A Cautionary Tale About Cautionary Tales?

While discussing the great nation of Scotland recently, I was reminded of something. Undoubtedly, Scotland has bestowed upon our world some fine gifts, including the telephone, television, penicillin, caber tossing, Billy Connolly, the Glasgow Kiss, the Bay City Rollers and the words “bampot”, “stoater”, “drookit”, “hackit” and “blootered”. (I discern a visit to the Urban Dictionary in your future, dear reader.)

But along with such distinguished cultural contributions, Scotland also produced the mother of all cautionary tales, a tale that exemplifies supreme “bathos” (no, silly, Bathos isn’t the name of the fourth Musketeer… and stop interrupting). And that tale goes by the name of William Topaz McGonagall. (Yes, I did just say “Topaz”. Bear with me, you’ll see.)

First, bathos. Here’s the dictionary definition:

bathos |ˈbāTHäs|
noun
(esp. in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.

The key word there is “unintentional”. For some unaccountable reason, something already funny is far funnier when it isn’t meant to be. If you doubt me, think back to your school days when you were passed a note featuring a crude rendition of a specific body part, and at that moment the teacher uttered the terrible words, “David, please share with the class what you clearly find so amusing.” (Yes, I know your name isn’t David, you’re missing my point, keep up. Sigh.) Anyway, the effect was excruciating. Your internal organs would seem to liquefy, then inexplicably feel like gravity had just increased tenfold. Your hands would sweat, your face take on the texture and hue of something you’d order from Domino’s. There would be a feeling in your throat somewhat akin to having a nest of boll weevils stuffed in your trachea, aching for release. Bottom line: forbidden humour is simply funnier.

So, who was William McGonagall? Well, he was a poet. Of sorts. More accurately, he was a truly abominable poet. If he was in any other field, not even the most militant union could have saved his job. But the spectacular part is that he believed he was gifted… and not only with verse. He also acted. So filled with hubris was this man that while playing the role of Macbeth, he once refused to die at the appointed moment in the play. I suppose rewriting Shakespeare on the fly is a form of subverted genius. Who knows what went on in this man’s head?

There are so many examples of his execrable poetry out there in Google-land (he wrote some 200 of the things), so I’ll just drop a quote from the conclusion of his most famous poem, “The Tay Bridge Disaster”. Keep in mind this is a lament for a very real disaster in which 75 people met horrible deaths when the Tay Rail Bridge near Dundee collapsed while a train was passing over it. Remember, we should not be laughing in any way at this…

“Oh! Ill-fated bridge of the silv’ry Tay
I now must conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way
At least many sensible men do say
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses
At least many sensible men confesses
For the stronger we our houses build
The less chance we have of being killed.”

A purer example of bathos we’d be hard pressed to find.

Oh, the Topaz part of his name? He once received a letter claiming to be from King Thibaw Min of Burma, informing him he’d been knighted as Sir Topaz, Knight of the White Elephant of Burmah. Either choosing to ignore or actually oblivious to this pretty obvious hoax, he henceforth referred to himself in his promotional material as “Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, Burmah”. Can someone hoax me something along similar lines so I can start a Facebook page entitled, “Sir David Emerald Antrobus, Knight of the Gold Phoque, Cascadia”, please?

Seriously, Google his name and I guarantee you will be helpless with laughter at many of the absurdities scattered throughout this man’s life. Unaware or unconcerned as McGonagall himself was, some of the events surrounding his seventy-seven years on planet Earth are scarcely believable. I’ll leave you with one such tidbit. No one can argue the truth contained in his first “review”, an ostensibly admiring comment from the subject of his very first poem, the Reverend George Gilfillan, who gushed, “Shakespeare never wrote anything like this.” Quite.

But what does his example teach us, as we each try to make our way in this world of letters? Should we mock him or admire him? In a way, perhaps both. Certainly on one level, I’m actually envious of the man’s stalwart self-belief. I’m as riddled with self doubt about my writing, after all, as the England national football team are about their continued progression at major tournaments: I just know I’m going out at the next penalty shootout. Whereas the McGonagalls of the world are apparently oblivious to those long dark tea-times of the soul (thank you, Douglas Adams), those quiet moments of reflection wherein most of us conclude our future most likely lies at a busy intersection holding a cardboard sign in one hand and a small, trembling dog in the other. But it’s easy to snipe, and perhaps this cautionary tale conceals another level of caution altogether. Despite his almost complete lack of writing talent, McGonagall’s bullheaded refusal to allow even a shred of self doubt to divert him from his vocation, his unerring insistence on his own brilliance, has ensured his seven collections of poetry are still being read over a hundred years after his death. Which, okay, is unintentionally funny, for sure, yet not really all that bathetic, is it?

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on June 29, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Phoque It

This is an early draft of a sales pitch. Please correct and edit before release. Under no circumstances should this be allowed to see the light of day in its current state.

Dear readers, writers, book industry people,

It’s become a cliché to claim there’s a veritable Pacific Ocean of crapola out there in the indie book world. But that cliché is not even a good analogy, really, so we’re going to turn it on its head. No, instead of an ocean, what we see is a vast floating island of ugly unbiodegradable plastic that grows vaster and uglier by the day. It’s at least as ugly as the word “unbiodegradable”. And we want to clean it up. Now, is there anything living in the ocean we can all get behind? Excluding those mean, club-wielding Canadians, that is? Wait, club-wielding Canadians are aquatic? Seals, of course!

With their large innocent eyes, playful natures and smooth, round torsos, pretty much everyone adores Canadians seals. Since we all approve of seals, it makes sense you will want to pay me to stamp your book with the “seal” of “approval” (clever, huh?). And since the French for seal is “phoque”, our company’s name almost writes itself: Phoque It. Geddit? It’s almost too perfect. Don’t know about you, but I’m giddy already.

So, here is my proposal. I have formed a collective. Right now it’s just me, admittedly, but my multiple personalities do actually qualify me in this lowdown masquerade exciting new venture. Anyway, I am going to fleece help all of you. And here’s how. Pretty much everyone agrees that indie books are somewhat quality-challenged, yeah? Quite honestly, I’ve seen better-written grocery lists than some of these so-called ebooks. Somewhere there’s a monkey sitting at a typewriter with more talent in one knuckle of its left pinkie finger than most of these losers. But what if we had a way to guarantee quality? You then get happy readers, of course. Who suddenly stop wanting to douse indies in grain alcohol and flambé them on a barbecue while cursing in an ancient Maori dialect start to drop their criticisms of indie authors. And who then buy more books written by said indies. After which, the collective self esteem index rises. Thus ensuring everyone wins. It’s the mother of all positive feedback loops. And with absolutely no more flambéing.

Look, I’ll cut to the chase: I have now patented a top secret algorithm that can objectively evaluate the quality of any book. It took the best part of two years and the illegal abduction expert help of a number of prominent scientists from MIT to create this unique software, but now you can benefit from its 100% accuracy. Not only is it able to assess grammatical accuracy, it can also rate such previously unquantifiable aspects of the writer’s craft as narrative arc, plot holes, the overuse of exposition, even a precarious imbalance of tell over show.

Once evaluated objectively by the program, our panel of industry experts will then pore over your work in order to provide that human touch. If I they decree it to be a reasonable standard, they will issue the Bronze Phoque to wear with pride on your book cover, and you will fork over pay the collective the incredibly low price of $250.

The Silver Phoque is reserved for slightly more elevated works, in which the dialogue is perhaps a little tighter, the language more tonally consistent, and we still only charge the almost painfully low rate of $350. Painful for us, I must emphasize. You, on the other hand, will feel an almost pleasurable sensation in your nether regions when you cheerfully part with such a paltry sum.

Finally, the Gold Phoque will demonstrate to everyone the bewitching, beguiling brilliance of your book, will suffuse it with—yes—golden lambent light and the mellifluous tones of otherworldly choirs (as well as the large Gold Phoque so prominently displayed on your book’s cover for the whole world to admire), all for the astonishingly, damn-near embarrassingly low price of $500.

We even tested our amazing system on a bona fide classic, with somewhat surprising results. Awarding To Kill a Mockingbird a Bronze Phoque, the software had this to say: “A bit weighty for a YA novel. This, alongside some disturbing displays of racism, frankly, prevents this book from achieving a higher rating from our literat-o-meter. We would encourage the author to find less offensive subject matter in light of the young age and impressionability of the novel’s protagonist”. It also suggested Shakespeare go back and rewrite his stuff in “a language we can all understand.” Okay, so there may be a few minor glitches and bugs to be worked out, but I can assure you of this: your book will be in expert hands. What can possibly go wrong?

This is the next step in our adventure together, my avid indie fleet. We are shedding gatekeepers like a squid sheds ink. Today we have set sail toward an unknown land. There may well be hungry sharks and heavy storms along the way. Pirates, even. But we are going to kill with righteous fury that ugly island of plastic, we’re going to remake our ocean voyage in our image, and we’re going to do it with seals, by imbuing them with approval, by showing we care only for quality and not stupid money, which you can’t take with you anyway. What are a few pennies when placed beside immortality, after all? I’ll answer that for you. Nothing, is what they are.

Which reminds me: here’s my last word, since you now know my word is good. In order to further cement your trust, we will demonstrate our exemplary self-marketing competence by providing one of the industry’s more memorable slogans:

“Here at Phoque It, You Give Us Money, Then We Give A Phoque.”

Thank you for your time.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on June 22, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Screw You Guys

I just want to clarify something about my modus operandi as a blogger and as a person. I am not a mean guy. I really do try to avoid hurting others. But I also have a wicked sense of humour, and like many of my original compatriots (the Brits), it is based on a kind of sardonic mockery with lashings of wordplay. Plus, it runs pretty gallows, too. Sorry, not gonna apologise for that. I just want to put it on record that, if I poke fun at something you feel is uncomfortably close to a personal attack, please please approach me privately and ask. I do not bite, other than playfully, and 99 times out of 100, you'll find I am just messing around, nothing unkind or offensive meant. If I have a problem with an individual, I will approach that individual. At risk of sounding complacent, this is what grown-ups are supposed to do, yeah?

Now, when a controversial issue crosses my radar and I recognise a bunch of folks are getting butthurt over it—legitimately or not—sometimes I will parody or satirize the entire topic in a blog post. To kind of blow it up, make it transparent. This doesn't mean I'm taking a position, necessarily. It means I am acknowledging it as a point of contention and using humour to defuse the tension a little. It's how I play. Test how it feels to be on either side of the fence. Or simply on the fence, splinters and all. Which is how I learn. Splinters in one's glutei work wonders that way.

To be honest, it feels kind of weird that I'm having to spell this out, but it seems there are some fellow interwebizens (yes, I just made that word up) who missed the memo that by employing enough snarkology we can sometimes illuminate or otherwise get to grips with a hot issue. I mean, do they live in a world somehow scrubbed of all traces of Jon Stewart? Or Eric Cartman, for that matter? As an example, I mentioned recently a post I wrote for Indies Unlimited that mocked internet collectives who scam writers and set themselves up as phony "experts". Well, yeah. And I still stand by that, of course. Snake oil salesmen deserve all the censure and ridicule we can muster. Unfortunately, those who are not selling snake oil can also feel they're being targeted. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you're not exploiting my fellow writers and are offering a reasonable service, fair play to you. Because look, although I am not even decided on the issue of whether these new "gatekeepers" can have any positive impact, I'm also not convinced they won't.

So, given my ambivalence, when I am able to take advantage of a free promotional opportunity to use one of these ventures for my own book, it is not hypocritical. And even if it were, so what? Show me someone who hasn't accepted his or her contradictions and I'll show you a very restricted and binary thinker. Cut me some slack here and I'll promise to return the favour.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Beachhead Elegy

And they were never seen again.

Cold dark waves like chocolate shavings, assailing the frosted grainy icing of a winter beach. Anemones and urchins know. The herring gulls think they know. Sea monsters might possibly know. We are utterly betrayed by the pretenders to the royal court of Happily Ever After, within the cruel kingdom of Some Day Soon.

I remember the two of them – arm in arm, sweetly curious, as if fresh-weaned kittens had developed hard science – combing the lacerated beach, scrutinizing reeking bones, shells, asking of all that capital-D-death what may have brought its unique chill to pass, at last.

“What is this? Do we know?”

“No.”

Oh, yes, that, of course, curiosity and the cat… along with that most chilling of clichés: Never. Seen. Again.

No monsters now. Just the lap and draw and slow allure of saltwater, over and over and over. Sucking and soothing. Whispering, like Highland mothers, “wheesht” to the stilted watchers, the quiet witnesses so wholly lost in the face of sorrow, so sorrowful in the lap of loss, so strained in the lacy flutter-and-flap of their licit and illicit loves. Beneath a leaden sky. Beneath all effective notice anywhere.

Three-finned fish limp and hump through wet mud. Something wretched with the spreading bloom of its own impending end mewls, infected, feeble. A drooping sun drops beyond it all.

“Pass me that scoop. That lens. Those slides. Somehow, we must preserve all this.”

We measure. We forget. We measured. We forgot.

The great heaving ocean once redolent of ramshackle life, salted, pungent, exuberantly sharp, now just reeks of something so utterly dead the ancient stars preen and pulse.

We look on, almost and even recalling the strides we took, the surf we rode, the honour we stole, the dirt we spilled, the balls we juggled, the plates we spun, the strings we plucked, the feasts we gorged, the grapes we trod, the lambs we slit, the blood we let, the steps we skipped, the fires we loosed, the love we snubbed, the holes we bored, the pricks we jabbed, the…

…the actual shrieking horrors we awoke, lacking any sedative. Or all perspective.

In the saltspray, hearing squalls, offering despair, thanking ourselves, raining stupid on our own parade, lurching nowhere, dark, dim, harrowdown.

Go away now. We are done. They are done. The subliminal drone is gone.

The End has never, ever sounded this dumb.

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A version of this story appeared on BlergPop on May 4, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Close

As unclear dreams go, we gassed up a few miles back and are now pulling into town. Town. An untidy strew of decrepit and peeling clapboard buildings. Okay, a town. After paying for a room – off-white décor, sticky carpet – I step out behind M. into the main street.

“Wonder where’s the best place to eat.”

“May only be one place,” says M.

We gaze vaguely eastward over a sunburned field, absorbing the clear blue brilliance.

Without warning, the unthinkable. A thick column climbs like a tumorous limb above the horizon – squirming, turbulent reds, charcoals, yellows, deep infected orange – blooms impossibly high in the deep blue, before flattening itself like a roiling brain atop a crippled spine, an utterly broken thing.

“I guess it doesn’t matter now,” I say, my heart liquefying when I see M.’s haunted hopeless face. People are crying and someone retches in the street. I step forward and hold M.

“Where is that?”

“Uh-uh, I’m not even sure where we are. New York City, maybe? DC?”

“We’d better get inside.”

In the room, we search for shelter, for something solid, but the furniture is rickety. Even the sagging doorframes seem unworthy. Faithlessly, we force shut windows that barely fit in their frames.

Then we hear it.

An aberrant rumble swelling around the hint of a ruinous howl. Distant yet closing. We stand senseless, embracing. Awaiting the end (the end), an eventuality we couldn’t have remotely considered earlier that day, adrift yet untroubled on warm ribbons of Midwestern highway.

An already hot day grows hotter. The rumble soon a catastrophe, assaulting the ramshackle structure in a storm of screaming heat. A violent, bewitched twilight come early, wholly uninvited. We stand for a long time, clasped in that shuddering embrace, amid hot unholy gales, me feeling the most bewildering blend of pure love and abject sorrow I’ve ever felt, or will likely ever feel again.

Blessed mercy, it passes. I’ve no idea how long we remain there, shocked immobile, waiting for our stampeding hearts to return to us. Outside, fiery buildings crackle and dance. Thick coiling ropes of ash trail in the wake not only of gusts of wind but behind the gathering numbers of fleeing people; these latter gape-faced, blankly intent on outrunning the hurt in the air. The sound of cars being started and revved, of doors slamming. A few individuals are trying to direct these instant refugees, gesturing solemn at intersections, as if civic order were suddenly vital… albeit futile – with a lone artery feeding the Interstate, and an entire town attempting to simultaneously mainline, everything gridlocks.

In the motel, we tie cursory bandannas over our mouths – too numb yet for regret, but oh so lonely – and sit watching thwarted drivers scowl against the backdrop of a smoking town beneath the preternatural murk of a heartrending sky.

One of us, not sure which, says: “When it’s our turn to head back west, at least we’ll have a full tank of gas.”

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A version of this story appeared on BlergPop on May 21, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.