Subject
"Conclusive Evidence": Junkyard dogs and the Protestant spectrum
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. The editor thanks alert Jerry Friedman
<jfriedman@nnm.cc.nm.us> for setting right his (DBJ) muddled recollections
re JIM Croce's "Big, Bad, Leroy Brown" and the line "Meaner than a
junkyard dog."
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Jerry Friedman, Northern N. M. Community College"
At 11:29 AM 1/13/99 -0800, your NABOKV-L editor wrote:
...
> The implicit "junk yard dog" pun becomes in the Russian a rather
>mundane "isterichnyi setter byvshevego star'evshchika," i.e., the
>hysterical setter of the deceased junk dealer. The phrase "meaner than a
>junk yard dog" was proverbial in my youth and more recently immortalized
>in Bob Croce's song of that title.
Not to pick nits, but the song was "Bad Bad Leroy Brown", written and
recorded by Jim Croce (1943-1973)--I believe it was the best-selling song
in the U.S. in '73.
On the subject of T. S. Elmann, I think no one has yet mentioned the
first meaning of "Amen Corner" that comes to my mind--a part of some
evangelical American (especially African-American) churches where the
especially devout sit with each other and shout "Amen!", "Hallelujah!",
and the like because the preaching is inspiring them. I imagine this
is the meaning in Baldwin's play. Since Eliot was conspicuously High Church
("Anglo-Catholic") in the later part of his life, could Nabokov be teasing
that notable snob by comparing his religion to a practice that's as "Low
Church" as you can get? (Please don't take me to mean "superior" and
"inferior".)
I hope the above has nothing to do with Sandy Drescher's suggested
connection to brown barbarians. And I take it the connection to "Bad Bad
Barbara Braun" would need, as John Rea might say, to be divided by i.
As for the lilacs in bloom, they appear not only in Whitman's famous
poem but also in Eliot's "The Waste Land"--the second or third line, if
memory serves. A comparison to the self-consciously "demotic" Whitman
would also mock Eliot's snobbery.
I can't even guess what Mann is doing here, beside having the same first
name as Eliot and being another Nobel laureate who Nabokov thought overrated.
Jerry Friedman
<jfriedman@nnm.cc.nm.us> for setting right his (DBJ) muddled recollections
re JIM Croce's "Big, Bad, Leroy Brown" and the line "Meaner than a
junkyard dog."
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Jerry Friedman, Northern N. M. Community College"
At 11:29 AM 1/13/99 -0800, your NABOKV-L editor wrote:
...
> The implicit "junk yard dog" pun becomes in the Russian a rather
>mundane "isterichnyi setter byvshevego star'evshchika," i.e., the
>hysterical setter of the deceased junk dealer. The phrase "meaner than a
>junk yard dog" was proverbial in my youth and more recently immortalized
>in Bob Croce's song of that title.
Not to pick nits, but the song was "Bad Bad Leroy Brown", written and
recorded by Jim Croce (1943-1973)--I believe it was the best-selling song
in the U.S. in '73.
On the subject of T. S. Elmann, I think no one has yet mentioned the
first meaning of "Amen Corner" that comes to my mind--a part of some
evangelical American (especially African-American) churches where the
especially devout sit with each other and shout "Amen!", "Hallelujah!",
and the like because the preaching is inspiring them. I imagine this
is the meaning in Baldwin's play. Since Eliot was conspicuously High Church
("Anglo-Catholic") in the later part of his life, could Nabokov be teasing
that notable snob by comparing his religion to a practice that's as "Low
Church" as you can get? (Please don't take me to mean "superior" and
"inferior".)
I hope the above has nothing to do with Sandy Drescher's suggested
connection to brown barbarians. And I take it the connection to "Bad Bad
Barbara Braun" would need, as John Rea might say, to be divided by i.
As for the lilacs in bloom, they appear not only in Whitman's famous
poem but also in Eliot's "The Waste Land"--the second or third line, if
memory serves. A comparison to the self-consciously "demotic" Whitman
would also mock Eliot's snobbery.
I can't even guess what Mann is doing here, beside having the same first
name as Eliot and being another Nobel laureate who Nabokov thought overrated.
Jerry Friedman