historical scholars / Gould in them there pillows

Joe Gould's Secret

Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962, p. 273—

Just when the troubles of Broom [magazine] were at their height, the eccentric little Joe Gould [aka Professor Seagull] fell upon me with demands for money—providing Shakespearean comic relief against the tension of our literary tragedy. We had published a few pages of his so-called History [An Oral History of our Time] in one of our last issues, but had announced at the same time that our magazine had no money to pay for contributions. Greatly excited at being put into print at last, Joe Gould refused to believe that he would not be paid an honorarium of some kind, and kept telephoning me at all hours. Beside myself with exasperation, I swore at him; whereupon this tiniest and most impecunious of historical scholars began to address me in a tone of severe formality, declaring that I had grossly insulted him and he was obliged to challenge me to a “duel”—a duel, with the midget Gould! Since it was he who issued the challenge, he requested that I name the weapons to be used.

“Pillows!” I roared into the telephone. “I’ll meet you with pillows at sunset tomorrow.” But he never came.

ham and bacon / let's say eggs for both of them

Vintage print advertisement

Richmal Crompton, William’s Treasure Trove. UK: George Newnes Ltd, 1962.

“I incline to the theory that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Bacon.”

“How could they be?” said William …“How could that man Ham—“

“I said Bacon.”

“Well, it’s nearly the same … Well, if this man Bacon wrote them, they wouldn’t put this man Shakespeare’s name on the books ...”

“Now, boys, I want you all please to listen to me … There was a man called Hamlet—“

“You just said he was called Bacon,” said William.

“I did not say he was called Bacon.”

“Yes, ‘scuse me, you did … When I called him Ham, you said it was Bacon, and now you’re calling him Ham yourself.”

“This was a different man…Listen! This man was called Hamlet and his uncle had killed his father because he wanted to marry his mother.”

“What did he want to marry his mother for?” said William …

“It was Hamlet's mother he wanted to marry.”

“Oh, that man what you think wrote the plays.”

“No, that was Bacon.”

“You said it was Ham a minute ago … I tell you what,” said William confidingly, “let's say Eggs for both of them.”

I Could Be Bounded in a Nutshell

© Roy R. Behrens

William Shakespeare, Hamlet—

I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

National Parks Poster Series | Yosemite

Poster (2019) © Roy R. Behrens

Above Yosemite National Park (2019). © Roy R. Behrens. From an on-going series of posters about wildlife habitats, and national parks and monuments.

Death Begins at Forty | Art Deco Illustration

Cover illustration (c1938)

Above, Artist unknown, "Death Begins at Forty." Magazine cover illustration published by Travelers Insurance Companies, c1938. Courtesy New York Public Library.

•••

Louis Untermeyer, Bygones: The Recollections of Louis Untermeyer. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965—

[Recalling his earlier immature writings] They were, as someone is supposed to have said, the kind of thing one should go to the trouble of not writing.…

It is as a poet that I most resent those resentful of puns, for the pun is, per se, a poetic device. Poetry is essential a form of play, a play of metaphor, a play of rhyme. The pun is another form of syllabic playfulness, a matching of sounds that, like rhyme, are similar yet not quite the same—a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance. Whatever form it takes, searching or silly, the pun springs spontaneously from the same combination of wit and imagination which speeds the poetic impulse.

[James] Joyce might well have tesitifed for the defense. Finnegans Wake, with its "Ibscenest nansence," "There's no plagues like Rome," "Wring out the clothes! Bring in the dew!" is a book-length frolic of puns. The nonrational logic of the man-level parable (or parody) of the life of everyman embodies more than a thousand word-plays, which makes Joyce the most riotous punster since Shakespeare (p. 45).