BUtterfonlust

I suspect I'm the only person who likes John O'Hara. To me he's not the guy who wrote as his epitaph "Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time, the first half of the twentieth century. He was a professional. He wrote honestly and well"; nor is he the guy who wrote to John Steinbeck and said, in essence, "Congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize, but I think I should have won it"; nor is he the guy who wrote a newspaper column to convey his bitterness at his lack of critical or academic accolades. To me, he's the guy who write Appointment in Samarra.

I loved Appointment in Samarra when I read it in high school, greatly preferring it to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. Gatsby had this annoying air of "Great American Novel" about it; Samarra was just ... a novel. Gatsby was about a world I could never know and thus felt completely disconnected from, whereas Appointment in Samarra was about a guy who's just trying to get along, who works and is unhappy and drinks and his wife resents him and he puts the moves on the babysitter and is rebuffed. It's arguable that Gatsby's setting is irrelevant vis-a-vis the themes of the novel, but I shan't argue that here, save to say that over-reliance on Gatsby's damnably obvious themes makes the book even more tiresome. Basically, I was overwhelmed by O'Hara and underwhlemed by Fitzgerald; I suspect this contrarian position is the real reason behind my 1999 expulsion from the MLA. (You don't really think those fuckers kicked me out due to "syntactical impropriety", do you?)

Upon returning to Saskatoon from Ashland two weeks ago, I was exceedingly pleased to find my battered copy of O'Hara's BUtterfield 8. (I was worried I'd left in Sarasota in January.) I started reading it again, and it's ever good. The problem I have with it is a small one: sometimes I don't know what the fuck is going on. For instance, at one point O'Hara describes the marriage of Weston Liggett, a Yalie via Pittsburgh, and Emily Liggett, daughter of an aristocratic Boston family, and ... well, we'll follow the action in media res ...

She was better off married to Liggett than she might have been with a Boston man because he never took her passion for granted. A Boston man might have, and might not be long looking around for more of the same from someone else. Liggett could not take her for granted. There is something about those good, good words of sleeping together, the language of sleeping together, when spoken in the tones of Commonwealth Avenue, that no man who has been brought up west of the Connecticut River can fail to notice. And when a man is listening for those words, when he teaches them to a woman, when he asks her to say them, he does not take everything all at once. He will want more.

Did you see what O'Hara did there? He starts off with the literal (taking passion for granted, looking around for more of the same from someone else) and then moves into the metaphoric (the language of sleeping together) and then he crashes the metaphoric into the literal (teaching a woman the words of sleeping together) and then he's back to the full-on literal (he does not take everything at once, he will want more). While I never finished my English degree, I still fancy myself a capable reader, but I'm completely stumped by this paragraph. Are Boston men lousy lovers, cynical lovers, selfish lovers, or some amalgam of the three mixed with other ingredients? Are non-Bostonians good lovers, gullible lovers, patient lovers?

And let's not get into the inconsitency of the first sentence -- "better ... married to Liggett than ... [married] with a Boston man ... " (emphasis mine, duh) -- though that's per'aps a nitpick.

Occasionally impenetrable writing aside, I really like BUtterfield 8. (The "BU" is not a typo: it has something to do with the telephone switching system of the 1930's, though I've yet to get far enough into the novel to see the title's significance. You know, like the Glenn Miller song "PEnnsylvania 6-5000": that's a phone number. If it were a real phone number, in years to come it would be shortened to "PE 6-5000", and then "736-5000". I find that really interesting. Now back to our story ... ) In her introduction to the Modern Library Classic edition, Fran Lebowitz praised O'Hara's depiction of "the low life of the high born and the high life of the low born" (or something like that; I skimmed that intro a month ago in NYC). And what's fascinating is way he informs his characters with his own insecurities; O'Hara never attended university, and he's able to use that to make a Yale grad seem like a second class citizen when faced with a Harvard family. True, given the choice I'd turn down Yale in favor of Harvard, but I hardly think Yale is small potatoes. And yet O'Hara can make it seem so!

Ahoy! Forced transition ahead, Cap'n!

And much like John O'Hara can make Yale seem minor league, Magnum P.I. can make the Ericofon seem like a good decorating idea.



I've been watching the first season on DVD and I've come to the conclusion that when it's firing on all cylinders, Magnum P.I. is one of the greatest detective/action/beautiful-scenery television shows ever. I was watching the show the other day and was stunned and delighted to see a cherry red Ericofon on the desk in Higgins' study. In one episode he even uses it! I just about had a telecommunications-related orgasm. I hit Ebay and then the "Ericofons for sale" page at Ericofon.com and came within a hair of getting one before I snapped to reality: dude, the vast majority of Ericofons are rotary! WTFOMGLOL! I then tried to rationalize an Ericofon purchase by thinking that I could use it as a bedside phone for receiving calls only, but then the "bedside" element added a nasty wrinkle: anyone seeing it on my nightstand would immediately assume it's some wacky sex toy. Just take a look at this chick:



No one who's about to make a mere telephone call has that kind of mischievous smile. Surely she's about to call Barry White and have him purr while she puts the earpiece to her ... you know ... clitoris.

Of course, for someone to think my bedroom Ericofon was a sex toy, I'd have to get someone into my bedroom in the first place, but that's another post for ... never. Alas, if only all love could be bought with PayPal. In the meantime, I'll have to settle for Swedish love.


Rowr.