“Joke people and you make enemies.”
It’s rare that I want to punch someone. Today, briefly, I wanted to punch Marty Beckerman. I don’t even know Marty Beckerman. The little I knew about Marty Beckerman — the thing that made me want to punch him — was this passage from his new book, which showed up on Andrew Sullivan’s blog:
The only time Hemingway cried over alcohol: When Congress made it illegal during Prohibition. But he pulled himself together, as a man does always, and traveled to Paris, as a man does seldom. There Papa committed to a life of glorious, full-throttle chemical dependence alongside “The Great Gatsby” author F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said, “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” In Fitzgerald’s case, the drink took ten thousand drinks and then left him dead in the gutter.
Yes, I know: Tragedy plus time equals comedy. Maybe next year Fitzgerald drinking himself to death at 44 will amuse me. Except it probably won’t. No matter how far Fitzgerald’s alcoholism recedes into history, there will always be alcoholics, and some of them will be people we know. Maybe enough time has passed for a comic to tell jokes about the vikings raping and pillaging, but he shouldn’t expect those jokes to get big laughs when he plays Darfur.
Setting that aside, I just don’t see the point of Beckerman’s book. An excerpt that ran on salon.com lists it as “‘The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within… Just Like Papa!’, a satirical look at Ernest Hemingway’s life and many misguided ideas.”
I don’t want to read much of it. But look at this. What the hell is this?
Whining is for women; whiskey is for men. The only shoulder a man cries on is marinated beef chuck, and the only tears he cries are tears of joy. “You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine,” Papa implored in “The Sun Also Rises.” “You lose the taste.”
But that’s not even the quote. Beckerman shortens it and takes it out of context. If it seems pedantic to point that out, just hang with me for a second. Here’s the exchange from The Sun Also Rises, which is so much better than anything you’ll get from me or Beckerman:
The count reached down and twirled the bottles in the shiny bucket. “It isn’t cold, yet. You’re always drinking, my dear. Why don’t you just talk?”
“I’ve talked too ruddy much. I’ve talked myself all out to Jake.”
“I should like to hear you really talk, my dear. When you talk to me you never finish your sentences at all.”
“Leave ’em for you to finish. Let any one finish them as they like.”
“It’s a very interesting system,” the count reached down and gave the bottles a twirl. “Still I would like to hear you talk some time.”
“Isn’t he a fool?” Brett asked.
“Now,” the count brought up a bottle. “I think this is cool.”
I brought a towel and he wiped the bottle dry and held it up. “I like to drink champagne from magnums. The wine is better but it would have been too hard to cool.” He held the bottle, looking at it. I put out the glasses.
“I say. You might open it,” Brett suggested.
“Yes, my dear. Now I’ll open it.”
It was amazing champagne.
“I say that is wine,” Brett held up her glass. “We ought to toast to something. ‘Here’s to royalty.’”
“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don’t want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.”
So, for giggles, Beckerman shortens this line from Count Mippipopolous and turns it into something that “Papa implored in ‘The Sun Also Rises.’”
OK. Time for two quotes I just found from The Good Men Project’s interview with Beckerman:
1) “Hemingway would think that I’m a total sissy. This book isn’t written from the perspective of ‘I’m the ultimate man, and I’m going to lecture my inferiors.’ It’s written from the perspective of ‘I’m a cosmopolitan infantilized eunuch who eats cupcakes and drinks smoothies just like everyone else with a Y chromosome, and this needs to stop.’I want to learn how to hunt, I want to learn how to sail, I want to learn how to short-circuit my liver … and Hemingway is my North Star.”
2) “I thought it was appropriate to open the book with Hemingway’s quote: ‘The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. … The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal.’”
See, I read that second one and I’m appalled that I ever wanted to punch the guy. But then he ends the interview like this:
As much as I love Gatsby, Fitzgerald doesn’t have a lasting iconic persona. Nobody aspires to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, except for lame-o English majors and people who hope to die in a gutter.
Let’s be done. One final exchange between Count Mippipopolous and Lady Brett:
“I’m not joking you. I never joke people. Joke people and you make enemies. That’s what I always say.”
“You’re right,” Brett said. “You’re terribly right. I always joke people and I haven’t a friend in the world. Except Jake here.”
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UPDATE: Then this happened.
