[lit-ideas] Re: On Nip Thievery
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 08:29:26 -0700
And this is a case in point despite Paul's not having joined in my search
for literature. Look here, did someone really steal David's nip? Why would
someone doubt it you might ask? Didn't he say they did? Well, I say in
response, he's in the habit of writing what I might call literature and he
might have done it again.
"Wait," you will say, "he mentions Walter and a real incident."
"But," I will ask another question by way of response, "didn't Dante mention
real people and real incidents? And didn't people round about think he had
really gone down into Purgatory and the Inferno and then subsequently
written about them -- from first hand experience; which would have precluded
The Divine Comedy from being literature and reduced it to mere reportage;
for reality can't be literature, or can it? We really haven't settled what
literature is, have we?
And I will ask by way of continuing this pursuit, does David really have a
choice of swords, rusty and not? We learned about his collection of
Encyclopedias; so might his nip-thief not chose those, the choice of weapons
being rightfully his? Encyclopedias at an appropriate number of paces?
"Bring your own," David might then demand, "or stand there with head bowed
in unrequited remorse while I bash you in the head with one of my own?" But
swords?
Or his multivolume edition of the OED, that would do as well if he would
permit it, a nip-stealer would not be expected to have an OED. That would
be beyond belief whatever the nature of literature. I've handled those from
time to time and been handled by them: a blunt instrument if I ever saw one.
But swords? They cut through my conception of him. Not that I have him
pegged as a pacifist, for he studies wars and knows about battles and duels,
but in a fly-on-the-wall, bystander, passerby sort of way, not as an active
participant. If we were to scrunch Portland down next to San Jacinto and he
were to come next door to look at my swords, assuming I have any and am not
being merely literary, and I were to ask "can we now go back to your house
to see yours, especially the rusty ones, would he invite me over, or would
he say with Dante or Mike Geary, "If you can't take a joke, then why don't
you go to hell"?
Lawrence Helm
San Jacinto
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of David Ritchie
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 12:51 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: On Nip Thievery
I am so angry I want to write this down so that the world had a
record of how anger goes. When my mother died, my brother, my sister
and I cleaned out my father's house. Among the loot were three
bottles of whisky that had been in my father's attic for thirty
years. My father no longer drinks spirits, so we each got a
bottle. I carried mine half way round the world to Oregon and let
friends taste whisky that had begun life in the nineteen sixties.
I stashed the bottle. Which is not to say that I hid it well, or
locked it up in a safe. I just put it out of the way and visited it
from time to time. When last seen, more than half a bottle of the
stuff was waiting for the right moments.
This evening I thought, "I haven't had a taste of that in a long,
long while. Why not, now? Life is to be seized. Perhaps before a
colonoscopy, the right answer is a drop of ancient whisky?"
I went, I looked, the bottle is gone. No one in my family drinks
whisky. So may he or she who stole it find much happiness in the
deed. Bastard.
Meanwhile I'll agree that Walter and all the others who say ice is a
mistake do have a point. The dram with which I diluted the urge to
go and disembowel all thieves tasted very well with just a dribble of
water in it. But if the thief would just reveal him or herself,
stand right out there on the lawn, I'd run him or her
through...choice of sword, rusty or no, up to the victim.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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