More of a Good Thing

One might argue that you can't improve upon perfection, but I say, give me more of it, and you've done so! Nicholas Again by Goscinny & Sempe and Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome are great examples. I can't say for sure I've laughed harder at these follow-ups to Nicholas and Three Men in a Boat, but I've laughed at least as much. Tears of joy have been shed; hyperventillation has been experienced; a book has been set aside as I strain to compose myself and continue. And a good time was had by all, except for, perhaps, Ickie, who has to put up with my insistence on reading snippets to him. I know he'd prefer to read them for himself, but I am compulsive in my desire to share my amusement with him.

To wit, here follow some selections from each text. Nicholas Again contains more stories of little Nicholas going to school, happily fighting with his buddies, innocently terrorizing adults, and having a fabulous time. This is from the chapter "Prizegiving Day":

"There were prizes for everyone. Cuthbert, who is top of the class and teacher's pet, got the Arithmetic prize, the History prize, the Geography prize, the Grammar prize, the Handwriting prize, the Science prize, and the Good Behavior prize. Cuthbert is nuts! Eddie, who is very strong and likes to punch his friends' noses, got the Gymnastics prize. Alec, my fat friend who is always eating, got the Regular Attendance prize; that means he goes to school the whole time, and I suppose he really did deserve the prize, because his Mom won't have him in her kitchen, and if he can't be in the kitchen, Alec would rather go to school than anywhere else. Geoffrey, who has a very rich Dad who buys him anything he wants, got the Deportment prize because he's always smartly dressed. There are times when he's come to school in his cowboy outfit or his Martian suit or his musketeer's uniform, looking really great. Rufus got the Art prize because of the big box of colored pencils he had for his birthday. Matthew, who is bottom of the class, got the Good Comradeship prize, and I got the prize for Public Speaking. My Dad was very pleased, though he looked a bit disappointed when our teacher said the prize was awarded more for the quantity than the quality of my work. I'll have to ask Dad what she meant."

In Three Men on the Bummel, "J," Harris, and George are 15 years older. J and Harris are married with children, and George, it can safely be assumed, couldn't be bothered to get up early enough to find himself a girl. The three fellows choose to go biking in Germany for this holiday. In one of my favorite chapters thus far, J chronicles the misery of being awakened by Harris's unruly children in the middle of the night. After which, the three fellows stop in London to play a joke George has devised. He found a phrase book written for Germans visiting England, with lots of dreadfully awkward, stilted phrases, and George tests them out on London cabbies and shopkeepers. (Doesn't this sound like a joke we'd come up with today?) It sends a boot salesman into a rage.

The chapters set in Germany capitalize on amusing cultural differences (primarily the German obsession for rules and order).

"All three of us, by some means or another, managed, between Nuremberg and the Black Forest, to get into trouble.
Harris led off in Stuttgart by insulting an official.... Harris did not know it was an official he was insulting. He took it for a fireman (it looked like a fireman), and he called it a 'dummer Esel.'
In Germany you are not permitted to call an official a 'silly ass,' but undoubtedly this particular man was one. What had happened was this: Harris in the Stadtgarten, anxious to get out, and seeing a gate open before him, had stepped over a wire into the street. Harris mantains he never saw it, but undoubtedly there was hanging to the wire a notice, 'Durchgang Verboten!' The man, who was standing near the gate, stopped Harris, and pointed out to him this notice. Harris thanked him, and passed on. The man came after him, and explained that treatment of the matter in such off'hand way could not be allowed; what was necessary to put the business right was that Harris should step back over the wire into the garden. Harris pointed out to the man that the notice said 'going through forbidden,' and that, therefore, by re-entering the garden that way he would be infringing the law a second time. The man saw this for himself, and suggested that to get over the difficulty Harris should go back into the garden by the proper entrance, which was round the corner, and afterwards immediately come out again by the same gate. Then it was that Harris called the man a silly ass. That delayed us a day, and cost Harris forty marks."

Object Lesson

Yesterday our neighbor came over and told us this story, which cracks me up for some reason.

"Did you hear we have a new mailman? You know, the old one died. He was a grouch. He died shoveling snow on his way to his hot tub. He was a drug addict. Okay, maybe he wasn't an addict, but he did a lot of drugs."

So if you're a grumpy mailman who loves his hot tub and has a lot of snow to shovel, please don't do drugs. Or if you're a grumpy mailman who does drugs and lives up north, put your hot tub inside. Or if you're a grumpy drug addict with a snow-covered hot tub, don't deliver the mail. However, if you're a mailman with a drug problem and a hot tub buried in snow, you probably can't help being a grump. Unless you do more drugs.

Boy Stuff

Reading Nicholas, by author Rene Goscinny and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempe, is the most fun I've had in a while. Accompanied by hilarious pen and ink illustrations, Nicholas is a simple book of stories about a little boy growing up in France in the 1950s. Little Nicholas narrates in an innocent, run-on manner, and the humor is best appreciated by adults who sympathize with harried parents and teachers. Nicholas cheerfully relates his adventures, each of which ends in a fight and a mess, thereby making it that much more fun. For example, in one chapter all the little boys attempt to play cowboys and indians but spend the entire time arguing and whacking each other, and Nicholas, as always, comments that it was a fabulous time. It's what little boys are like (and occasionally dads and little girls too).

There's a charming cast including Nicholas's mother and father, Cuthbert (who is top of the class and teacher's pet and wears glasses so they can't whack him so much), Old Spuds (the grumpiest of the teachers), Mr. Billings (the neighbor and Nicholas's father's arch enemy), Alec (Nicholas's friend who is fat and eats all the time), and the rest of Nicholas's gang.

I've requested every other Nicholas book that I can find translated in our library system. I can't wait to read them! They remind me of The Magic Pudding author Norman Lindsey's theory that children are only interested in two things: fighting and eating.

Tolkien Five

Here is a great little top five essay for Middle Earth fans. My favorite quote within the essay describes predominately inferior world-building by lesser authors as the "great clomping foot of nerdism."

Glee

I'm a cynic. I approach nearly everything with at least a touch of sarcasm. But there are also quite a few times when I just like something unabashedly. Here's something I stumbled upon that made me not a cynic.

Having Everything

Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light is such a lovely, plaintive book. It interweaves the true death of a young woman in 1906 with the tale of a fictional girl, Mattie Gokey, growing up in the Great North Woods. Donnelly was inspired by Grace Brown's letters as well as the stories told by her grandmother, who grew up in the region. It reminded me a bit of Northern Borders by Howard Frank Mosher, although I resonated more deeply with Donnelly's protagonist, possibly because she's a young woman who dreams of being a writer.

The novel's chapters alternate between two time frames, and the story concludes when these time frames meet. The first storyline begins with the discovery of the drowned body of Grace Brown and the mystery of her missing partner. Mattie works at the lakeside hotel where Grace and her companion were staying. The second storyline begins a few months earlier, as Mattie struggles to finish high school, mourns her recently deceased mother, and cares for her father, younger siblings, and their farm. Mattie is bright and creative, with a love for books and words. She and her best friend Weaver, the town's only black boy, dream of going to college in New York City.

The novel is filled with the overwhelming grind of everyday life and much tragedy. So many scenes were heartbreaking and a few were amusing. On a personal note, it was therapeutic for me to read this book this week. Whenever I became overburdened with my daily responsibilities of caring for my baby, housekeeping, and freelance editing, I would pick up A Northern Light and read about Mattie's friend trying to care for her newborn twins, cook for her husband and all the farm hands, boil laundry, etc. To say life was hard is an understatement.

The mysteries of the story are thinly veiled, but the manner in which Donnelly reveals information is touching and deeply personal. She focuses more on the effect the revelation of truth has on Mattie than on manufacturing twists and surprises for the reader. I still hurt right through when I think about Mattie talking about her first kiss and how nice it felt because it was the first time anyone had embraced her since her mother's death nearly a year ago.

A Northern Light is delicately composed and is a credit to Mattie's literary idols (e.g., Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Louisa May Alcott), and although it has obvious appeal to women, I believe men would appreciate the quality of the work as well. (At least you fellows ought to do so!)

Phraseology

Most of us have a movie, book, or TV show quote that's worked its way into our daily use, serving as an inside joke among our little club of fellow fans. Who among us didn't quote Monty Python's Holy Grail constantly in high school or college? (If you didn't, you might not be nerdy enough to enjoy my blog.)

Ickie and I have several regulars in current rotation. We can always make each other laugh by saying "Go back from whence you came!" (G.O.B. in Arrested Development). As cuss-word substitutions, Ickie often uses "Frak" (BSG) and I use "Blurg" (30 Rock). But the really random, just-between-the-two-of-us quote is "When will they listen, Bob? When will they listen?" We're not even sure that's the exact quote anymore. Any deviation just makes us laugh harder. "When will they learn, Jim? When will they learn?" It comes from a Mystery Science Theater short that's a cheesey educational video about train-track crossing safety (view here). Basically, a 1950s kid gets hit by a train because he doesn't follow proper precautions, and the railroad employees comment on his carelessness, shaking their heads grimly in a laughably stilted bit of acting. We reference it all the time. You'd be surprised how applicable it is to everyday life. For example, Pizza Hut shows an ad for gross-looking pasta, some rednecks have a noisy argument on the street outside our house, Ickie's students fail because they don't apply themselves, a duck gets hit by a rock...the possibilities are endless, especially when you go around feeling superior all day long like we do. Just thinking the phrase now in my head makes me feel like laughing.

I'd love to read your favorite oft-used quotes in the comment section. Maybe I'll even make a pie chart of the results. Because pie charts are super fun.