Posts by Dr. Boli
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: One year ago on this day, I happened upon a vehicle bearing a “BLANDO” plate on Murray Avenue. I have kept the area under the keenest observation ever since, but I have seen no sign of the famed magician and heard no rumor of his plans. Has your staff any information on his activities? —Warmest greetings and regards, LCNSLVR.
Dear Sir or Madam: The Great Blando, for various reasons, is not allowed to operate a motor vehicle at present, so the vehicle you saw must have belonged to one of the many minor Blandos. It may be of interest to you and other readers, however, to hear some news of Mr. Blando since he retired to private life. For the past eight months, he has been working the drive-through window at a pierogi parlor in Esplen. He is prohibited by the conditions of his parole from giving acrobatic recitations in public, but his parole comes to an end on August 31, and from that moment he is a completely free man. To the questions often put to him about the possibility of a comeback, however, he resolutely refuses to make any other reply than “Do you want that with or without onions?”
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: Why did built-in gutters go out of style? They are sturdier, more capacious, more attractive, and less likely to collapse while you hang onto them for dear life. Was it some insidious plot by Alcoa to get us all to hang flimsy aluminum boxes on our houses? Why, these structural abominations even require trips up an unstable ladder every few months for cleaning and can barely support the weight of a child, let alone a full-grown adult. Any wisdom which you could provide on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Also, can you recommend a good ambulance service in the vicinity of Pitcairn? I fear that I may soon require their services. —Sincerely, A Man Hanging From an Insubstantial Box Gutter in the Process of Pulling Out its Last Nail.
Dear Sir: Surely the business of teetering on a ladder is a matter best left to your servants. Dr. Boli himself has a reputation for being unusually indulgent to his staff, but there is such a thing as carrying indulgence too far. Your gardener or maintenance man or upstairs maid—the decision as to which one being, of course, best left to the butler—will soon become an expert at gutter-cleaning, if only you will not stubbornly insist on doing the thing yourself.
As for the ambulance, Dr. Boli would recommend dialing 9-1-1 and taking the first one that comes. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for comparison shopping, and there is a time not to be too fastidious.
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ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boli: The world is out of control and I’m writing to get your advice on how to start a movement.
The world has been plagued and brutalized for centuries by a certain group who have it in their heads that they own the entire planet. Some individuals may not be aware they are a part of this elitist demographic. Perhaps some are part of your readership. I am speaking of those schlemiels who have the ability to raise one eyebrow.
In pre-school, I saw Ms. Ahern raise an eyebrow in confusion over my use of the “Thinking Chair” to think, when its true purpose was to punish misbehaving children. From that day on, I have tried to raise one eyebrow without success. I consulted the a film developer at Giant Eagle about cosmetic surgery, but he advised against it saying uni-brows don’t count.
As I said, I would like to start a movement, and seek your advice on what to occupy.
—Sincerely, Concerned Citizen Who Can’t Raise An Eyebrow (CCWCRAE).
PS. Mal-mart (where I work) told me that consultations with actual health care professionals are considered “pre-existing” and not covered by my health insurance. However, the film developer WAS wearing a lab jacket during consultation.
Dear Sir or Madam: The ability to raise two eyebrows at once must logically be twice as useful and praiseworthy as the ability to raise one eyebrow at a time. Why anyone would consider the opposite a mark of superiority is a mystery, but certainly not the only manifestation of this peculiar perversity of human nature. Monks of the Dark Ages took personal filth as a mark of exceptional holiness; the barbarian chiefs of the same era considered their illiteracy a badge of superiority. There were in the not-so-distant past whole groups of people who considered themselves superior to the general run of humanity on the grounds of a deficiency in so obviously useful a substance as melanin. The illogical elitism of the raisers of one eyebrow is no more absurd than any of these other inexplicable affectations.
Whether anything can be accomplished by protest is questionable. In preference to demonstrations, Dr. Boli would recommend a concerted and persistent campaign of withering scorn, frequently demonstrated by the raising of both eyebrows together.
Still, if you mean to occupy something, Dr. Boli would suggest occupying banks and brokerages and other denizens of Wall Street as usual. No one really likes them, and their notorious and multitudinous sins make it difficult for right-thinking citizens to take their side when they are mildly inconvenienced by harmless demonstrations.
A BRIEF GLOSSARY OF COMMON TERMS IN ACADEMIC LITERARY CRITICISM.
SINCE WE HAVE been speaking of academic literary criticism lately, it may be useful to include this brief glossary for the sake of those who do not spend their days behind the gates of the university English department.
Bourgeois. Having to do with what the critic assumes are the thoughts and beliefs of people who are ignorant of or reject current fashions in literary criticism. It should be noted by linguistic conservationists that academic literary criticism is the very last refuge of this term in the English-speaking world.
Criticism. The art of separating the bourgeois from the transgressive.
Gendered. Making a conventional distinction between male and female. A novel or other text that overturns bourgeois assumptions about gender is transgressive and therefore good. One way of challenging the gendered nature of bourgeois society is to write a female character with thoughts of her own, since academic literary critics believe that no one but academic literary critics has discovered that women have thoughts.
Masculinity. A collective term for all the stupid stuff guys do.
Simplistic. Failing to find what is transgressive in a text. If one critic finds a text to be simply bourgeois, another may reject that criticism as simplistic. This generally leads to blows.
Text. Anything with words in it: a novel, poem, grocery list, bar tab, patent-medicine broadside, etc. For the purpose of literary criticism, all texts are more or less equal, and the duty of the critic is to determine whether the text is bourgeois or transgressive.
Transgressive. Not bourgeois. That which is transgressive defies, in some subtle way, what the critic perceives as the ordinary mores or assumptions of the era in which it was written. To say that a text is transgressive is the highest compliment a critic can pay to it. Most texts, with sufficient critical labor, can be found to be transgressive, since no one with enough brains to form letters with a pen actually harbors the thoughts that academic literary critics assign to the bourgeois.
THE ANSWER.
Title page of the Tauchnitz edition, published the same year as the first London edition.
—
THE ANSWER TO yesterday’s literary puzzle: East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood, one of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century.
The book is very easy to find on line, though ambitious graduate students will be disappointed to learn that neither the word “bourgeois” nor the word “masculinity” may be found anywhere in the novel.
A good scanned copy of the Tauchnitz edition:
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
AN AMUSING DIVERSION.
This text appears in a Wikipedia article:
Critical assessment
Some critics argue that the novel champions middle classes over the lower orders; others, however, find this claim “too simplistic” and argue that the novel “highlights the shortfalls inherent to bourgeois masculinity.” Sally Mitchell argues that the novel simultaneously upholds and undermines middle-class values.
For an afternoon’s amusement, here is a challenge: Without resorting to a search engine, see if you can guess what novel is here described. The answer will be given tomorrow in this space.
For further amusement, try to list as many novels as you can think of to which this description might apply. You may wish to give yourself a time limit: as many as you can think of in five minutes, for example. Having compiled your list, award yourself a graduate degree in English Literature.
DR. BOLI’S CALENDAR FOR 2012.
WHEN DIVVS IVLIVS got to name July
After himself, a precedent was set.
Augustus took the next month; but then why
Has no one thought to claim September yet?
It’s just as well they stopped it, all the same:
“Tibery” would have been an awful name.