Archy and Mehitabel
I remember checking out this book a long time ago. I cannot even tell you the decade, much less the particular "head set" I was in at the time that made me want to read it. Hmmm. Dialogues between Archy, a philosophical cockroach and Mehitabel the cat who once was Cleopatra, now on her ninth feline life. wotthehell wotthehell
Would I have read it in the Taoist-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance epoch? Or the existentialist Christian period of reading? Or the period when Casteneda's places of power was all the rage in my thoughts? Maybe the Karl Popper Brain-is-everything era, or the anti-reductionist thread from the late 70's?
And having read about Archy's typewritten words of wisdom, did I like it? Did I learn anything? Who would have told me about this book? It's all a blur. More and more memory recedes into the murky distance. So be it. wotthehell wotthehell
Comments
They were part of grade 7 or 8 English as I recall....I loved them. However, like you I haven't got a clue why...it's lost in the fog of adolescence.
Posted by: Jane | January 1, 2004 1:14 PM
For me, they were part of the e.e. cummings and Langston Hughes era of my reading life. Moving away from rhymed poetry. And "freddy the rat perishes" has stayed with me to this day.
Posted by: travelertrish | January 1, 2004 1:19 PM
I worked in a library in the late Forties and I read everything I could get my hands on. Since my job was to put books back on the shelf, I got to read adult books that I wasn't old enough to check out.
Don Marquis and Thorne Smith were two of my favorite authors at that time. Although they wrote about quite different subjects, their viewpoints were similarly offbeat to ignite a certain curiosity in me that has never waned.
I loved the ending of freddy the rat perishes: "we dropped freddy off the fire escape into the alley with military honors"
You can read the whole poem at: http://www.donmarquis.com/readingroom/archybooks/freddy.html
Posted by: David | January 1, 2004 5:59 PM
I just bought a new car and, according to family traditions, had to come up with a name for the Malibu Maxx. After several starts and stops, she became Mehitabel. I finally got the chance to look up the name on the web and was surprised that Mehitable was the cat and NOT the cockroach. Long live Mehitable Malibu Maxx.
Victoria
Posted by: Victoria | February 24, 2004 11:14 AM