I've an appetite for fiction
No post-modern work can slake
I refuse to buy a book
Unless it's thicker than a steak
Now Gordon Lish and Barry Hannah
Have their partisans and shills
But I prefer Victoriana
For my literary thrills
And of all the British authors
Who were writing at that time
There's one special British author
I find especially sublime
Now Austen is awesome
And Dickens is a kick
But no one packs a wallop
Quite like Trollope
Yes Trollope is the one I most adore
But my days of reading Trollope are no more
I was sitting in a quaint cafe
With a favorite tome and some cafe au lait
But my luck ran out when you came my way
Now I'll never read Trollope again
You spied the cover as you slithered near
And said "The 1800s--that's my favorite year."
And then you sat right down and now I fear
That I'll never read Trollope again
Armed with Trollope and a cup or two
I could while the day away
Now just a dollop
Makes me think of you
And that's too high a price to pay
I'll read Kafka's tale about that lonely vermin
I'll read every Jonathan Edwards sermon
Hell, I'll read Emmanuel Kant in German
But I'll never read Trollope again
I used to read him with a friend or two
I used to read him by myself
But to read him now only makes me blue
So I've tossed him from my shelf
I'll read Don Quixote five or six times through
I'll read Jackie Collins till my face turns blue
Hell, I'll even read Bukowski too
But I'll never read Trollope again
No I'll never read Trollope again
Monday, May 05, 2008
Lyric of the Day
Having at one time hung out with Gordon "How to Write a Novel" Lish after gaining an undergraduate degree from a school that employed Carver and worshiped Bukowski, lately I've been reading British fiction (Middlemarch last week; started Oliver Twist yesterday), while listening to Dave's True Story [from the Sex Without Bodies album], in particular, the jazzy I'll Never Read Trollope Again:
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2 comments:
Speaking of Kant ---
======================================
Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant
. Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
. Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
. Schopenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
. Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
. 'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed!
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
. On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away
. Half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
. Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
. "I drink, therefore I am"
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed;
. A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed!
- Monty Python's Flying Circus
OBH:
Thanks--I'd forgotten that.
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