(repost) :: i am my wife's ornamental hermit (and i feel fine)

in

(This was originally shared here last July, but given that summer is once again upon us and I am back to my hacking and digging and mowing and leveling ways, I felt it was an opportune time to revisit…)

There’s something about the life of the 18th century ornamental hermit — which, according to Atlas Obscura…

While some gardeners might now throw in a gnome statue among their flowers and shrubberies, back in the 18th century wealthy estate owners were hiring real people to dress as druids, grow their hair long, and not wash for years. These hired hermits would lodge in shacks, caves, and other hermitages constructed in a rustic manner in rambling gardens. It was a practice mostly found in England, although it made it up to Scotland and over to Ireland as well.

— speaks to me: I feel, as I wander our backyard in the AC, a certain kinship with the gentleman pictured above. I would totally live in one of those “hermitages constructed in a rustic manner in rambling gardens”; I pretty much already do. I have found, then, my life goal; little did I know I was already living it.

(Plus, the bit about not speaking to anyone for seven years sounds fantastic. The not bathing part, eh, not so much. Still, sacrifices must be made.)

big little survival

in

(This post – which is, itself, an expansion of an earlier post on wed/20230222 heralding the arrival of the first DICK TRACY (and first-ever) Big Little Book produced – was originally published in MacroParentheticals 0106 on sun/20230226. I’m reproducing the newsletter version here because I’m rather fond of it – and I’ll be publishing a short follow-up this Sunday. You can subscribe here, if so inclined.)

I've had a thing for Big Little Books, those +/- 3.5" x 4.5", Depression-post-WWII - era handheld books and entertainments, since I was somewhere in the single digits and my grandfather purchased three of them - CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, BONANZA, and THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (all from the late-60's revival) – for me from an antique dealer friend.

Though MAN FROM UNCLE was always my favorite, it was the BONANZA one, spine number two of that revival series, that took on a special significance three decades hence when, at my first trip to the closest this indifferent agnostic will ever get to heaven on earth, The Toys That Time Forgot (the last trip to a store before COVID hit), I found spine number one, DICK TRACY ENCOUNTERS FACEY: an obsession – scratch that, two obsessions – was/were thus revitalized.

Wednesday, then, was a big day, a very very very very very good mail day: the first Big Little Book ever produced, December 1932, the now-exceedingly rare product of a single print run testing out a new type of narrative delivery system amidst the throes of the Great Depression, that just so happened to feature the object of my second obsession, arrived in my hands:

To put this book's place in history in perspective: Dick Tracy was only a year old (and "known to 10,000,000 readers," as the cover states); FDR had been elected in a landslide but had yet to be inaugurated (for the first of four times); Superman was six years away from making his debut, Batman seven; Tod and Bela and James and Boris had, only a year earlier, shepherded Dracula and Frankenstein's monster into cinematic history; and both of my grandfathers were six, a little younger than I was when they collectively birthed this particular obsession in me; to possess the first – and now, the second DICK TRACY BLB adventure (that pair is below) – is, to put it mildly, a big fucking deal for me.

This obsession with Big Little Books goes further than enjoying the format, a shared connection to my grandfathers, and a desire to possess: I have a far deeper love of what would be considered disposable media - pulps, BLBs, old comics – narrative delivery systems that were not meant to survive consumption and possession, either through quality, life, historical events, or parental intervention – than the purported treasures of more recent years: I'm still noodling about in the notion, unpacking it, but I've been thinking that these disposable narrative delivery systems of yesterday provide a key for new, sustainable narrative delivery systems and storytelling forms today: indeed, they're already shaping how I approach writing and the delivery systems I choose (handmade zines printed on sugarcane waste paper, etc etc) to contain whatever concoction I send you that passes for a narrative.

But: that these little packages of entertainment did survive – not out of quality of construction or design for posterity but of a concerted effort on the part of someone, be it the first owner who treasured them enough to enable a nearly 100-year-old 10-cent book to endure the Great Depression, WWII, and every historical event between then and now – to spend the next phase of their lives in Funko Pop plastic cases on my shelves here in The Paintshop, my sancutary in the middle of a fuckall nowhere highway afterthought/speedtrap 'burg in Ohio, is nothing short of amazing: by all accounts, they shouldn't be here. Yet here they are:

I don't know: maybe I'm putting to much thought into it. This is my way. But it might also be why you read (or tolerate) me.

But I mean, really: Do we love anything enough these days to hold on to it for that long? To ensure its survival? To pass something down through subsequent generations, to instill a love of something in such a way that it becomes unconscionable to let it die? Or do we take too much for granted today, especially when what would be considered the pulps of today can be deleted from an e-reader with a flick of a button?

Or maybe I'm just getting old(er) and grouchy(ier). Damn kids, etc etc. Off my lawn and all that. Need to develop the above more. (Not that I'm older and grouchier, that's a fact of life, I'm talking the Big Little disposable / sustainable thing...)

Anyhow... (the thought trails off)...

(Again, the above post was originally published in MacroParentheticals 0106 on sun/20230226. I’ll be publishing a short follow-up this Sunday. You can subscribe here, if so inclined.)