“A Big Edition” (E45)

Originally printed: The New Yorker, November 21, 1931
First reprinted in: Never reprinted
Original Byline: Guy Fawkes

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Comments:
A big edition indeed! Guy Fawkes covers a lot of ground in this 5-page installment of The Wayward Press. He begins with an expression of pity for American journalists forced to pretend that they understand or care about “international news”. Given a line on a good murder spree or their semi-annual Trial of the Century, those press boys could really kick up some copy, but with nothing much cooking on the domestic front in early November 1931, Fawkes finds them serving up second-hand statecraft scraps. The papers were abuzz that autumn with hearsay concerning French Prime Minister Pierre Laval’s fruitless confab with Herbert Hoover. Fawkes chides the media for churning out placeholder headlines and stories, all claiming to be on the cusp of big balance-of-power altering revelations, when, in fact, not even Laval knew what he was doing on this side of the Atlantic.

The author does a little digging in the London papers and finds them even more at sea in their reportage, with the Daily Express going furthest astray in their accounts of a “shocking” shipboard slip and fall by U.S. dignitary Henry Prince, which was supposed to have upset Monsieur et Madame Laval greatly and augured ill for discussions of a Franco-American Pact. In reality, RB asserts, Prince had the stomach flu and the Lavals weren’t anywhere near him when he took a tumble. This was no mistake on DE’s part – the paper simply understood that beleaguered Britons were eager for a little comedy relief in their foreign correspondence.

Fawkes makes short work of the New York City Aldermanic elections, described by various organs as indicative of a victory for Tammany or for the anti-corruption Seabury commission (definitely seems like the latter, in retrospect, given the imminent fate of Mayor James J. Walker) and the death of Thomas Alva Edison (he’s just happy the sportswriters weren’t asked to pile their purple clichés onto his pyre – if they had any words left in their artless arsenals after emptying them for their encomia to Knute Rockne). In between these segments, RB goes in for some multiple regression data analysis (comparing October 1930 circulation figures to the October 1931 numbers) in order to demonstrate that a sizable portion of the now-defunct World and Evening World readerships wound up falling to the Hearst papers, while a hefty percentage of the populace (188,196 to be exact) appears to have stopped reading entirely.

Things really heat up during the final two pages, as Fawkes holds up his end of two feuds initiated by The Wayward Press – one with The Sun, which has a rather distorted view of the meaning of the term “reading matter”; the other with Times Business Manager Louis Wiley, who pleads innocent to the charge of accepting press coverage payola from the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Along the way, we also get an amusing play-by-play of a fall flare-up of nonsense numbering in the New York papers, several of which appeared to be trying to one-up each other by going far beyond the traditional “Three/Four/Five Star Final” formula for identifying their last gasps of the day. Fawkes tracks The Sun, The Post and The World-Telegram through their paces, observing nigh-exponential progress from the usual 5, to 14, to 16, to 118, to a truly preposterous edition number 219 shamelessly put forth by The Post.

Favourite Moment:
Now that we know The Times wasn’t paid for anything [re: stories about the Waldorf-Astoria], the thing is even less understandable than ever. The Herald Tribune at least got a great big advertisement for its pains.

“Aubergine’s Way: After Reading Too Much Proust (Naturally in Translation)” (E29)

Originally printed: The Bookman, December 1931
First reprinted in: No Poems; Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways
Original Byline: Robert Benchley

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Comments:
Intentionally tedious parody of Marcel Proust’s vertiginously digressive style, punctuated by some real comedic highlights (such as the ‘favourite moment’ transcribed below). The speaker here leads us on a merry chase through his mental meanderings at a dinner party that he attends in hopes of gaining some intelligence of the movements and behaviour of his absent friend, Aubergine. He hears no news at all about Aubergine, but this leaves him free to dally just long enough among the already established details of their relationship to realize that Aubergine wants nothing to do with him and is probably actively avoiding him. Her way, in effect, appears to be any way but this guy’s way.

Our narrator takes consolation in the feeling of solidarity that can develop between fellow hay fever sufferers. Meanwhile, our metatextual parodist takes pleasure in the knowledge that he can end this farce at any time…

Favourite Moment:
“Neurasthenia, complicated by an interest in fans, sometimes develops into an arthritis, just as an arthritis, which is only a toxic form of neurasthenia, develops sometimes into an interest in fans.”

Reprint Notes:

The main text appears verbatim in No Poems (without any accompanying artwork), but the final teaser from the end of The Bookman article has been omitted:

“In the next volume, ‘Aubergine Disparue’, we shall discover why Aubergine thought it hardly worth her while to stick. And can we blame her?”

“Atom Boy!” (E28)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, February 14, 1931
First reprinted in: Benchley Lost and Found
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Comments:
RB contemplates the Atomic Future with a mixture of bewilderment and cosmic irritation, soothed by genuine delight at the prospect of a post-work social order. As concepts like protons, neutrons, and atom smashing trickled into the popular consciousness via reporting on the theories and lab experiments of Ernest Rutherford and others, Transcendental Absurdists of a Benchleyan bent were bound to take an interest, if only until they realized some math would be involved.

This piece offers an excellent demonstration of RB’s perfected approach/avoidance style in dealing with abstruse subject matter (to compare the results with an earlier effort in this vein, see E11). Exasperated by the microscopic scale of his intellectual query (and quarry), our author veers momentarily off course into sub-vaudeville ethnic humor. This goes nowhere either and leads him back to the thought that everything – from open mic routines to the supposed building blocks of the universe – appears to be crumbling under the strain of humanity’s decaying orbit around superseded verities. But hey, if we can bombard the discombobulated fragments of the old order with alpha particles and generate enough leisure time for everyone, maybe it’ll all be worth it? (Annotater’s note – no luck on that score.)

Favourite Moment:
“I think there was even more to the story than that tantalizing bit I have given you, but it is too late now. We are back again on the atom.”

“Art Revolution No. 4861” (E24)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, August 8, 1931
First reprinted in: Chips Off the Old Benchley
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Comments:
As you might expect, given RB’s uniquely grounded brand of absurdity, the author never tired of burlesquing the barrage of bouleversements that swept through the art world during the first half of the 20th century. A close relative of E17, this piece is more successful, in that it strings together a stronger set of critical hits at the underground establishment, but it does boil down to the basic assumption that aesthetics should be a refuge from theory – not a lost continent submerged beneath successively waterier nouvelles vagues. It’s a fairly palatable take on philistinism, all things considered, but it’s not a view shared by your humble annotater.

Those reservations aside, this reader has no quarrel with Benchley’s invention of Straw Man Scrawler Jean Baptiste Morceau Lavalle Raoul Depluy Rourke – whose obsessive idées aren’t designed to fix anything. RB opens up a can of wild analysis in scrutinizing the feeble embodiment of Rourke’s theoretico-aesthetic ideals, a half-baked soufflé that wears its sub-mental symbols on its sleeve like so many cut-rate concept billboards. Bring on Art Revolution No. 4862!

Favourite Moment(s):
“Thus, the laughing snake in the lower left-hand corner of Mist on the Marshes is merely a representation of the spirit of laughing snakes, an has nothing to do with Reality. This snake is laughing because he is really not in the picture at all.”
“Whatever it is, you cannot deny that it is in the upper left-hand corner of the picture.”

“Around the World with the Gypsy Jockey” (E21)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, October 24, 1931
First reprinted in: No Poems; Or Around the World Backwards and Sideways
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Comments:
Well… as you might expect from a piece with the above title, this one is a parody of Orientalist/white supremacist anthropological gawking that nevertheless participates a little too blithely in that unsavoury discourse. RB writes chiefly in the persona of Colonel Michington Mea, a Movietone marauder who makes his living by pointing at things you wouldn’t see at your local church picnic and expressing astonishment. The Colonel is certainly a fair target for ridicule, but the piece quickly lapses into a rehearsal of well-worn tropes that undoubtedly fit (alongside his foot) in the mouth of our guide, but aren’t much fun to read.

Benchley does eventually pull the parody together into something resembling a genuine critique, culminating in the delirious expostulations quoted below…

Favourite Moment:
“The Spell of the East! Will it ever release us from its thralldom? Who knows? Who cares?”

“Announcing a New Vitamin” (E16)

Originally printed: Liberty Magazine, September 12, 1931
First reprinted in: No Poems; Or, Around the World Backwards and Sideways
Unable to compare reprint with original text – Liberty Historical Archives not available at Toronto Public Library
Original Byline: unknown

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Comments:

Writing in the persona of an introspective nutritional ballyhoo man, RB details the trials and deliberations of researchers who isolate a compound with very little get-up-and-go-to-market potential. Stumbling upon their discovery while picking through a mess of mackerel bones, Dr. Arthur W. Meexus and the author congratulate each other on shoring up the inexcusable gap between Vitamins E and G (later demoted to second-class status as Vitamin B2). The pair’s mirth dissipates when they realize that all of the really good dietary claims have been staked by their alphabetical antecedents. What’s left for Vitamin F?

Groping about for some slogan-ready boon in their breakthrough, RB and Meexus try a few biological jingles on for size. Saliva anyone? How about a little top-up for your tear ducts? Perhaps a dash of grotesque anthropology might make the masses F-conscious? No scientist worth their salt (or milk, or radishes, or cod liver oil) is going to yoke their lab’s prestige to such a lemon (lemon? that’s Vitamin C – a good vitamin!) The thing begins to seem a little desperate, and our author wisely considers tossing Vitamin F back on the bone heap.

Favourite Moment:
“We have announced [Vitamin F’s] discovery and have given to the world sufficient data to show that it is an item of diet which undoubtedly serves a purpose. But what purpose? We are working on that now, and ought to have something very interesting to report in a short time. If we aren’t able to, we shall have to call vitamin F in, and begin all over again.”