Futility Closet

Henry Roth had writer’s block for 60 years.

He published Call It Sleep in 1934 and couldn’t produce a followup until 1994.

“Eight Degrees of Drunkenness”:

1. The Ape-drunk, who leaps and sings and hollers
2. The Lion-drunk, who is quarrelsome and rude
3. The Swine-drunk, who is sleepy and lumpish
4. The Sheep-drunk, wise in his own conceit, but unable to speak
5. The Maudlin-drunk, who declares he loves all mankind
6. The Martin-drunk, who drinks himself sober again
7. The Goat-drunk, who is lascivious
8. The Fox-drunk, who is crafty, like the Dutch, who bargain when drunk

– Thomas Nash, 1592

Jonathan Swift’s “Resolutions — When I Come to Be Old”:

• Not to Marry a young Woman.
• Keep young Company unless they reely desire it.
• Be peevish or morose, or suspicious.
• Scorn present Ways, or Wits, or Fashions, or Men, or War, &c.
• Be fond of Children, or let them come near me hardly.
• Tell the same Story over and over to the same People.
• Be covetous.
• Neglect decency, or cleenlyness, for fear of falling into Nastyness.
• Be over severe with young People, but give Allowances for their youthfull follyes, and Weeknesses.
• Be influenced by, or give ear to knavish tatling Servants, or others.
• Be too free of advise nor trouble any but those that desire it.
• Desire some good Friends to inform me which of these Resolutions I break, or neglect, & wherein; and reform accordingly.
• Talk much, nor of my self.
• Boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with Ladyes, &c.
• Hearken to Flatteryes, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman.
• Be positive or opiniative.
• Sett up for observing all these Rules, for fear I should observe none.

Rejection letters sent to Henry James:

“A duller story I have never read. It wanders through a deep mire of affected writing and gets nowhere, tells no tale, stirs no emotion but weariness. The professional critics who mistake an indirect and roundabout use of words for literary art will call it an excellent piece of work; but people who have any blood in their veins will yawn and throw it down — if, indeed, they ever pick it up.”

“It is surely the n+1st power of Jamesiness. … It gets decidedly on one’s nerves. It is like trying to make out page after page of illegible writing. The sense of effort becomes acutely exasperating. Your spine curls up, your hair-roots prickle & you want to get up and walk around the block. There is no story — oh! but none at all …”

They didn’t seem to bother him. “Do not mind anything that anyone tells you about anyone else,” he said. “Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”

On March 15, 1980, the Boston Globe ran an editorial about the nation’s economic woes:

Certainly it is in the self-interest of all Americans to impose upon themselves the kind of economic self-discipline that President Carter urged repeatedly yesterday in his sober speech to the nation. As the President said, inflation, now running at record rates, is a cruel tax, one that falls most harshly upon those least able to bear the burden.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but it carried the headline “Mush From the Wimp.”

In 1984 Globe editorial writer Kirk Scharfenberg admitted he’d written it. “I meant it as an in-house joke and thought it would be removed before publication,” he wrote. “It appeared in 161,000 copies of the Globe the next day.”

You can fool some of the people all of the time.

Perhaps inspired by Thomas Chatterton, the teenage Samuel William Henry Ireland (1777-1835) “found” an old deed with Shakespeare’s signature.

His father, a collector, was overjoyed, so Ireland went on finding more Shakespeareana — a promissory note, a declaration of Protestant faith, letters to Anne Hathaway and to Queen Elizabeth, books with notes in the margins and “original” manuscripts for Hamlet and King Lear.

Amazingly, these were all authenticated by experts of the day. Ireland wasn’t caught until at age 18 he wrote an entire “lost” play, which was mounted at Drury Lane Theatre. As a playwright, he couldn’t match the Bard, and Vortigern and Rowena closed after a single performance on April 2, 1796.

Sadly, his father took the blame, as no one could believe such a young man could pull off such a forgery. His son fled to France and died in obscurity.

Two examples of “Irish bulls,” or ludicrous published statements:

It is in a Belfast paper that may be read the account of a murder, the result of which is described thus: “They fired two shots at him; the first shot killed him, but the second was not fatal.”

Connoisseurs in [Irish] bulls will probably say that this is only a blunder. Perhaps the following will please them better: “A man was run down by a passenger train and killed; he was injured in a similar way a year ago.”

– From Henry B. Wheatley, Literary Blunders: A Chapter in the “History Of Human Error,” 1893

In a 1632 version of the King James Bible, the printers omitted a “not” from Exodus 20:14, so the seventh commandment read “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

The printers were fined 300 pounds, a lifetime’s wages, and most of the copies were recalled. Eleven still exist.

Bonus erratum: In Myles Coverdale’s 1535 Bible, Psalms 91:5 read: “Thou shall not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night.” Should have been “afrayed for eny terror.”

I had often, cowled in the slumbrous heavy air,
Closed my inanimate lids to find it real,
As I knew it would be, the colourful spires
And painted roofs, the high snows glimpsed at the back,
All reversed in the quiet reflecting waters -
Not knowing then that Durer perceived it too.
Now I find that once more I have shrunk
To an interloper, robber of dead men’s dream,
I had read in books that art is not easy
But no one warned that the mind repeats
In its ignorance the vision of others. I am still
The black swan of trespass on alien waters.

That’s from “Durer: Innsbruck, 1495,” a poem by Ern Malley. When it was celebrated in the Australian modernist magazine Angry Penguins, its real authors, James McAuley and Harold Stewart, stepped forward. Not only had they written the poem, they said, but they had “deliberately perpetrated bad verse”: “We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions.”

The point, they said, was to show that modern critics had become “insensible of absurdity and incapable of ordinary discrimination.”

The critics insisted that they had accidentally created a masterpiece.

From John Aubrey, Miscellanies Upon Various Subjects, 1696:

Mr. Schoot, a German, hath an excellent book of magick: it is prohibited in that country. I have here set down three spells, which are much approved.

– To cure an Ague. Write this following spell in parchment, and wear it about your neck. It must be writ triangularly.

A B R A C A D A B R A
A B R A C A D A B R
A B R A C A D A B
A B R A C A D A
A B R A C A D
A B R A C A
A B R A C
A B R A
A B R
A B
A

With this spell, one of Wells, hath cured above a hundred of the ague.

– To cure the biting of a Mad-Dog, write these words in paper, viz. “Rebus Rubus Epitepscum”, and give it to the party, or beast bit, to eat in bread, &c. A Gentleman of good quality, and a sober grave person, did affirm, that this receipt never fails.

– To cure the Tooth-Ach: out of Mr. Ashmole’s manuscript writ with his own hand.

“Mars, hur, abursa, aburse”.
Jesu Christ for Mary’s sake,
Take away this Tooth-Ach.

Write the words three times; and as you say the words, let the party burn one paper, then another, and then the last. He says, he saw it experimented, and the party “immediately cured.”