Big news: For the next little while I won’t be here, but here as I guest-blog for the summer at About Last Night, joining two of my favorite bloggers Terry Teachout and OGIC. (Announcement.)

Pleased as punch, etc. etc., with only one concern: I like the people who read here, all dozen of you, and I’ll miss hearing from you in the Comments. So please do join me at About Last Night and feel free to email thoughts, contrarian impulses, suggestions and foundationless gossip (email address is in the upper right corner of this page; although I strongly recommend not using subject lines like “Hi” “Hello” and “I’d like to enlarge your penis” as I only open those if they’re from Clem Snell).

It may get dusty here so I’ve left you with a picture of one of my favorite places in the world: Jacob’s Meat Market in Appleton, Wisconsin. I used to take piano a block from here and after my lesson my dad and I would come here for sausage, which would get fried up in a skillet for dinner (serve with mustard!). I visited at New Year’s and it was astoundingly the same. The woman at the register said that lots of people who’ve moved away stop in to Jacob’s when they’re back in town. Whenever he’s in Wisconsin, Mr. Tingle (who’s a Southerner) likes to intone, “There’s a different mass consciousness at work here.” If that’s true, Jacob’s is a seat of that mass consciousness.

The counter at Jacob’s Meat Market after the jump (warning: not an appetizing shot for vegetarians).

And because there can never be too much documentation of this building, Jacob’s Meat Market in profile.

Which is to say:
• No, I didn’t delete your comment.
• If you emailed recently, I may not have received it, or I received it but have no prompt to remind me I received it.

Now for analog difficulties: We went to get a bike helmet today but couldn’t find one to fit my giant “Walking Candied Apple” head. The Women’s size didn’t fit, the Universal size didn’t fit, and the Large didn’t fit either. I’m now going to Google and see if there is some sort of Big & Tall store for heads.

Confidential to one Mr. Snell: Hi!

The bike was going to be called Hot Tamale, but I’m now sorely tempted by the name Count Gottfried. (My typewriter is named Helga* and the car is Stella Vine, so it might be nice to add a guy to the stable, albeit one who enjoys “appearing in women’s clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings” and “exotic designer frock coats.”)

The basket for the doguette is on back order for another month, which is disappointing but probably for the best. It’s been a long time since I rode a bike with any regularity, and when we were test-driving bicycles in the Liberty parking lot I wobbled a lot at take off and needed roughly a 500-yard radius to make a turn without dragging my feet on the ground. This will give me the chance to get on warmer terms with centrifugal force before taking on a passenger. My stepdaughter has pointed out that we’re going to need a wee helmet as well.

In short: !!!!!

* One of my favorite songs as a kid — around the same age it was a great dream to organize the kids I played kickball with in a talent-show performance of “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love.” No dice.

UPDATED: Meine Damen und Herren, Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen! Count Gottfried is after the jump.


Because a tiger is a tiger not a lamb.

If you cannot tell, this post and the one previous are evidence of concerted procrastination afoot at Tingle Alley (read: I’m under deadline). Discovering the Charlie Rose video archives is like tapping a rich gusher of time-wasting material.

There’s an interesting bit near the interview’s end about Shakespeare films. Rose observes that many actors he’s known have spoken of the difficulty of doing a “great Macbeth” (as opposed to a “great Hamlet”). This reminded me of something I read recently in Mark Van Doren’s Shakespeare. The chapter on Macbeth starts with an elegant bit about the shallowness of Macbeth as a character, which I’ve always felt to be true. (I think the same of Lady Macbeth; and one of my disenchantments with Bloom’s Shakespeare, as brilliant as it often is, came with Bloom’s hothouse read of Lady Macbeth’s character, which credits her with all sorts of complexities, and made it seem as if he were intent on seeing every character as Falstaffian in depth, even those who are merely Longoria-ish.) Where was this going? Oh yes, and this quality of shallowness might be part of why it’s hard to act a great Macbeth, because it’s simply not as deep a character as Hamlet.

I’ll post the relevant Van Doren passage later today — I also need to re-read the Bloom essay on Macbeth to see if he really runs as hot as I keep reproaching him for, or if it was just the Amontillado.

* Lane on T.S. Eliot.

I wanted to re-read it as I’m very interested in Louisa May Alcott right now, on two fronts: Her Unitarian-ness as well as her pulpy Gothic fiction side. Earlier today, I picked up Madeleine B. Stern’s biography of Louisa May Alcott from the library. Whenever I get into a subject like this I enjoy researching around online about what books to read, and I’ve noticed that books on the American transcendentalists seem to attract a particularly exacting & scathing class of Amazon reviewer. I suppose it’s the historical society tartars. Not necessarily people you want to dive into gin & crumpets with but clearly knowledgeable, and they say Stern is the way to go.

RELATED LINK: “Concord Writers on the Web”

• As an extension of an article about the African literary scene in their July issue, Vanity Fair suggests additional African titles worth exploring, including Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. (I wish the main print article was available online but it’s not.)

• Bolaño Bolaño Bolaño!! Even if you thought you’d ODed on reviews of Savage Detectives, Francisco Goldman’s essay in The New York Review of Books is worth your time. See also the Mumpsimus on Bolaño, which includes a great list of related links. (First link via Maud.)

* I’ve only met her once, but Maureen played a part in one of my favorite conversational exchanges of the last few years. It was on a night she read at Malaprop’s with Kelly Link and Christopher Rowe. Mr. Tingle and Gwenda were in the audience with me, and after the reading, we all went across the street to Bier Garden.

The bar was noisy, but we had a nice big table, with me seated next to Maureen and Gwenda across the table. Maureen and I talked about her experience with Hodgkins (which she’s chronicled at her blog), and how it had left her with a heightened sense of the world’s fragility. “Sometimes,” she said, “I even find myself worried about bunnies.” Gwenda overheard the last bit and said in a very reassuring tone of voice, “Well, of course you do. Like little bioterrorists in fursuits, aren’t they?”

A few highlights:
• Recent trips have convinced me that if I ever leave Asheville, it will be to set up residences in Milwaukee and Antwerp, Belgium (with some sort of share in a house in Austin). They really are my favorite cities. In Antwerp, I would bicycle around all day with my small dog in a basket, trying not to be run over by diamond traders. In Milwaukee, I would join the Brewcity Bruisers and when you came to visit me I’d always have a pot of cheese-and-beer soup simmering on the stove.

• I didn’t make it to Schwartz’s in Milwaukee this trip, but I did hit Shakespeare’s in Madison. It’s a used bookstore near the Capitol building that I used to visit in college. I picked up a great copy of Eudora Welty’s collected short stories with this inscription: “My darling, I hope these stories give you as much pleasure as you give me… at this Charleston Christmas in 1980 and every day of the year. Tom.”

• Finally, I rarely talk about my athletic triumphs on this blog as I rarely have any to report. But on Saturday, I hit three bullseyes in a row playing darts. Not three passersby, three bullseyes.

• Also from the Dept. of Amusing Probably Only To Me, but I’m currently preoccupied with imagining a sit-com based around Christopher Hitchens. Tentatively called “Everybody Pisses Off Hitch,” it features a wacky female neighbor who, even though she works some great prop comedy and hilarious visual gags, never manages to amuse the star, who sits at the kitchen table drinking Scotch and blinking like a mordant eagle caught in the rain. The show’s signature catch-phrase is, “I find that boring and irritating,” and on a very special holiday episode Hitch gets very drunk and regales the neighborhood kids with the story of the lost weekend he and Kingsley Amis spent in Tijuana.

* Lately I’ve been forcing myself to attend the coffee hour that’s held after services at my church, with the rule that I have to introduce myself to at least one stranger before leaving & going to the park next door to read. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet (I’m better in bars), and it’s hard to escape the sense that I am swooping in on people. The whole thing — the self-improving resolution, the church, the presence of “hot beverages,” the awkward dithering of the conversations themselves — feels acutely Pym-like. Next thing you know I am going to be helping someone with his index.