In further tribute, here's an excerpt from one of his early articles, a memoir of a job at a schlocky tabloid:
The staff would have a bull session each Monday morning and work out 15 or 20 ideas for the next issue. "Say, how about this," somebody would cry. "Mad Hunchback Sells Hunch to Butcher/Woman Poisoned by Hunchburger?"
"Nah," the editor would say, "Too far out in left field."
"How about, 'Vice Squad Cop Catches V.D. From Prostitute He Arrested'? "
"Great, " the editor would reply, "We'll use that one."
And so another "news" story would be born. I often reflected that we represented the next stage in journalism, after The New York Times. The Times merely alters and selects facts to fit a particular political line. We invented our facts on the spot, a much more creative process. If it is the destiny of man to "transcend mere reason and empiricism," and to "achieve a rebirth of myth and magic," as many modern philosophers think, I can safely claim that we schlockscribes in our grubby offices were doing more to further that end than the Times.
I soon discovered that my predecessor on the men's pulps had applied the same formula: "Woman Gives Birth to Puppies" appeared in the tabloid; "Women Who Have Given Birth to Animals" had appeared several issues back in one of the men's pulps. A girl who regularly had intercourse with a dog – a spectacle she performed for money in a Mexican whorehouse – had "worn down her immunity" to dog sperm and thus became impregnated. The pulp archly stated that the story had appeared "in several Mexican newspapers" but that "some doctors" claim it is impossible. The tabloid picked it up without any reservations. Folklore students of the future will have to wade through tons of this schlock in stalking down the origins of various contemporary folktales.
The schlock-sex field is much tougher than schlock-crime or schlock-ESP. "This is kind of tame," the publisher, or schlockfuehrer, would say occasionally. Since he fired one person every week without fail (and thus kept us all in that half-mad kind of frenzy necessary to the production of true schlock), this remark would spread terror throughout the factory. We would outdo ourselves with "Teen-Age Sex Club Seduces Parents" or "Wolf-Men Who Drink Blood for Lust." Then, the schlockfuehrer would come around again, looking worried. "Take out 'cunnilingus,' " he would say (referring to a factual story, for once, about a crusader for sexual freedom), "you gotta be careful in this business. "
My predecessor, I discovered while going through back issues, had named one model "Senora Maria Theresa Fellatia" and said she was waiting for an appointment "with her physician, Dr. Cunnilingua." Somehow, this one went through. It is altogether possible that the publisher didn't know either of those words at the time.
Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.
One of the best things Wilson ever wrote was an essay for The Realist called "13 Choruses for the Divine Marquis." Here's how it ended:
I dreamed I called D.A.F. de Sade on the phone and asked him, "Jesus told me that he and you agree on at least one thing and it explains freedom. What is that one thing?"
"Quite simple," he replied, "don't be afraid of the Cross. The fear of death is the beginning of slavery."
And the line went dead with a triumphant click like a barred door falling open.
But for the record, my favorite film of '56 is The Seventh Seal. My favorite from '46 is It's a Wonderful Life, with My Darling Clementine and The Big Sleep close behind. For 1936 it's Rose Hobart, with Theodora Goes Wild close behind. For 1926 it's Charley Bowers' comedy Now You Tell One, with Metropolis close behind. And for 1916, I guess it's Les Vampires, though it's not as though I've seen many other movies made that year.
The deluge of Ford revisionism is starting to get on my nerves as well, even though I'm a bit of a Ford revisionist myself. I'd even argue that he and Carter are better than any of their successors, and if that isn't revisionist what is? But the love for the Nixon pardon really grates. As Christopher Hitchens put it in his anti-eulogy:
You may choose, if you wish, to parrot the line that Watergate was a "long national nightmare," but some of us found it rather exhilarating to see a criminal president successfully investigated and exposed and discredited. And we do not think it in the least bit nightmarish that the Constitution says that such a man is not above the law. Ford's ignominious pardon of this felonious thug meant, first, that only the lesser fry had to go to jail. It meant, second, that we still do not even know why the burglars were originally sent into the offices of the Democratic National Committee....[B]y the standards of "healing" celebrated this week, one could argue that O.J. Simpson should have been spared indictment lest the vexing questions of race be unleashed to trouble us again, or that the Tower Commission did us all a favor by trying to bury the implications of the Iran-Contra scandal. Fine, if you don't mind living in a banana republic.
It's one thing to keep quiet about such sentiments for a while, so as not to speak ill of the newly dead. It's quite another to actively argue the opposite position. But when a president dies, it's now apparently obligatory to praise his term in office. If America elected a leader who went mad his first week on the job, ordered an invasion of Wisconsin, raped a Brownie Scout at a White House photo op, and shot three cops when they came to cart him away, he could rot unloved in a straightjacket for 20 years only to be "reevaluated" on his death as an important historical figure who united the country at a difficult time and was a prescient critic of the Badger Menace.
Look: President Chevy Chase wasn't a grand imperial guy. Just as the Ramones started to teach us that anyone could be a rock star, Gerald Ford was there to remind us that anyone could be a president too. To see him mourned in royal style isn't just silly; it's a betrayal, man. It's like punk never happened.
During the Roman Saturnalia all class distinctions were abolished, with slaves and their masters switching roles, and laws that normally governed sensible behavior virtually suspended.
In medieval times, most Europeans adopted the Roman taste for a good time by electing a Lord of Misrule, or King of Fools. This harlequin king went by many names: King of the Bean in England, the Abbot of Unreason in Scotland, the Abbe de la Malgouveme in France. All had the power to call people to disorder. Cross dressing, bawdy songs, drinking to excess, and gambling on the church altar were only a few of the wanton acts reported.
In some places the Festival of the Ass was commemorated. A young girl with babe in arms entered a church riding an ass or donkey. During the mock services, prayer responses that would have normally included an 'amen' were substituted by a hearty 'hee-haw'.
Saturnalia took place from December 17 to December 23, with some variation in different periods of Roman history. There never was a standardized date for the medieval celebrations. Even Boxing Day carries a ghost of the old carnivals, or so I gathered from one of the later, lamer episodes of M*A*S*H. But as the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, the festivities tended to take place "on or about the feast of the Circumcision" -- that is, January 1. Its most famous American descendant, the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, takes place on that same day, and so it is today that we'll mark it on this blog.
Scholars still debate whether the carnivals served as a safety valve, and thus ultimately undergirded the social hierarchy, or if they were something more revolutionary -- in Bakhtin's words, a liberatory "second world and a second life outside officialdom." The two positions are not mutually exclusive, and I doubt that there's a single answer to the question. I should note, though, that the Church eventually cracked down on the celebrations. Clearly, not everyone in the establishment felt that order was being reinforced.
I'll close with two quotes from James Frazer's The Golden Bough. One describes life during Saturnalia, when
masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table; and not till the serf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared and dinner set for his master. So far was this inversion of ranks carried, that each household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of state were discharged by the slaves, who gave their orders and laid down the law as if they were indeed invested with all the dignity of the consulship, the praetorship, and the bench. Like the pale reflection of power thus accorded to bondsmen at the Saturnalia was the mock kingship for which freemen cast lots at the same season. The person on whom the lot fell enjoyed the title of king, and issued commands of a playful and ludicrous nature to his temporary subjects. One of them he might order to mix the wine, another to drink, another to sing, another to dance, another to speak in his own dispraise, another to carry a flute-girl on his back round the house.
The other recounts a rather forceful restoration of the ancien regime:
Roman soldiers at Durostorum in Lower Moesia celebrated the Saturnalia year by year in the following manner. Thirty days before the festival they chose by lot from amongst themselves a young and handsome man, who was then clothed in royal attire to resemble Saturn. Thus arrayed and attended by a multitude of soldiers he went about in public with full license to indulge his passions and to taste of every pleasure, however base and shameful. But if his reign was merry, it was short and ended tragically; for when the thirty days were up and the festival of Saturn had come, he cut his own throat on the altar of the god whom he personated.
And so the world is turned rightside-up again. Enjoy your holiday. You'll be back at work tomorrow.