Sofa Bed or Loaf of Bread-Part I

The flexibility of the sofa bed, and I don't just mean its folding ability but also its home usage as desk, bed, sofa and cutting surface for vegetables, is wonderfully depicted in this illustration of these two men conducting a business meeting. Notice the man standing keeps his trench coat firmly closed and belted to assure the other man that no homosexual advances will be made, at least over the course of the meeting, a standard practice in the home business office where sofa beds are involved. Even with a drink in hand and shoe removal during document perusal. After the meeting it's anyone's ballgame, social barriers may break down and anything can happen, including even the arrival of one of the mens' wives, in which case a threesome might be involved or a cuckolding situation that may or may not include the use of an anteater, stopwatch, socket wrench, lip gloss and a little Shostakovitch on the boom box while one man weeps and the other whoops for joy as heavenly bliss is achieved. Either way, the sofa bed has provided a sanctuary, not only for doing business but as a convenient place for a busy businessman to kick off his shoes, kick back and enjoy a good book on the mating habits of marmots of the Pacific Northwest while throwing down a Mai Tai on the rocks.

It is my aim in this posting to right a wrong that has been perpetuated in sofa bed history and left a man's dreams shattered, his reputation tarnished and his life in ruins even though he's dead, but he was pretty broken up and depressed by the time he hit the grave. Which is no way to meet your maker if you ask me. Am I talking about the true discoverer of penicillin, an unsung hero of World War I, a gentle nun who devoted her life to lepers in the Lesser Antilles or the inventor of Brylcreem? No, I am not. The focus of this wrongdoing is the sofa bed, or hide-away as some call it, that ubiquitous piece of furniture that many take for granted and yet has afforded such peace and restfulness for weary travelers and uninvited guests over the years who beg, plead and often times offer to shave any part of your body you feel needs shaving, including difficult toe or knuckle hair, in exchange for a sofa bed to lay their heavy heads on for the evening. And it is the inventor of this miraculous device that is part furniture, part boudoir accessory, that has gone unnoticed to this day, the credit given to another man who rode the coattails of this true genius and garnered the fame and accolades while the real originator withered away, his socks unwashed and his cardigan stained with the tears of ingratitude and gorgonzola cheese. So, behold the man and the mind that thought up such an invention, which in the annals of 20th century history is second to none except, perhaps, for the Invisible Liftee Shoe Height Pad.

The Invisible Liftee Height Pad gets no complaints from me when it comes to a deserving place in invention history, but being taller means nothing in the end if you don't have a place to rest your head after all the dancing you've done earlier in the evening. And ten-to-one that girl you were cutting the rug with will be bringing you back to her place for a little tete-a-tete or making-the-beast-with-two-backs, a wristwatch and lint-covered breath mint, on her sofa bed, no less.

Yossi Blitzen may seem an unprepossessing man but his ingenuity and dogged determination to invent, in his own words, "the greatest thing since sliced white bread," was not some unfounded and whimsical dream of a crazy man but rather a cold-blooded and calculated endeavour designed to revolutionize the furniture industry and the way we look at sofas until the earth itself ends.

Yossi Blitzen, the real inventor of the sofa bed, here pictured with another of his marvelous inventions, The Regurgitating Mailbox, meant to dissuade the postman from leaving junk mail. A small sensor inside alerted the homeowner that the mailman was at the box and the homeowner, using either a keen eye or binoculars or both, would scan the mail for leaflets, pamphlets or flyers and if any of the offending items were spotted, the homeowner, with a simple press of a button, could trigger the mailbox to disgorge a series of smaller boxes, many disassembling midair, creating a kind of shrapnel effect striking the mailman in the head, face and around the shoulders and chest area. Unfortunately, various pending lawsuits put this invention on the back-burner.

It's not just coincidence that Yossi Blitzen would mention creating something to surpass the invention of sliced white bread, because it was exactly this substance that was used for building the prototype of his first sofa bed. Crippled by debt from the lawsuits over his Regurgitating Mailbox, Yossi turned to this most humble of substances, and yet a substance that personified the backbone of America itself, because it was all he could afford to pursue his dreams of fabricating a piece of furniture that would take the country by storm. Sadly, once the finished product rolled off the assembly line, it was not Yossi Blitzen but instead, Muncie Hifflesteen, that would get all the credit for this fabulous invention.

Muncie Hifflesteen, entrepreneur extraordinaire and human vermin to all the true sofa bed historians of the 20th century. Here he is, photographed on the day of his induction into the Sofa Bed Hall of Fame, wearing his specially designed anti-germ suit and holding a Frisbee, two other inventions he stole and claimed credit for himself. A true pioneer of sleazy business practices, and yet he was adored by women, loved by children and even the most vicious of dogs was known to lick his hand although the Frisbee smeared in beef tallow might've helped.

How could such a calamitous situation and unfortunate set of circumstances occur in the first place, you might ask? If you haven't asked then you are a bigger fool than my neighbour, Voltar, who spent $75 on a guinea pig cloning machine only to find out it was a food dehydrator and his beloved beast, Nunzio, was turned into some dessicated, hardened thing before his very eyes. I can still hear its squealing to this very day as it was subjected to the dehydrating rays. Anyway, back to this tale of woe. Due to the mounting debts from the various lawsuits against him because of damages inflicted upon persons suffering from the Regurgitating Mailbox, Yossi Blitzen, after having built his first sliced bread sofa bed prototype, was forced to look for outside funding to complete his sofa bed project. Enter the nefarious but always charming Muncie Hifflesteen. The two men struck a deal in which Muncie offered both money and his factory to build Yossi Blitzen's dream sofa machine in a mass production setting, and all Muncie Hifflesteen asked in return was a 35% cut of the profits. But when Yossi turned his back, which he often did when the sun was too bright or some wood chips flew off the lathe or one of the spring assemblies flew apart, Muncie Hifflesteen, with the aid of his team of devious double-dealing lawyers running a legal subterfuge, patented the sofa bed invention for himself, claimed complete control over its manufacturing and took all the profits, not to mention basking in the glory and enjoying the parades thrown in his honour when the sofa bed was released to the public. 

Muncie Hifflesteen, enjoying the affections of some of his admiring lady friends at a Sofa Bed Parade. The serviceman's outfit he's wearing was stolen, just like all his ideas, from some poor veteran in the old folk's home. Muncie wore the uniform on many occasions to impress the men and lady folk alike and liked to claim he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, but the only bulge he battled was the one in his pants, which resulted in him fathering fifty-seven children with thirty different women, all the kids ending up in the orphanage while Muncie continued to enjoy sofa bed fame and fortune.

Needless to say, Yossi Blitzen was crushed and with no money, had no choice of recourse, no lawyers to hire, nothing to right the wrong of Hifflesteen's diabolical deed. To add insult to injury, Blitzen's wife, disgusted by his business failings, left him for the mailman, the very one injured by the Regurgitating Mailbox (which really adds a whole new dimension to the "insult to injury" phrase), even though the mailman had been horribly disfigured by the incident and had to have his two big toes grafted onto the sides of his face to replace his missing cheeks. It so happened that Yossi Blitzen's wife, Millicent Blitzen, was a foot fetishist and with the mailman's new facial reconstruction, she could now suck on some toes without having to get down on her hands and knees, which turned out to be fortuitous for her and the mailman but didn't help Yossi Blitzen's situation in the least. He moved into a wigwam at the Wigwam Motel, humiliated, cuckolded, devastated, emasculated and forced to live in a fiberglass teepee after pawning his wedding ring and commemorative Bikini Atoll Atomic Bomb Testing cufflinks.

Yossi Blitzen's last place of residence before his unfortunate and untimely death. His wigwam was the second from the left, right behind the chain-link fence. In fact, he was using pieces from the chain-link fence to redevelop a whole new approach to the sofa bed but was found out by the management one night with a wire-cutter in his hand and was facing eviction from his wigwam at the time of his passing.

He eventually found a job shampooing dogs at a local kennel but was bitten by a crazed Shih Tzu, contracted rabies and both he and the dog had to be put down. Yossi Blitzen is buried in a pauper's grave out by a shellac factory with no one to remember his name or decorate his tombstone with old bed springs. His wife, Millicent, after his death, married the mailman and became a podiatrist but her license was revoked when she was caught sucking on her pastor's toes. The pastor was excommunicated and he, Millicent, and the mailman formed a polygamous marriage near an old bomb testing site in Nevada and the last anyone heard of them they had set up a mail-order bride business specializing in Russian women with enormous feet, ready and willing to leave their footprint on the American dream, and soil, so to speak.

Leaving a footprint on American soil Soviet style, as this image from Millicent's big-footed Russian mail order bride catalog expounded to slobbering young American men from Omaha to Oahu.

They also started up a radioactive jams and jellies cottage industry using fruit from a nearby stunted orchard that had sprouted in the waste. As for Muncie Hifflesteen, he was shot to death by an enraged husband after he was caught in flagrante delicto with the man's wife who tracked them, ironically, to the very same wigwam motel where Yossi Blitzen met his end. Muncie was wearing a feathered headdress, loincloth and was whooping with ecstasy over the naked Mrs. Florbis, whose body he had rubbed down with beef tallow beforehand in preparation for the orgiastic festivities, when the husband barged in and shot Muncie in the chest. Apparently Muncie's last words were, "Make sure this headdress gets back to the costume rental company before they ding me for the full price," or something to that effect before he fluttered away into the great beyond. Was justice served? Did Muncie Hifflesteen receive his just desserts after bilking Yossi Blitzen out of what he truly deserved, along with all the fame and fortune that accompanied such an incredible invention? No. Of course not, I state most emphatically, and I'd state it again except my mouth is a little dry from the day-old pastry my landlady, Mrs. Grabowsky, gave me in exchange for cleaning Mr. Feeley, her cat's, litter box. It's a little deal we worked out and if it wasn't for Mr. Feeley's excessive defecation (he's old and I believe has irritable bowel syndrome along with some bladder control problems), I wouldn't have any pastry at all to brighten my day. 

All over America scenes like this were played out again and again with people enjoying sofa bed comfort, oblivious to the fact that it was all made possible by a man wasting away in a fiberglass wigwam.

But that day-old pastry gave me a brainstorm and I'm pleased to announce that I have arrived at a plan to avenge Yossi Blitzen's senseless death and bring him back from obscurity to his rightful place in sofa bed history. Words alone cannot accomplish this and so I plan to replicate Yossi Blitzen's first sofa bed prototype made from sliced white bread and for which I have found the blueprints. I'm currently gathering the bread from various sources that I don't wish to make public, due to the fact the early morning grocery delivery drivers might beat me up. Then I merely have to wait for the white bread to get stale and moldy, the better to support a human body, both sitting and reclining and then I will send that miscreant, Muncie Hifflesteen, back to the bowels of sofa bed purgatory and bring honour once again to the Blitzen name, if not for Yossi, then at least for his children, of which he didn't have any but if he did they would be proud of their father if they existed in the first place. So stay tuned for Part II of Sofa Bed or Loaf of Bread because, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, except this pudding is like a bread pudding and comes complete with cushions and springs and offers a restful night's sleep without getting any pudding in your ears or sinus cavities.

Reviews of Books I Have Read

The Bratsworthian Elegies by Songmar Oomaplintz Norfenlander

The eminent Songmar Oomaplintz Norfenlander, poet laureate of Bratsworth, reciting one of his elegies into a recording  machine. Bratworthians so admired him that after his passing, they scraped the speaking tube of this machine for his saliva dribblings, placed the precious drops in a glass vial and put them on display in the Bratsworth Museum of Arts, Culture, Science and Goat Herding History.

In my role as a translator of some of the greatest European authors you've never heard of, none are more lyrical nor deeper in meaning, thought and metaphor than the amazing and unsung Bratsworthian poet, Mr. Songmar Oomaplintz Norfenlander. Where is this Bratsworth you might ask and if you don't, you should because, obscure as it is, Bratsworth is the true cultural capital of Europe, its influences felt from the lowly ghettos of Antwerp to the lush tundra and icy environs of the Arctic Circle. And Songmar Oomaplintz Norfenlander is the leader of the Bratsworthian cultural pack. Even the ospreys can be heard calling his name as they circle the choppy waters of the Black Sea, looking for sardines and dried kelp on which to sharpen their beaks.

Oomaplintz-norf norf-oomaplintz-norf norf, sounds the call of the majestic wild osprey. The non-wild ones, like at Bruno's Osprey Rehabilitation Sanctuary and Cheese Curd Manufacturing, barely make a sound except for a low gurgling that sounds more like a mating guinea hen in the low brush and scrub land of West Virginia and certain, deserted parking lots in Medicine Hat, especially around Sven's Bingo Emporium.

The tiny country of Bratworth sits between Bulgaria and Romania and since the Roman times has been mistaken for a garbage dump. It was only in 1983 that British outdoor enthusiast and grasshopper collector, Samuel Ungeworth, on one of his collecting field trips, discovered an entire country flourishing in the flora, fauna and fumes of hundreds of miles of septic waste and a hearty people who lived there and who spoke a language that seemed a mix of ancient Norse and 19th century Yiddish. He also discovered a cultural revolution in the literary, visual and theatrical arts that was soon embraced by all of Europe and was agreed to be so groundbreaking and trendsetting that soon all followed in the wake of its waste-encrusted gumboots. Bratsworth was also the catalyst for a whole new movement in modern dance, based on the meandering routes taken by their famed goat herders as they led their mangy beasts from one garbage dump to the next looking for tin cans, ear wax, ham hock scrapings and other delicacies that the goats were fond of. In fact, it was this ritual that led Mr. Norfenlander to write his one and only play/ballet, Goat On A Hot-Tin Bedpan, which, of course, Tennessee Williams was to steal from later on.

A scene from Norfenlander's Goat On A Hot-Tin Bedpan, as performed by the Royal Bratsworthian Ballet and Theater Company.

But it's his poetry that Norfenlander is best remembered for and especially his Bratsworthian Elegies, which Wallace Stevens called the finest series of poems ever written by a man with a head that resembled a dust pan. Perhaps this analogy is most apt because of Norfenlander's aptitude for collecting the dust of Bratsworthian history, filtering it through his brain and turning so much stray hair and lint and general grime into something beautiful, lyrical and clean considering its filthy origins.

This dust pan and broom are part of the annual Norfenlander Poetry Prize, given out each year to new, budding poets of Bratsworth who show unusual promise. The other half of the prize is a goat, usually older and bound for the slaughterhouse. It is considered a great honor in Bratsworth to save a goat from slaughter, invite it over for dinner and dress it in your dead grandfather's underpants.

But don't take my word for it. Take Norfenlander's words for it instead with this example from Elegy 2, Stanza 6.

Stinkmitzplinfooven noodarden snutz,
Aigen snutz,
Yag borglungen kadasploufungen
Klunga blotspoohaufen,
Kunga punga
Gits zietsmanplimple arf mit lungafil loofpitz,
schnitz, schnitz vingovelstrumpf.

Translation:
Odiferous goats of dusk,
Clinging dusk,
You penetrate my flinching buttocks
Whooping on beaten hooves riddled with corn husks,
Is this not a trampoline of despair where you can't find your shoes,
Must I jump for hours until someone  finds my shoes and dispenses some aspirin for my bouncing, soulless mood,
Sneeze, sneeze, then spray saliva no more on the strudel cake of doom.

Here metaphor rides roughshod so as not to slip in the mud and goat dung and the repetition of the word "sneeze" followed by a spray of saliva calls to mind Ezra Pound's dictum of oral hygiene and the spread of germs as the facilitator of words that could make a dictator out of a heating duct cleaner and sully a soul until it's reduced to washing linen in the blood of she-goats at a Bavarian clambake. "Bavarian clambake," you exclaim, "I've never heard of such a thing." Believe you me, there certainly is and those Bavarians knew how to throw a clambake at the edge of the Black Forest like it was going out of style, so let's put that to rest right now, okay? And let us not forget the buttocks standing in as a symbol of a quivering and declining European economy and gastronomy, prodded and slapped and prodded again until not even the promise of a force-fed duck will mean fresh liver for the children of tomorrow or at least the next day. Balance that image with defiled corn husks and you can smell the doom in the air like the wash of ozone off a heavily chlorinated swimming pool. Then in Elegy 4, Stanza 3, Norfenlander takes a whole new approach to the age old dilemma of a long and barren goat herder winter and the philosophical pondering that comes from excessive mustache waxing and the surprise visit of a long lost cousin believed to have been killed in an accident at a doorknob factory on the outskirts of Budapest.

Horflingmunsten fluntz
Mit chorckal versht gunt flitzen broot
Stumzlashmuftz zsakasakapaka ja ja twonk plitz
Vlish piptominkyak clotfinstenbrau
Hauf klonken task tsak mit hoofen splotz.

Translation:
The ventriloquist's underpants
Cast a heavy shadow across the porcupine's brow,
What's that? The plinking of a dissolute piano string
Choking the horse penis of the evening, yes, yes,
Cries the matzoh meal man,
Do not try to stump the house of remorseful goat people
Or the clomp clomp of their childless wombs.

Here, famed Bratsworthian actor and Norfenlander's cousin, Heinzfeld Leif Mictonschmeltz, admonishes his sidekick, Ebner Vishka, for hiding the ventriloquist's underpants. Notice the excessive mustache wax which places Heinzfeld squarely in the goat herding caste even though his suit tells a different story and so does his dummy, even if he does have the words put in his mouth or taken out or something like that. This photo was taken during the run of Mictonschmeltz's one-act play, Soul Stenches and Coattails, loosely based on Norfenlander's elegies.

In this elegy, Norfenlander puts a new twist on the poetic voice by having a ventriloquist stand in as his alter-ego, allowing for him to say things like horse penis and porcupine's brow, bringing the natural world into interplay with the destitution of the Bratsworthian industrial landscape, especially around the animal fat rendering plant and Kolaslov's End-Of-The-Roll Carpet and Broadloom Warehouse. The recurring themes of goats, underpants and clomping uteruses might seem overkill at this point but Norfenlander skillfully tempers their recurrence by introducing the parable of the matzoh meal man, subtly weaving allegory and reality into a seamless fabric, much like Kosalav is able to do with only a smattering of carpet roll remnants, creating an elusiveness of meaning that has no meaning, which in turn gives it plenty of meaning by not meaning anything in the first place, which is no mean feat when your words are brimming with so much meaning it actually hurts your feet. As we can see in Elegy 9, Stanza 15, Norfenlander takes a different tact in which he opens up the dialogue between man and beast, doctor and patient and roofer and shingle supplier all at once, making for some confusion, but after all this is poetry where confusion is at its best, especially at Lancelot's two-for-one shish-kebab night, where the poets of Bratsworth still continue to gather for a little playful philosophical bantering and charred goat meat.

Plitzhagen mein migzoftin hauf hauf,
Vishtuncle naarsnaarsgaard oguntz neef broten
Snussle vit kuchentitsvaarn moidel,
Guntzhaulfinbinen putz und a vatz schmutz und lokshen gossle,
Blauplotz fingendoorzvogen shmuntz eiger soorsmunchkin,
Heif, heif gonosht gizzlungoormaard pipple zugflishten.


Translation:
My hovering globules of life, oh globules of life,
Do not forgo the broth of your fecund mind or the ant tunnels beneath,
Even webbed feet must be kissed from time to time
And maybe greased with midget fat and fluids of ethereal delights.
Still the shoe inserts may evade your fingers when night drops its mallet of despair,
But the ants in your toreador pants shall always be welcome in our house of goat hides.


I don't know how you feel, but each time I read this elegy the tears drop from my eyes like the poop from the mythical chimera's behind, so rich in nutrients and life-giving aromas and forces that it emits, it actually nourishes all the unborn in a 50 km radius from its source, as well as the ability to impregnate goats from 20 feet away and cook mutton from an additional 10 feet. Of course this all hinges on the amount of ant tunnels in the vicinity and it's precisely this element that Norfenlander, although so briefly touching upon in the elegy, obviously accentuates through the  underestimation of its power and integral role in the Bratsworthian cultural psyche. For beneath the garbage piles and waste and interesting fungi and mosses that grow in the stench, the ants are continually tunneling, creating their magnificent ant cities, but all with the threat of having the earth above collapse on their heads and beneath the Bratsworthian's feet simultaneously, and so both species live in dread of this day and walk softly, even when carrying heavy loads of laundry or root vegetables or escalator parts or burlap sacks of goat droppings. That is why they say, all over Europe, that the people of Bratsworth are the greatest tiptoers west of Tripoli and east of Labrador, a province equally famed for their tiptoers due to the nature of the shifting ice and polar bears that they must sneak by daily on their way to work.

Here, Professor K., a good friend of Norfenlander and renowned Bratsworthian ant historian, explains the effect of ant tunneling on the Brastworthian psyche.

It's also interesting to note the recurrence of shoe imagery, first used in the Second Elegy, although previously it takes the mercurial form of shoes lost on a trampoline, a nifty bit of transposition that puts anthropomorphism firmly back in the hands of the amphibians, while in Elegy 9, it is not the shoe but its inserts that take centre stage. What is the importance of this, you might ask, and I would answer, how come it's so hard to turn the radiator caps in my apartment and then you might ask, is that really what you meant or are you re-contextualizing the shoes through the use of steam heat and I would answer, I haven't pressed a shirt or ironed my pants since before man landed on the moon.

Norfenlander's favourite goat, awarded to him by the Bratsworthian High Council for the Arts on his 70th birthday. As tradition dictates, the goat was dressed in Norfenlander's dead grandfather's underpants, a man who was just as beloved as his grandson because of the bright hue of his underwear. Everywhere he went people used to say, with the utmost respect and sense they were standing close to goat herding greatness, "Hey, there goes that nut case with the brightly colored underpants," and Norfenlander's grandfather, Yonkers Splashgaard, would laugh and reply, "If your goats wore underpants as bright as mine, maybe you wouldn't lose so many to the wolves in the forest outside of Galipsoboline. Not to mention my wife has more teats than your average Romanian gypsy caravan and it's only because of the underpants that this is possible and that I am such a happy man while you all wallow in the septic waste hoping your goats will pump out enough milk to make even the smallest cube of feta cheese that wouldn't even feed a colony of ants during the winter time."

Suffice to say, Bratsworth is back on the map, both physically and culturally and is taking its due place in the course of history and septic waste and the ability of its people to eke and carve out fulfilling lives amongst the debris and goat droppings and it's all owed to one man, one great man who had the foresight to see the future even though he was nearsighted and once even mistook a goat for his wife and a son was born although that's a different story and one most Bratsworthians are loathe to mention. Anyway, it's because of Songmar Oomaplintz Norfenlander and his wondrous  elegies that the world can at last witness what it must be like to hear the singing of angels and the thrumming and humming of heaven, much like a well-oiled air conditioning unit and believe you me, those Bratsworthians know and understand a fine piece of machinery and would never take one for granted, especially when the goats begin to smell during the spring and the garbage heaps vibrate with the ants beneath and you can smell change in the air like your Aunt Gerta after she'd been dead for seven days and the goats were licking her body and urinating in mourning. That's the kind of poetry I'm talking about and if you don't like it then you can take it up with Songmar Oomaplintz Norfenlander when you get to heaven, but if he's not in you can talk to his cousin, because he's a pretty reasonable guy as long as you compliment his mustache wax and mention his grandfather's underpants.

Saliva Producing Recipes

Fish Brain, Guts and Gill Fritters in Alphagetti Aspic

If fish is brain food it only makes sense to eat the brains of a fish and thus double its potency and effects on the neural pathways. I speak not only as a scientist but also as a garcon de gastronomique. I've put this premise to every cook, chef, dishwasher, waiter and busboy that has found me rummaging around in their restaurant's dumpster bin but they don't listen.
"Look," I say, brandishing my bags of fresh fish guts and heads. "You're throwing out the best parts and it will be your brain capacity that will suffer for your folly. Or your customers' brains, in which case they won't even be able to figure out your 15% tip."
Sometimes they flick their cigarettes at me but my heightened brain power allows me to anticipate the curve and arc of their burning butts and easily evade the trajectory.

The effects of super brain fish power demonstrated in a controlled laboratory environment. This man, Hubert Blork, was once a patient of mine and after I put him on a pure fish entrails diet, he blew the spectronograph reading right out of the water, much like a trout caught on a 5-pound line.

Now, it's obvious that a man of my considerable talents in psychology, phrenology, theology, ornithology, archeology and urology, not to mention my forays into psychoanalysis, hamster habitats  and raising giant frogs, squabs and snails for fun and profit, needs all the extra brain power he can squeeze out of the old clump of gray stuff. So that is why I've come up with this delicious and economical recipe for a fish dish that'll send your synapses spinning while your wallet remains slumbering deep in the comforting nest of your sock drawer. If you don't have a sock drawer may I recommend the lint trap of a dryer or a jar cloudy with pickle brine and oxidized pennies that you can keep behind your dresser. Anyway, I promise this dish will make not one dent in your pocketbook as long as you stick to my specialized hunting and gathering techniques and my unique gelatin made from boiled fish heads recipe. The Alphagetti may cost you a little something but if you look for the dented-can specials they have in some of those Korean mom and pop corner grocery stores, you can snag one of these delicacies with only the change you have hunted for so diligently, and may I say with dignity, on the sidewalk during the week. So, first things first. Pay a visit to your local fish monger but don't let that front door stuff fool you. Go around the back in the alleyway, find the dumpster and start fishing for fish heads and innards using a simple straightened wire coat hangar. A dumpster filled with rotting fish guts is sure to deter even the most resolute of winos, bums and junkies who're looking for cans, bottles, old prescription bottles and cheesecake remains, leaving you to reap the rewards and get the cream of the crop of fish pickings. So, once you have your bag of fish parts, again we're looking for heads, fins, gills and innards, hightail it out of there because it is of the utmost importance to work with these ingredients while still fresh and don't yet smell like my neighbour, Lumpy Balford's overcoat.

Lumpy Balford in his overcoat. Lumpy's face is not blacked out. He just has a very large mole that covers the entire surface of his face.

 Place your ingredients in the refrigerator and if you don't have access to one, again, just like with your wallet, your sock drawer will do. Next, it's time to round up some bread crumbs for the fritter batter. I've never understood people who buy breadcrumbs at the store when there are plenty available if you can beat the pigeons to them in the park. Really, it's no great effort as most pigeons are absolute pigs and not quick enough to beat me to the bread chunks. Nevertheless, I still utilize my specialized arm-waving technique, guaranteed to send pigeons skittering and scattering, leaving the spoils to the victor, which, in this case would be you. I've had a few run-ins with the old men and women who feed the pigeons in the park and try to deter me from swiping bread from the gluttonous birds but as I say, "Hey, look how fat these pigeons are? You really think they're gonna miss a coupl'a pieces of bread?" The only real danger to this foraging procedure are the crows that descend like hell's carrion, so you must work quickly and I've taken to wearing oven mitts after having my hands pecked by these nefarious bottom feeders of the sky time and time again.      

Here is my well-tested and time-proven arm-flapping technique for chasing both fattened and emaciated pigeons away from the bread scraps. Three easy steps guarantee you success and an unlimited supply of bread. The pajama-like apparel is optional.

So, now that you have gathered all your ingredients, it's time to start constructing the dish. Your guests will be amazed that it didn't take you more time or money to create this dazzling display because visually, it looks like a million bucks, even if some of that money came from racketeering, prostitution, drug-smuggling, gambling and chinchilla farming. There are some who may ask, "Dr. Haltiwanger, don't you feel the aspic is overkill in this dish?" To them I reply, "Why cook the pheasant if you're not going to put it under glass. Catch my drift, kemosabe." And on that note, aspic is the first order of business. Take your fish heads, removing the brains first, and place them in a good sized pot for boiling. If you're not sure of what a fish brain looks like once you've cut an opening in the head, I've provided this illustration below, complete with nostril location to give a sense of brain placement in the fish head.

 
If you still can't find the brain, just pull every slimy thing you can get a grip on out of the head cavity and set aside. Put the fish heads on a rolling boil for an hour or more or until you can't stand the smell any longer and then set aside, preferably on an open windowsill where a cool breeze will assist with the gelatinizing process. If you have a fridge handy, then by all means pop the concoction in there for a couple of hours until the fish head jelly water begins to set (my landlady, Mrs. Grabowsky, has forbidden me from using her fridge for any more of my culinary experiments after my Tower of Meat extravaganza but I'm sure you're not as unfortunate as me and have a proper refrigerator at your disposal). The chemical compound for your gelatin should look like the configuration below, but if you don't have access to an electron microscope for this purpose, just poke the surface with anything pointy and see if it bounces back a bit.

Now, most importantly, before the fish head jelly has completely set, pour in a can of Alphagetti, spreading out the letters evenly for a more attractive visual presentation. The tomato sauce base should also go into the gelling liquid to add some colour to the aspic. Place the bowl or pail of this delightful mixture back in the fridge or on the windowsill or in the broom closet next to one of your closet-aged salamis and begin the fritter and fish innards step. Take the breadcrumbs you've stolen from the pigeons, spread them out in a bowl, or if you don't have a bowl even a clean ashtray will do, and the dip the innards in the mixture, making sure to coat the entrails thoroughly. Some people may wish to first dip the guts in an egg and milk mixture but I find this masks the taste of both the guts and the breadcrumbs and I prefer to let these flavours sing, especially once they've been submerged in the Alphagetti infused aspic. 

These tantalizing fish innards are just begging for some fritter batter to complete their journey from ocean to plate.

Now, it's time for the fritter frying. If you have a stove or hotplate, well, kudos to you. If you're like me and have a minimum of tools and appliances at hand (as most of the great chefs of history are used to), then five or six Sterno cans are just the ticket to get these fritters sizzling and sumptuous to the palate. Of course one Sterno can will also do but you must be patient to achieve the perfect golden fish guts crust. Once the fritters have attained that golden brown colour, drain them on a paper towel, toilet paper or wad of napkins you've pilfered from McDonald's, and then push them into the aspic, which should have solidified nicely by now. Don't be shy. Push those fritters in like a prostate examination. Gentle but assertive is the key to this technique and the recipe's success.

This prostate examination training device is equally good for fritter insertion exercises.

Well, now you're about done. The guests await with baited breath and tongues hanging out. Or at least my dinner guest, Mrs. Grabowsky's cat, who pants with anticipation at my fancy victuals and he knows a thing or two about fish guts and heads and so you may scoff, but a more temperamental and discerning critic would be hard to come by.

Portrait of the food critic as a fat, not so young cat. Mr. Smeely may look like a meat-eater due to his substantial girth but believe you me, this cat knows his fish and can tell a pike from a pickerel with just one sniff.

Well, you may ask, was the dinner a raving success? I for one could not stuff the fish brain and innards fritter and the jellied gills and Alphagetti mixture into my mouth fast enough and as for Mr. Smeely, I believe the hairball he left by the side of his plate is proof enough that this dish will please even the most discriminating of palates. It's true I did not anticipate his sudden trip to the vet not long after the meal nor my bout of prolonged vomiting that almost cost me my gullet but that's the price of fine dining on a pauper's budget.

Reviews Of Books I've Never Read

Blindness by Jose Saramago

To research his book, Jose Saramago, feigned blindness by using welder's goggles and then had his landlady, Mrs. Smutz, who really was blind, lead him around the quaint town of Chorizocojones on the Catalan coastline, dropping into shop after shop and through touch alone, having him try to identify different types of sausages and salamis. It's this type of dedication to his work and definitive research that earned him the Nobel Prize.

They say love is blind. And so are bats. And many moles in strong sunlight. So, what is it to be blind? Is there a correlation between love, bats and moles? Does this tell us something about not having sight? Does this help us identify different types of salamis? And if a bat falls in love with a mole and they should mate, will the two blindesses cancel each other out and the offspring (boles? mats?) have super-vision? It's unfortunate that Mr. Saramago doesn't touch on subjects and ponderous thoughts such as these and frankly, for me, calls into question the whole Nobel Prize committee (were they blind to these neglected theories and philosophical leanings), but nevertheless, his book isn't half-bad. If you're one of those that sees the glass as half full instead of half empty. That is, if you can see at all.

It's amazing that Saramago's novel was awarded the Nobel Prize while that of author Samson Ordenbrauer's great work, The Twilight of the Balloon Spleen, was so sadly overlooked. Pictured above is Mr. Ordenbrauer holding a replica of the main character of his novel that his wife, Gretchen, so lovingly created for him and which he kept on his desk next to his typewriter for inspiration, a balloon spleen with a human brain that intercepts and decodes a series of secret messages from Hitler's SS to his troops positioned around Stalingrad, passing them on to the Russians and thus helps to save the city and end the war, vanquishing Germany.

And kudos to him for writing about a touchy subject that's been around since Oedipus plucked out his own eyes over that whole thing with his father and mother and not wearing any underwear and stealing the family's vacation money and playing Charades with the Sphinx. Actually, when you think about it, this has been cannon fodder for novelists, playwrights and psychoanalysts alike, so I guess there's an upside to plucking out one's eyes from a historical and posterity perspective.
Now, I'm not one for leaning heavily on the cane of irony as it were and then using it to tap, tap, tap my way down the street blindly with only the echoing laughs and harrumphs of recognition at the sheer coincidence of seemingly non-connected events coming together to guide me down a sidewalk littered with more debris than you can shake a cane at with hands stiff and arthritic from masturbatory revelry, but I'd be a cat trying to cover its scat on a marble floor if this book didn't whack me upside the head with its literal transference from concept to killing machine. For, it appears to me, when I flick on the bathroom light in the middle of the night, those devious devils, the silverfish, that have haunted me for many years, freeze, blind it seems, because when I approach them with this book, angled at a degree for maximum striking velocity, they don't move an inch. No flex of antennae or movement of one of their many, hideous legs and I can only believe, as I am about to hit them with a copy of Blindness, that they themselves are temporarily blind and some kind of ironic justice is being served. Chalk one up for the iron fist of irony helping the blind to smite the blind and sending those silverfish back to Satan's laboratory where they were born, bred and fitted for spats.
Well, enough about my own philosophical ramblings. After all, we're here to discuss the book, not my silverfish problems and the chasms and schisms they create in the mind of a deep-thinker such as myself, especially after a bottle of cough syrup and some ham steak. Blindness has a real whizz-bang opening that's hard to ignore, even if you're drowsy with dextromethorphan and stray embers from your Meerschaum pipe are burning holes in your underwear. I mentioned moles and bats earlier and this is no coincidence because Blindness begins with a surprise attack by a group of Spanish anarchists known as the El Marmotas, whose resemblance to half-mole, half-bat entities is striking. Saramago based them on a real-life anarchist group in Spain, El Hombres Ardilla de Tierras, or the Ground-Mole Men. In two rare photographs pictured below, you can see how they used to get liquored up and then shoot their unsuspecting victims with their "Anarchy Blindness Gun." Firing liquified calamari indiscriminately into large crowds, these Ground-Mole Men were the scourge of many large cities in Spain for a good decade, blinding people temporarily with their liquid squid concoction and then raiding local stores for TVs, stereos and rubber gaskets and bathtub plugs.

A rare photo of El Hombres Ardilla de Tierras firing their Anarchy Blindness Gun into a unsuspecting crowd in Barcelona, circa 1965.

You can see the power of their weapon worn on the expression of the head honcho of El Hombres Ardilla de Tierras, Ibrahim Legumanzos, as he suffers the kickback from the burst of liquid squid.

So, with this dynamic opening, Saramago introduces two key elements into the flow of his barely begun novel; that of political anarchy in the hands of liquored-up little men who wouldn't look out of place French-kissing a groundhog or think twice about spraying you in the eyes with liquid squid, and an overwhelming blindness that settles on the citizenry of Madrid, spreading eventually to Barcelona and parts of Bulgaria and the Netherlands. Actually, it's there where the plague of blindness wreaks the most havoc as the Dutch, such avid bicyclists, suddenly struck blind, ride off the dikes in alarming numbers and are washed away into the Northern Sea. But Saramago centres his story primarily in Spain's two great cities and his initial descriptions of a group of friends in a tapas bar in Madrid, suddenly without sight and having to find their finger food with their fingers while squid juice drips from the ruins of their eyes, is as gut-wrenching as a plate of Patates Bravas with a chorizo chaser coming up in a bout of acid-reflux on a Magic Fingers bed.

The power of Patates Bravas on the esophagus with a Magic Fingers Vibrating unit as the catalyst is well demonstrated in this image featuring the author, Jose Saramago's wife, Valente, on a trip to Niagara Falls where Saramago was researching his uncompleted book, The Honeymoon of Drowned Souls. The drowning refers not to the Falls, but to a water-bed mishap that makes a widower of Alphonso Quintara, a zipper manufacturer from Seville, who, through his torment and sorrow, writes an opera about Niagra Falls and the tragic death of his new bride before they could even enjoy the Honeymoon Suite in the Maid of the Mist Motel.

Soon we learn it's not the work of the El Marmotas and their evil anarchy gun, but something far more sinister and much harder to control. For a massive asteroid has hit the earth, just outside of Barcelona in a deserted soccer stadium, perhaps part of a diabolical cosmic plan that's only hinted at in the initial pages, because on this asteroid exists millions of microscopic alien plant spores that, upon impact, are sent "flying like so many dandelion seeds, spinning and whirling like tiny helicopters of death, all innocence until their pollen clouds the corneas of the good citizens of Spain, eventually eating the jellied spheres of their eyeballs like PacMan on a murderous rampage." It's exactly these turns of phrase and this ability to drive metaphor and simile like a Fiat 500 through a crowded Barcelona street, that makes Saramago such a spectacular writer. Sure, he might hit a few pedestrians along the way, but they're blind and he's wearing welding goggles so who is to blame. In a court of law, this would have the jury out for days.
Anyway, the novel focuses on five people bonded in their blindness and love of gypsy curses and hypnotizing water fowl. Dr. Sergio Hamantashen, struck blind mid-operation, perforates his patient's bowel and during his surgical team's protestations, they too are suddenly blinded and then the patient dies and the surgical team is left to fend for themselves, feinting and slicing at the air with scalpels like Don Quixote jousting with windmills but this is my allusion, not Saramago's, but it's one I think he should've made and added a little depth to this scene rather than just severed arteries and screaming, naked nurses running blindly into walls to escape rutting and blind orderlies with tumescent protuberances sprouting from their foreheads and groins (part of the asteroid's spores side-effect of the takeover) and trays of cafeteria food growing cold under the unwatchful eyes of hair-netted custodians in orthopedic footwear. I don't like to say that a Nobel prize-winner should follow my advice, but in this case, he should have.

The alien spores adapt quickly, taking the shape of huggable bunnies (as pictured in blueprint above, patent pending) with sippy cups and drinking straws hidden inside, making them all the more alluring and effective to both adults and children alike and hastening an already extremely efficient alien spore takeover. Well, before you can say glockenspiel or lug nuts, the blindness is so widespread you can't see the trees for the forest, so to speak. Meanwhile, the El Marmotas, immune to the effect of the spores due to some genetic permutation in their mole/bat-infused body chemistry, are having a field day, getting liquored up and aiding in the panic by feeling up blind, unsuspecting women and shoving entire squids up the rectums of the women's accompanying paramours. Not to be forgotten are the group of friends in the tapas bar, feeling their way amongst the deep-fried food debris. Led by Pablo Mercantes, the group consisting of Penelope Pervazas, Renaldo Horchata, Leif Gonzalez and Pasquale Velasquez grope their way out of the tapas bar and through a series of hilarious and slapstick adventures, find themselves in the hospital where they meet up with Dr. Hamantashen's group. Some cannibalism ensues, which is a natural offshoot of human behavior when faced with dire circumstances along with unsightly and frenzied fornication that has more to do with chicken coops than romantic ideals.

He may look like the cock-of-the-walk in his penthouse chicken coop but I don't see any lady chickens around. Do you?All the style in the world won't bring the chickens home to roost if you don't have the personality to match.

A word to the wise here. If you don't enjoy explicit descriptions of cannabalistic gorging you might want to skip pages 137-139. You wouldn't imagine an author of Sarmago's stature could write such depravity and if the Nobel Prize Committee were handing out awards based, say, on a writer's ability to graphically and realistically describe the eating of human intestines, then for this alone Saramago would've won the prize hands down, but of course there are other elements at work, rest and play in this novel. For during a respite from the blind and cannibal orgy, Dr. Hamantashen and Pablo Mercantes strike up an intriguing conversation about the fate of democracy in contemporary Spain, especially after General Franco's reign. Seething anarchists, left-wing tapas-eating amorists and  underground right-wing canoeists all serve as the gunpowder igniting the musket-mouths of these two leaders' verbal firepower and they fire volley after volley at each other while their supporters, sated on human innards, sangria and penicillin, join in the cerebral festivities with raucous shouting and severed appendage waving until one is led to believe blindness is but a small hindrance in their pursuit of merrymaking, rabble rousing and philosophical inquiries. It's true that the political ramblings, considering the circumstances, can feel forced at times, but Saramago is a master at concealing these more dogmatic diversions in his characters' personalities so that, when Penelope Pervazas says to Juan Manchachas, "Hey, bikini waxing is for pleasure-seeking Brazilians and Spanish socialists only," leading Juan to blindly grope Penelope to see, or rather feel which side of the fence she sits on, so as not to split hairs in further conversations and maybe help him get lucky (he being so ugly that finally fate intervenes and ensuing blindness works in his favour), the political and the personal are properly couched in the narrative, seamlessly really, as if the couch were not a couch but a sofa-bed, hidden away but then folding out to reveal so much more than meets the eye in the first place although with all the characters blind, it's not so much what meets the eye as what meets whatever they bump into and they are able to take turns on the sofa-bed, resting a bit before the narrative picks them up and prods them forward again, sometimes like puppets on a string, sometimes like plumbers on call in a land where all the faucets leak.

A small respite for the tortured characters in Saramago's novel as they rest on a sofa-bed before continuing to stumble blindly across the countryside, their philosophical investigations comfortably couched on the double-spring frame, their heavily-stubbed toes wiggling beneath a water-fowl down duvet.

Meanwhile the alien spores shed their bunny sippy cup bodies and take on the glutinous and pulsating contours of their true forms, and then, through a strange and wonderful process, the creatures portrude long suction tubes that they plunge into the humans' eye sockets, sucking out their eyeballs and then replacing them with their own alien eyes. Then everyone is bar-mitzvahed and circumcised to pay them back for the Spanish Inquisition.

Rabbi Mendel Megatron-X-9 performing the simultaneous bar mitzvah/circumcision in accordance with the laws of the 13th tribe of Israel who had been exiled to Gorvotron-6 in the Kishkadian Galaxy back in the 13th century.

And just when you think Saramago couldn't pull any more tricks out of his bag of blindness, Dr. Hamantashen reveals that he is the ringleader of the anarchist group, the El Marmotas, and it was only through the use of invisible liftee-height pads in his shoes that he was able to fool so many of the people for so long and that as a doctor, he had been introducing an El Marmota bat/mole virus via IV-drips into thousands of his patients who are already beginning to show the effects with balding heads, shrinking bodies and an insatiable thirst for liquors of all kinds. Well, what with the alien eye replacements and the bat/mole body reconfigurations, Spain is plunged into sheer anarchy although they still enjoy their siestas and a burgeoning economy due to a heavy export business in chicken drummettes and black velvet toreador pants. The international community enjoys these items so much they turn a blind eye to the alien takeover and the bat/mole people and even the Spanish Inquisition is forgotten in the greasy drippings and sizzlings of miniature chicken legs and thighs. Nobel Prize? Hell yes. Saramago deserves it, if only for the fact Saramago sheds light on a place where no light is normally shed and by that I don't mean your rear end.

Reviews Of Books I've Never Read

The Sound And The Fury by William Faulkner

Faulkner taking part in the annual Sound And The Fury Parade that his hometown of Oxblood, Mississippi, puts on every year in his honor. Thankfully, he lived long enough to ride his scooter in the last two parades before he passed away and as a gentleman of the south, understood it was entertainment first, dignity second, especially when it came to amusing the kiddies who still line Oxblood's main street on parade day, regurgitating hot dogs and cheering on the festivities.

There are books that are heavy by sheer weight and books that are heavy by the sheer weight of the ideas contained within. Both are comparable for killing silverfish but I like to think it is those books laden down with deep thoughts that are the superior vermin killers. Perhaps it's just a pretension but surely Dostoyevsky's Notes From The Underground is a far better silverfish sniper than say Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers. Although I do like the cover of The Carpetbaggers better because who wouldn't take a half-naked woman over a mole with a limp any day, which is what Dostoyevsky's book is all about or at least what I could glean from the first page. The cover didn't even give me that much, appearing to be a portrait of some guy slumped in a chair looking at his footwear and an expression on his face that can only be described as excessive flatulence or maybe just the wrong shoe size. Perhaps that mole with the limp is looking better by the minute. Anyway, I'm getting away from myself or my self is getting away from me, which would look pretty strange in the mirror and make shaving a bit difficult too. It's bad enough getting a razor burn on my real face let alone on my mirror image, which I can't put any cream on or soothe in any kind of way except to suck in air through my teeth in my real face and watch myself doing it in the mirror and pretending I can feel the sucking in of air soothing my mirror face, but anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, of Mice And Men. No, wait, that isn't right, that's by John Steinbeck. I was talking about The Sound And The Fury. But as a point of interest, Steinbeck and Faulkner were brothers (I have proof but it's in a box filled with silverfish and mouse droppings and I'm loathe to look in there currently), Siamese Twins actually, but they were separated soon after birth and apparently Faulkner got all the brains while Steinbeck got the long legs and distinguished hangdog jowls that earned him many a free bowl of beans in hobo camps across America.

John Steinbeck enjoying a plate of beans at a hobo camp just outside of Feeliesburg, California. He's the one in the rear with his back turned to the camera because his unsightly jowls jiggled while he ate and he didn't want them photographed and  ruining the appetites of those who might view the photograph in future years.

 He named himself Steinbeck to shake himself from his brother, William's, psychological clutches, a name he took from Fliston Steinbeck, the famous candy-floss machine inventor because John Steinbeck had an insatiable appetite for candy-floss although during the Great Depression, it was pretty hard to come by. It forced him to come up with his own candy-floss device that he built out of abandoned railway car parts. Sugar was scarce much of the time so Steinbeck had to make do with whatever he could find and he made candy-floss out of the most unusual of materials like asbestos, wood chips and dung from barnyards. Still, from hobo camps to hobo jungles you could hear the cry, "The candy-floss man is coming, the candy-floss man is coming," as Steinbeck would appear on the hillside, silhouetted against the sky, lugging his big candy-floss contraption while big novelist thoughts filled his mind.

So, to make a long story short, the two brothers never spoke again and William Faulkner went so far as to have candy-floss banned from the Sound And The Fury Parade. In a way, it is perhaps this separation of Siamese twins, the falling out afterwards and the bond of brothers forever broken on principles long forgotten that was the impetus for Faulkner's genius and especially in this great novel. For racial disparity and injustice haunted all of Faulkner's work and just maybe, Faulkner found the inspiration for his forays into mindset of the deep south, formed in his characters' minds by history and family ties, finding voice in their sometimes horrific actions and prejudices but also in their downtime, sipping lemonade, playing on the tire swing and just generally being human beings, in the traumatic tearing apart of his Siamese twin and the gulf that exists when two worlds collide and then get torn apart and then collide again, much like bumper cars, but far more serious and with less electricity and overhead pole sparks.

On that note, the novel begins with one, Lothario Benson, who has taken over the family farm in Oxbird, Mississippi. Or maybe it's Oxbow or Oxblood or Oxplum or Oxycodone, I can't quite remember, but it's ox-something or another and that's all that's important here. The farm was willed to him by his father, Snedley, and Lothario bends under the pressure of his dead father's wishes and also his mother, Esmeralda, who repeatedly strikes him with a wooden spoon covered in hardened lard every time Lothario expresses his misgivings about taking over the farm. Witness this wonderful piece of dialogue that fully illustrates the depth of Faulkner's dramatic courage and lithesome sentences so flexible they could easily fit through a drainpipe.
"As God is my witness, your father worked this land, worked his fingers to the bone, worked his bones to the sand, to the mud, to the dirt, to the dung which he thereupon heaped upon the arid soil and weathered the best years of his flea-bitten, whiskey-sodden life for yon children, children of yore that ye may reap the reward and all that he sow and be sown and me sewing socks and plucking gristle from there yonder teeth that ye all may live to chew again and again in the dusk and dust seetling like locusts upon the pasture the flagrancy of wings buzzing and cricking and your backtalk like cicadas chirping in the gullet of some burned out deadened cow skull bone-white and the maggots falling from the sky like rain. What have you to say for yeself boy?"
"I say it and again must I say it I don't want no part of this vile stinkin' farm that shadows me like a grave freshly dug and rife and steaming with the manure of all dead things bowels freshly flushed from the throes of death when it is ventriloquism, yes, yes, I say it again, ventriloquism that stains my heart thumps my breast, the voices sounding like a coon-dog on the scent and buckshot peppering the limp body of yonder duck but I can make it speak, a magic that begins guttural but soon finds its purchase in all manner of living and dead and all that lies between and even the trout in the stream sing my name but barely, just barely and may the sun set and cast its darkness into your darkness and so dark you can't find the doorknob for the darkness within."
Wow! I don't know about you but when I read that passage I just about choked on my luncheon meat. Faulkner's command of the language, his ability to break the rules of grammar and thus break down the boundaries between words, freeing not only language itself but the minds of his characters, is inspiring and dizzying and I highly recommend not eating any kind of canned luncheon meat while reading this book. Just a warning unless you're adept at Heimlich maneuvering yourself over the back of a chair or across an old steam radiator or against an ironing board, which I have had to do on two separate occasions and so Faulkner and luncheon meat sit just right with me. With you, probably not. 

 Also, if you have any pets in the vicinity, it can affect them adversely too so brush up on your animal Heimlich techniques before cracking the spine on this baby. I mean the book, not the pet of course.

Now, let's get down to the nitty-gritty of Faulkner's generational plot line, meandering its way much like the Mississippi, past this house and that, this farm and that yard, this jukebox joint and that hanging tree before depositing its alluvial silt in Mrs. Runsmusses' garden plot where her zucchinis grew to the size of horse penises and the turgid waters roiled and neighed and hid terrible secrets in their muddy depths.With Lothario's marriage to his half-brother's sister's second cousin, Etta Blimpspots, and her undying love and support for his overpowering dreams, Lothario pursues his love of ventriloquism and is soon touring the countryside putting on shows in barns and on ant heaps and bringing crowds in from as far away as Posthole, Texas and Drainage Ditch, Kentucky.

It's a known fact that Faulkner based many of his characters on actual people he knew in his hometown of Oxblood, Mississippi. In this case, the character of Lothario Benson was modeled after his real-life counterpart and inspiration, ventriloquist and potato farmer, Heathrow Haminsod, and his dummy, Mr. Chowdy, pictured above.

He leaves the care of the farm in the hands of his wife's cousin's sister's Uncle Gibble, crippled during the Civil War but his mastery over the growing of rutabagas earns him two gold and one silver ribbon at the county fair. Meanwhile, all is not well on the ventriloquism front. A newcomer to the scene, a dour and taciturn young man by the name of Samuel 'Melonball' Malone, who has not one, but two dummies at his disposal, begins putting on shows in town, drawing good-sized crowds, which is odd considering his rather sombre act and the fact that neither he nor his dummies ever utter a word or a sound.

The real-life 'Melonball' Malone, aka, Booger Fitzsimmons, a traveling ventriloquist originally from England, who began touring the deep south with his two dummies, Sheldon Goldstein and Senor Knobby. He had a highly unusual ventriloquism act in that he never uttered a word and neither did his dummies. The three of them just sat on a stage, looked forlornly at the audience and occasionally 'Melonball' Malone would move the two dummies around a bit, swiveling their heads and sometimes appearing to choke them. He got his moniker, 'Melonball,' incidentally, when he was a professional melon-baller at the Bristol Hotel in London, turning out as many as five hundred melon balls an hour for sumptuous banquets and buffets.

It's not long before the two ventriloquists are at odds, vying for audience's attention and approval. Lothario cannot understand how a ventriloquist, no matter how many dummies he has, can possibly draw a crowd just by sitting on a stage, never uttering a word, occasionally swiveling his dummies' heads but never making them talk, let alone clacking their jaws, but 'Melonball' is drawing them in like a snake oil huckster in Alabama during armadillo mating season.
"What evil has this misbegotten son wrought upon those duped by the fragrance of ventriloquism gone astray, gone from the voice that would throw itself that would speak itself and then speak in the heads of others and in voices those others have not heard before with jaws clacking like an old man on his deathbed speaking last words, teeth rattle to death rattle and nary a word to be heard, mute like the tongues of angels pulled from their roots and put on display, oh, the sound, the fury, the dummy that speaketh not nor rolls its eyes with the great joke that snuffs out all being."
These are Lothario's words, so beautifully constructed by Faulkner, and the reader glimpses the first allusion to the title of the book and its subsequent meaning. For the sound is the sound of throwing your voice, the ability to make dummies speak and the fury is the anger arising from Lothario Benson's perceived slights when confronted by a fellow ventriloquist who will utter no sound. "Oh, the sound, the fury," Lothario bemoans a second time, maybe ten or eleven pages later (I'm not sure which as the pages were stuck toether with either some sort of dried food remnant or bodily fluid), sitting at the kitchen table of his farm, his head resting on one of Uncle Gibble's giant rutabagas and his sheer despair can be felt right through the pages and you can even smell it too, although that might just be because the copy I own is a little moldy. In one of the most heart-rending scenes in the novel, Lothario strips off all of his clothing, runs out naked into the fields like a lamb of God before the slaughter and begins throwing his voice indiscriminately, making rutabagas speak and then cabbages and then beans, potatoes (which have eyes so doesn't seem as strange), carrots, pumpkins, rhubarb and celery (Uncle Gibble, it seems, had quite a good vegetable crop that year). Soon the fields are alive with the sound of vegetable voices, talking, mumbling, muttering, groaning and laughing, the sound and the fury culminating into one great chorus of voices rising to the heavens, mute no more against anti-ventriloquist forces posing in sheep's clothing and then the little lamb is slaughtered and so is its mother and there's mutton on the table for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next five nights and a little left over for Parson Oobalooba when he drops by on Sunday and so the wolf need not wear sheep clothing anymore nor howl at the moon when the mutton runs out. But Lothario's dear wife, Etta Blimpspots Benson, soothes the tortured soul of her husband, so much so that nine months later she gives birth to twins, Tzitzi and Noncy, brother and sister and it's not long before they follow in their father's footsteps, putting on shows with their dummy, Lord Pomeroy.

Actual Oxblood twins, circa 1949, Snitzy and Rudolph Horfhorf, who used to come out to the Faulkner farm and amuse William Faulkner in the especially bleak moments of his life, like when his dog, Jaundice, died and when his mother's funnel cake batter became ridden with flies. Their dummy, Baron von Plimpy, is now resting comfortably in the Smithsonian.

With three ventriloquists in the family, it's not long before the family farm falls into disarray, and with the death of Uncle Gibble, Lothario's wife is left to hoe the rows and till the soil until she drops dead between the beanpoles one hot August day. This moment is referenced in Faulkner's later novel, Light In August, but in the meantime Lothario is left to raise the twins by himself and bring in a measly dollar from the withered and decrepit crops of his failing farm. 'Melonball' Malone, incidentally, is found guilty of dallying with the devil because of his silent ventriloquism and is promptly hung along with his dummies. The twins go on to become traveling evangelists, posing as husband and wife, clouding the narrative with a mosquito net of incest that Faulkner leaves intentionally ambiguous because he wrote the novel and was allowed to do this, either for fun, for profit or for posterity, it's anybody's guess and your guess is as good as mine or maybe not as good because of my Faulknerian insights, but it's close enough not to count for just some kind of chump change.

Snitzy and Rudolph Horfhorf many years later, posing as husband and wife just like their fictional counterparts, and working as evangelist ventriloquists with their dummy, renamed Timmy from Baron von Plimpy, because of some bad feelings for German names after the war.

 

Eventually Faulkner winds the whole thing down in a fractured denouement that resounds like a grandfather clock being struck repeatedly with an axe. Such is the subtlety of his thoughts, couched in the fecundity of his language, or more accurately, crammed into a folded-up sofa bed, its springs broken by time and the enormous rear ends of overweight cousins. Is this the place you'd like to sleep? To rest your troubled and over-sized head? I think not. Neither does Faulkner. And let me tell you, it isn't easy trying to throw your voice from inside the cramped space and metal constraints of a sofa bed. Just ask Sir Lumpy, Lord Pomeroy, Mr. Gobbles or Sheldon Goldstein. Don't wait too long for an answer though because by then you'll be dead or maybe a zombie making cannibal salami in Hell's kitchen. And wishing you'd paid a little more attention in ventriloquism school.