Wednesday, November 19: Tune It Or Die!
THE GRAND ALLUSION
By Rob Lopresti
I feel like Humpty Dumpty today.
Well, no I don’t. I tell a lie. But if I did feel like Humpty Dumpty how do you think I would feel? Fragile? Shattered? Full of bad cholesterol?
I have been reading The Oxford Dictionary of Allu- sions, by Andrew Delahunty, Sheila Dignen, and Penny Stock. This is why I brought up the late Mr. Humpty.
So, what is an allusion? Glad you asked. The book defines it as a ref- erence to a person, event or literary character “which conjures up some extra meaning, em- bodying some qua- lity or characterist- ic for which the word has come to stand.”
No doubt you have read of someone being “as rich as Croesus,” but who the devil is Croesus? According to the book he was the last king of Lydia, famous in the sixth century B.C. for his wealth. Other allusions they list under Wealth include Daddy Warbucks, Fort Knox, and Rothschild.
The main arrangement of the book is by subject but there is an index by name, which is especially useful for seeing who is considered to have come to stand for several characteristics.
For example, Abraham Lincoln gets a mention under Freedom, Oratory, Speech, and Thinness. Alice is listed under Ascent and Descent, Hair, Height, and Small Size. Alice shares the Ascent and Descent category with Lucifer, who also makes it under Cunning, Devil, Failure, Pride, Rebellion and Disobedience. Not a very attractive combination.
Moving into our genre, the subject of Detectives brings up Dick Barton, (never heard of him), Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes (surprise!), Philip Marlowe, Miss Marple, Perry Mason, Pinkerton’s, Poirot, Spade, Dick Tracy, and V.I Warshawski.
Under Mystery we find Agatha Christie, Wilkie Collins, Eleusian mysteries, House of Usher, Mona Lisa (interesting choice),Sphinx, Udolpho (I’m guessing James would need to explain that one to most of us), and Veil of Isis.
If you are ready to complain that “House of Usher” isn’t about mystery, or that certain people have been left out (Does Warshawski really get mentioned in literature more often than Kinsey Milhone, or for that matter, Nero Wolfe?) then you have discovered one of the pleasures of the book. It is a volume to argue with. (How could they leave Horatio Alger out of the section on Success?)
From the back of the bus
I don’t know if what follows qualifies as an allusion. Perhaps the better term is shibboleth, since it was intended to separate those In The Know from Them What Ain’t.
There is a radio station in my town, KISM-FM, that advertises on the back of our buses. The other day I saw one of their ads and laughed so hard I almost fell off my bike. The ad consisted of three lines:
TIME.
MONEY.
BRAIN DAMAGE.
If you don’t get it, those are the titles of three songs from one of the most successful albums of all time, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. (And if you’re a fan of that album you really need to hear the Austin Lounge Lizards’ bluegrass version of “Brain Damage.”
Or maybe I’m just making mischief, like Anansie, Dennis the Menace, and Loki.
Rob, a belated thanks for the kind words about “Panic on Portage Path” in your Feb. 7 blog. That was before I discovered the pleasure of reading Criminalbrief.
Some of the choices and omissions in “allusions” are beyond comprehension.
Dick, I’m glad you found my comments on your story. I do enjoy those Akron tales.
I suspect one problem witht he book of Allusions is it is from Oxford, i.e. English. They may speak different allusions over there. But the book is fun.
I’m afraid to read the book of allusions because I know I’ll get angry, as I usually do, If I don’t find some allusion or reference to Easy Rawlins, Coffin Ed, or Grave Digger Jones.
Rob — I love this kind of thing! Great column.
Thanks for pointing us to this book.
I’m a sucker for books like this! Check out “The Oxford Book of Comic Verse.” I am a research geek! Thanks!
Glad you liked it guys.
Not to get you mad, Louis, but since you raise a good question and people might be interested.
Easy, Ed, and Grave Digger do not appear in the book. Not surprising in the case of Easy Rawlins. He made his first appearance a decade before the book came out (2001) and it takes a while for a character to appear as a reference in a lot of other books. (The most recent I spotted in the book was Warshawsky, 1982.)
I’m no expert on African or African-American literature but the only character I saw in the index whose origin was an African or A-A author would be Anansie – unless you count Brer Rabbit and Tar Baby, depending whether you credit them to Joel Chandler or the slaves that inspired his stories. Of course, I may have missed some.
If you want to be mad, of course, the question is whether to blame the editors of the Book for missing citiations, or the authors who didn’t cite the characters enough to get into the Book.
Someone’s doctorate topic waiting to happen…