Fit 7, pg. 75/3 … work is the curse of the inking classes, part two

Leaving someone to their fate is all the rage in certain philosophical circles. The smart set calls it a feeble-minded tautology but we think it's a splendid excuse for yet another obsessively cross-hatched depiction of Karl Marx shaking his fat German booty in a tight-fitting Hindustani harem outfit.

Of course, if you just tuned in to this GN version of The Hunting of the Snark, you're probably eying the exit by now, eager to get away from all this eschatological psychobabble but if you're a regular habitue of these parts, you'll know that all of the above is just another example of this artist's singular inability to clearly explain whatever it is that he's up to.

The shehnai-playing monkey and the bewigged barrister-pig are window-dressing for the real "meat" of this stanzel is the squiggly, blobby bits of ink encrusted on the right-hand margin, the ones that spell out the word "BOO". This word's grim import will become clearer later on but for now, I suggest that you avoid making eye contact with it.

Snark drawings are the New York subway-riding winos and psychos of the illustration and comix world; reeking of strong ink and sour, week-old tautologies fished out of filth-ridden dumpsters, they spell nothing but trouble, especially of the B-O-O ilk.

So go ahead, give 'em your spare change if you want to but you know what they'll do with it, don't you? … far better to leave them to their fate while you scurry back to your cozy, safe home in the predestinarian suburbs …

Meanwhile, a propos of nothing in particular … here's Terry Gilliam's take on making a living in the arts:

"If I'd actually learned any of the lessons, I wouldn't be making films anymore. I try not to learn. I spend most of my life unlearning …"

Soyez zen, Mr. Gilliam!

Fit 7, pg. 75/2 … drive your snark and your plow over the bones of the dead

This stanzel is jam-packed with jolly bits of scrumptious, Nonsense-soaked Carrollian references. Would it interest you to know that —

1. mimsy is a portmanteau of miserable and flimsy. The word is current throughout the Carrollian Multiverse, ranging from Snark Island to Looking Glass Land. The islanders pronounce it with a marked rolling of the "r", while the Spiegelmans and womans prefer to drop the final, silent "o".

2. the Banker is rattling his bones and fingering his hair; the former is a reference to Mister Bones, a stock character in Victorian minstrel shows who would literally play himself, ie., play the bones … and the latter is a probably just the Banker luxuriating in his newly-minted, windswept locks. In short, he's vamping, ie., playing himself.


WILLIAM STANLEY MOUNT, THE BONE PLAYER

3. the deliciously well-turned line, "words whose utter inanity proved his insanity," is a cleverly veiled jab at the letter "S", whose appearance inside a word, say inanity, seems sufficient here to render it unfit to operate heavy machinery or make major financial decisions. There's a yummy whiff of the Eternal Recursion here — the primum mobile of the Carrollian Mutliverse — since this petty defaming of the letter "S" is itself a classic example of the inability of most phonemes to just get along. Why can't they learn to live in peace with one another? It's utter insanity, their communal inanity.

In short, more of the same for 2012 …

Fit One, Page 8, Panel 1

Words, words, words! There's not going to be any of 'em in this drawing and besides, the Beaver seldom knows what to say anyway. They make such a buzzing in her head … so she's popped off, outside on deck, away from that galoot of a Butcher and his loquacious cronies in the main salon. She's having a breath of fresh sea air, watching the Boots and the Bellman gammon the ship's bowsprit, thinking of absolutely nothing in particular.

She is, as they say, a tabula rasa. Just the thing for an artist who's short on paper. A few quick strokes of the pen and voilà! In place of a quotidian Castor Canadensis, we now have a charming ingenue recently out of finishing school. She has imbibed all the social graces necessary for the sporting companion of any High Church Anglicans bent on Snarkicide. No more riparian galactophagogery for this lady, she's wearing the galligaskins now and she's loaded for Boojum!

In short — nurture triumphs over nature — again! Huzzah for the tabulae rasae of this world! Besides, no one likes a palimpset anyway, those snooty, nefandous know-it-alls.
________________

NB. Special thanks to Doug H., a true Snarkologist, for furnishing me with sample pages from Peter Bowler's The Superior Person's Little Book of Words. Address all excess-word complaints directly to Doug. I am but a humble bystander, so fight your own naumachia, eh?

Fit One, Page Five, Panel Two

"His form is ungainly--his intellect small —"
(So the Bellman would often remark)
"But his courage is perfect! And that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Snark."
He would joke with hyenas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
"Just to keep up its spirits," he said.

A nautical though nice bit of ink-stained gallimaufry in which we see the Baker's character (still anonymous though!) in a better light, perhaps even the light which shines down from above, the light to which the Baker refers with his finger, in fact, the light for which one does not lack when heaven guides the way. If one were to see the Baker in a philosophical light, one might say that he carries about him a certain Platonic air, a mystical faith in a universal flashlight which he carries about with himself wherever he goes and which enlightens his path in even the darkest caves of the human mind. It is this mental flashlight which provides him with the aplomb necessary to navigate through the thickets of hyenas and bears in which he finds himself today. Note also that he smiles at his tormentors, a Mona Lisa sort of smile which says to his would-be tormentors: I know that you are not real, that you are merely shadows of a Higher Hyena and Bigger Bear.

The ursine fellow to the Baker's left is a Gradgrindish sort of fellow, well-schooled in the Facts of Life, ma'am, a scholastic air about him, Aristotelian even, judging by his know-it-all headware. He has no need for invisible flashlights (or torches, as LC would say), he relies upon Facts, just the Facts & their Causes, perhaps even some Numbers, and that's That! He carries a book, not for idle speculation but for assaulting lesser-minded weaklings such as the Baker with.

At their feet we see a personage in the guise of a drawing of a hyena taken from a xerox of a photograph of Heraclitus copied from a painting of a second-hand redaction of the life of Michelangelo as told to Vasari. This reflective beast (first mentioned in Fit One, Page Three, Panel Three) is lounging pool-side, debating whether 'tis best to plunge entirely into the waters or better still to merely dabble the tips of one's toes in the waters. He is consumed with doubt lest he be unable to bathe in the same waters twice. Incidentally, it appears as if he is also consumed with a petty jealousy over the excellent design of the panel in which he finds himself depicted. Not only is it a cunning gloss upon the above Stanza, but it also illustrates the wisdom of obtaining one's artistic training at a qualified and accredited institute of higher learning, a precaution which this hyenaic gentleman's rival, the infamous Raphael (not shown here) attended to by graduating cum laude from the Roman campus of the School of Athens.