"Wolfgang" wrote...

[...]

Hells bells, it seems Thurber stole Mitty from Stevenson. Well, perhaps
not "stole," but the idea is certainly there.

I looked for the original source of the quote after I posted it. Well,
one thing led to another and I never quite got there......you know how
that goes

You have no idea... (actually, you probably do)

.......but I found a reference that suggested Stevenson was alluding
(however indirectly) to a certain gentleman of La Mancha. Seems that
rather than committing outright theft from an origianl owner Thurber was
(ala Shakespeare) just recycling an already well used idea.

I guess Thruber does have to get the credit for the submarine scene.
Windmills is one thing, underwater warfare, quite another.

An enterprising
scholar could (and probably already did) make a career of listing
everybody who flogged it before Cervantes got hold of it.

WorldCat shows over 18K results for "cervantes." I'm not even close to a
literary scholar, but me thinks the lacunas have been filled.


Never read much of Stevenson; perhaps I should.

While in college (getting to be a while ago now despite the fact that I
got there a decade and a half after my high school classmates)

I know that feeling well. I graduated 7 or 8 years after most of my high
school 'friends.' 'Course, a coupla years following the Dead, stuffing
hallucinogens down my throat may have impeded the academic progress to which
I strived. Not that I regret that for one second, mind you, but it had its
consequences.

I made a
concerted effort to work my way through the great 19th century American
and English authors.

A worthy goal. One of the worthy-est. Michelle had a class a few years ago
with the late Gwin Kolb at the U of C. I sat in the back for one of his
lectures on Samuel Johnson. The way Kolb was able to mix Johnson with so
many other authors was amazing. I know I'll never have that grasp of purely
literary work, so it was doubly impressive. Now, if for some strange reason
you want to discuss social history, we can talk names...... :-)

There turned out to be a lot more of them than I expected
and most of them were alarmingly prolific. Needless to say, perhaps, but
I didn't get very far. But I DID manage to get through Twain, Irving,
Stevenson and Dickens (blech!).....and maybe a couple of works each by
some lesser luminaries like Hawthorne and Cooper. Stevenson is definitely
worth the time.

Over the summer, I've promised myself at least one novel a week. I'll still
have a bunch of school-related stuff to get through, but I want to read some
fiction. Authors are yet to be determined. I think I'd like to read one
classic of sorts and then a newish book afterwards. Hmmm... rough decision,
eh?


Michelle and I often discuss this very idea. She usually catches me
flipping through a well-worn copy of one of the many Calvin and Hobbes
anthologies that dot my book collection, which leads to a discussion of
Mitty and the whole idea of the internal life, separate from the
external. Usually makes for an interesting discussion...ranging from your
basic daydream (which I believe to be a "healthy" expression of simple
desires) to the secret lives some people live (not so healthy, IMO...)

Well, the whole idea of reading books (indisputably one of the most
salutary of human activities) outside one's own professional specialty is
Mittyish to the core.

Ain't that the truth. In some ways, within one's specialty, too. I guess it
would depend a lot on what that specialty is. In the historical world,
there's a million ways to interpret whatever happened, so reading an
interpretation with which you disagree is, in some ways, Mittyish.

The self-referential irony in Mitty couldn't possibly have been
lost on Thurber. Reading is simply a manifestation (albeit with a bit of
mechanical aid) of your healthy daydreaming.

Yes, yes. Additionally, I find that often, it's the cause of further
daydreaming. But that's just me. :-)

Writing, on the other hand,
represents (if we are to give credence to the evidence of practioners' own
statements as well as the testimony of innumerable eyewitnesses) those not
so healthy and all too infrequently secret lives.

:-)


Anyway... it's about 65 or so outside, and mentally, I'm a little west of
Madison, casting a little sedge over a rising trout.

Try the Pass Lake......trust me.

I have...fished it as a dry more often than not, and I've had OK results on
the Black Earth. I haven't really figured out which is my go-to fly there,
unless the water's cloudy, when a green BH rock worm is, despite being a
nymph, impossible to beat. I tend to be staring into space daydreaming (heh)
a lot whilst fishing, so for me, anyway, the focus is more often than not on
the 'fishing' rather than on the 'catching.' That's purely preference of
course, and surely the possible subject of a long discussion, but for
me...it works. That being said, I guess it doesn't really much matter which
fly I use....


Physically, I'm sitting inside my little carrel reading a surprisingly
intersting union journal from the 1920s. Great stuff.

Um.....yeah, that HAS TO be better than it sounds!

You have no idea. I do social history, mostly looking at working class
history and historical agency, largely thru a Gutman-esque lens. (If you
want to know, I'll fill you in...) This particular union (whose journal, in
a complete run, for reasons I do not know, exists, quite conveniently, only
in Madison) is a particularly interesting example of a group of artisans
falling back on a pre-industrial (usually) culture to resist the
mechanization (de-skilling, "industrializing," whatever) of their craft.
Excellent stuff. Wonderful stuff. [Insert superlative of choice here] stuff!
There's even pictures!

Dan
....who, knowing the "glass houses" witticism well, will never criticize
anyone's proclivities as being "boring."