Misadventures in the Land of Fables #73
James Thurber, ‘Fables For Our Times’ A few weeks ago I picked up a two volume collection of works by James Thurber, ‘Vintage Thurber.’ Among these works were the ‘Fables For Our Times.’ These were very nice. Fantastic, in the superlative if not the ‘wildly imaginative’ sense of the word. Where Ambrose Bierce is cynical […]
Aphorisms #5
~~~ “Those born into brambles find a world full of thorns.” ~~~
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #72
AMBROSE BIERCE’S ‘FANTASTIC FABLES’ ~~~ The title ‘Fantastic Fables’ is as misleading as the cover image. These are not ‘fantastic’ or ‘fantastical.’ You might call them whimsical if they weren’t so deeply misanthropic and if the characters weren’t figures of contemporary life, familiar objects of satire (politicians, clergy, doctors, judges). These are the caustic amusements […]
Aphorisms #4
~~~ “You are like the man who lay down to give his shadow a rest.” ~~~ This proverb in the second person feels like the application of a fable: ‘you’ are being criticised by way of comparison to a fable. But there is no such fable, nor indeed is there a ‘you’ because the object […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #71
I read somewhere that among the earliest extant fables was one entitled ‘The Elephant and the Wren.’ I was intrigued. The elephant is a stalwart of Middle-Eastern folk literature, but the wren? What was it up to four thousand years ago, I wondered? What did wrens mean to the Ancients. I went a-looking and found […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #70
“The intolerable grievousness of extractions” Ha, what a phrase! Dated, sure, but I think I’m going to adopt it as a response to, well, grievous extractions, or in other words, tedious demands on my time. A kind of dismissive verbal sigh: “ah, the intolerable grievousness of extractions again.” The phrase is the caption to the […]