188: Archy and Mehitabel

Should I start recording locally? Yeah, you should go ahead and start recording locally. I've already started recording the thing and I'm recording myself. Um I've done it.

Welcome back to Sophomore Lit, where we reread your tenth grade reading list. I'm John McCoy, and with me is returning co-host Dan McCoy. Hello, it's me, returning champion Dan McCoy. That's what you said right. Or as I like to call him, Little Daniel. Oh. You sound very uh uh early David Letterman, the way you delivered that. Well, David Letterman and I both have similar gaps between our two teeth, so Well there you go. It's your new next career. Yeah. Impersonator.

So uh you know, everyone out there knows who you are, but go ahead and introduce yourself anyway. Um, I'm John's brother, and that's the most important credit. But also I have my own podcast called The Flop House that you can look up if you like a podcast. And who doesn't like podcasts? Um hey, first of all I wanna give a couple of housekeeping uh notes. If my voice sounds different, Uh there are two reasons for that. One, I have a new microphone that I got for Christmas.

but only now hooked up because it's an XLR microphone and I didn't have a mixture to run it through to my computer because I'm an idiot. Uh, and now I have one and so now I'm joining Dan in the world of professional microphones. Um and two, I just recently had uh uh septum surgery, so my nose uh may sound a little different.

This makes me feel bad'cause it reminds me that I had I did not comment on this as the first time I'd seen you since that, but it I think speaks to the fact that you just seem normal that I I just forgot. We didn't we didn't have a talk. Well while I thought we had uh uh like a zoom call or something while I was still in my uh cast. Um maybe

Hey anyone out there considering getting a septoplasty, uh, you know, the the end results are great. Uh everything else is hell about it. It's a pretty miserable experience to go through. But I'm happy I did it'cause it's in the past now and I don't have to think about it anymore. Congratulations. So so enough of enough of this peek into my boring uh Yeah. Yeah. This peak right up my nose. Um we we are t we are here to talk about uh Don Marquis

Book Archie and Mehidbal. Now, when I call it a book, I I have to be more precise here. Archie and Mehidbal had its beginnings. in Don Marquis' regular column in the New York Sun, the first appearance of And The Cat Who Would Become Hitabel was in uh nineteen sixteen and he wrote these sketches on and off as part of his regular column until nineteen twenty six.

In the in the past I've talked a a lot about how newspapers used to be a place where you could go as a columnist and write about anything. And y I'm normally thinking of Don Marquis when I think of this because Don Marquis uh today is pretty much remembered as the creator of Archie and Mehitabel, but he he wrote on a lot of different subjects.

and he wrote serious things and he wrote humorous things and he wrote novels and plays and he wrote poetry and a lot of these sketches ended up in his column uh, first in the New York Sun, then he moved to I don't know, some other new n uh New York newspapers. This was the time when there were like literally fifty newspapers in New York, so he he bounced around the place.

I wanna say um so Archie and Mahdibel the collected uh columns, poems, whatever you want to call them. Uh it's one of the things that I'm familiar with. because it's one of the things you passed down to me in your effort to make me um socially uh confusing to everybody. Um Yeah. No, but like I I I I it's it's not like a well known

piece of uh American culture in like the the the the most broad sense. I think people still know it, but it's not it's a niche thing that I I learned about through you. But I Never looked up anything about Don Marquis, um until today and I realized that because of his name, I always imagined him as like a Spanish lord. This is Don Marquis whereas his name was of course Donald and uh He was just an American newspaper man.

Yeah. Well in in his in his lifetime he was extremely famous and extremely popular. Uh he was considered the heir apparent. to uh the position that Mark Twain had uh filled as the great humorist of American letters. And um he directly inspired Uh the work of E. B. White, who wrote uh Charlotte's Webb in some ways as a uh i from the inspiration of of Archie the the cockroach who who writes

in this uh these columns. He said that he modeled Charlotte after uh after Mahitabel, but it seems more likely that it it's it's that it that he had Archie really in the back of his mind. He was he was just well known. He was he was he ha he hung out by the way with Alexander Woolcott, uh, who you know from reading uh Harbour Speaks. Yeah. Um About two or twelve times in my lifetime, I think.

So he was part of that nineteen twenties um intelligentsia that was running around New York drunk all the time, writing columns and novels and whatnot. Um yeah, I th th that makes uh more sense th Than my sort of imagined uh Spanish lord in all his finery writing these um poems. You know, I you talk about this as a as a niche um property and it and I I don't

I really honestly don't know how well people know it today. This actually was something that was in two readers I had in s in school. There was um a uh you know, back in in middle school when you had a textbook for uh literature, I remember there was the um There was the piece that is called Freddy the Rat Perishes in a uh it a as as a entry into this.

textbook and I believe it would there was a different entry in a textbook I had in high school. So it was still hanging on as one of those pieces of um ephemera that that made its way into textbooks when I was uh a young one.

Kan jag gå igen? So well I mean it's to to give my anecdotal uh taking of the temperature, this is based on So y you sent me a YouTube link to nineteen seventies Shinbone Alley in my texts and uh uh another thing that didn't happen until today was I d I didn't click on this YouTube link until today. So I didn't realize that it was r related to Archie and Mahata because you sent it to me without context.

And I didn't see fit to like ask you in return, like what's the context. It just sat there uh until I uh looked at it and like, oh, okay, this is uh uh you know, an adaptation uh through several layers. I looked it up. It's uh you know it's based on the musical that was based on the album that was based on the poems. Um so, you know, it's a game of telephone at this point. And apparently uh

Side note I had not been aware of the musical uh had di uh some at least additional dialogue by Mel Brooks, uh in it, and that some of which I think made to the movie. But this is all a side uh a sidetrack before saying that I went to letterboxed as I often do to like see what people are saying about Shinbone Alley from nineteen seventy and only the top review, top most popular review. seemed to know that it was uh based on Archie and Metapel. There were a lot of people

Like I went I read through, you know, a bunch of the bigger reviews and there are a lot of people name check checking Ralph Bakshee, like, Oh, this is like kind of this reminds me of that. Uh but only one reference to the actual original source material that I could see. Yeah. Well we we we should definitely talk about adaptations of this book. There have been several and there have been several works that have been inspired by this.

work. But uh as far as my initial uh exposure to Arch and Mihaville, I remember poems that I saw on these readers were reproduced with the illustrations by George Harriman uh of of Crazy Cat, uh who all all the kids love Crazy Cat today, um so they know exactly who I'm talking about. But but As a kid, it's hard to explain to d millennials and Gen Z just how little information was readily available in the days before the internet. And so

I was vaguely aware of Crazy Cat from a very young age. There was a segment on Sesame Street. There was an animated little segment of Crazy Cat that I saw. And it confused the heck out of me. But I was very interested in it. And then at the time there were these big

compilations of of comics that were out there that maybe reproduced one or two strips from comics from the early twentieth century. And that's where I got to learn about little Nemo and Slumberland and uh, you know, w the Cats and Jammer kids and and everyone's favorite Foxy Grandpa and Yeah. Did you know Foxy Grandpa was made into a series of uh silent films? Ton of movies, yeah. I did know this.

Everyone stop listening to this podcast right now and and look up Fo Foxy Grandpa on on YouTube and then think This was just a hundred and twenty years ago. Human beings have changed into a completely different species in that time. I have to admit I am aware of Foxy Grandpa. I know that Foxy Grandpa was a comic strip that then became a uh a a movie series. I'm mostly familiar with Foxy Grandpa as a funny thing.

to say, like a funny title. And it's only now occurring to me that of course it must refer to like a grandpa who's wily, not like a really hot grandpa. Right. Well they're you're calling kids today are calling them grandsaddies.

Crazy Cat is its own property and Archie Mahibel is a different thing entirely, but George Harriman's drawing style is so weirdly distinct, so unlike anything else, that uh for the longest time I just thought the two of the thing the two things were somehow the the the the same thing and I couldn't quite work out what they were.

And it was only when I was older that I was able to find a copy of Archie Mahitabel and read it. And then, uh, you know, I I was able to sort that all out. So um a actually when Archie Mahitabel was originally

published in the newspaper, there were no illustrations. There was eventually a single illustration that appeared that looks nothing like George Harriman, which is the cover of if you if you can find it, the Penguin Classics uh annotated Archie and Mehdabel, which is an interesting book to read, uh, because it gives you the original uh um the original column before Marquis rewrote them and re edited them and Among other things, what's interesting is if you read the first appearance of Archie

It seems like he's he's dead at the end of that c column. It was like a gonna be a one and done sort of thing. And Mahitabel is not Mahitabel. He she's only referred to as that cat. And it was only when uh Marquis put these sketches together into uh this loose book of sketches in nineteen twenty seven that he went back and and changed it so that Mahidabel gets named for the beginning. Mm-hmm. Interesting. So I inherited an interest in George Harriman from uh, you know, the books that you

had lying around that you uh referenced before. Um I was also drawn to the art and the w weird comedy of that. And so I think that that was why I was drawn to your copy of Archie and Mahdebel lying around the house, I'm sure. Yeah. I wonder what happened to that copy. I have a I have an omnibus somewhere which has all three of the collected uh books, but

really all the good stuff's in the first book and and the other thing to know about reading Archie and Metabel is these were columns. They were written as uh standalone items and some of them are Better than others. And and you really if you if you if you want to read Archie Mahebel, you have to kind of approach it like

uh I would call a like a bathroom book. You you you pull the book down, you read a a few of the uh segments, poems, I guess you might call them. They we'll get into that. Uh and And then you can't there's there's no overarching plot. The the uh the characters are basically static. They kind of they they're they're set in their ways and it's more like catching up with a of like a a sitcom or something.

I may have your copy of Archie and Medical, by the way, so if you have any nostalgic attachment to it.

No, that's okay. I I I have I have I have plenty of Archie Mahidabell Roman house. Okay. In fact, uh you know, before this uh episode I I want everyone out there to know I could not find my copy of the annotated Archie Mahitabell for like three days and then uh I eventually I found it and of course it was on the shelf alphabetically where it was supposed to be, which I I I bring up only to say I am very old and I have too many books.

We've we've gone a long way without actually talking about Archie and Mahitabell. So I've infected your show with my show. So you you wanna give the premise to the people out there of what the who Archie and Mahitabel are and what their relationship So I'm actually doing this semi from memory, semi from uh you know, looking at the Wikipedia. earlier today. Uh Archie is the r reincarnation of a poet, uh, correct? Then he he's reincarnated as a cockroach.

And he types by jumping on the keys of Don Marquis typewriter is I guess the backstory, the lore of How these are uh being trans transmitted to humans. And Mahetabal is uh sort of uh Streetwise sadder but wiser like street cat. Right. And she hearing that Archie uh is a has the soul of a human, she claims to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra. Uh the the astute reader will will will uh doubt this claim. The the the strip actually s began

as or not as a strip. I'm calling it a strip. It's not a strip. It's a column. They and and it was only occasionally part of Don Marquis column, uh, which he in which he wrote many other things. But uh This feature began largely as a parody of um a spiritualism, which was really heavily in vogue at the time. Uh he it the first column makes reference to Madame Blavatsky, who was the spiritualist who's founded what was called the Theosophical Society Which uh

popularize the idea of uh of the transmigration of souls in America at the time. Um among uh the adherents were uh Arth Arthur Conan Doyle. Which is weird when you think about uh Sherlock Holmes as being this ultimate rationalist. Yeah. Doyle himself was a huge spiritualist.

Well and Doyle like you know, like this has been maybe overstated a bit for the for the fun of the story, but like he also dabbled in like helping solve a few crimes. It's not like he had like a non analytical mind, but He uh yeah, he's really fell for the whole fairy's thing.

Yeah. So so it began as as a a kind of a commentary on that. And the in fact in the first column of Archie and Mahitabel. Um there was a l a lengthy uh introduction by the fictionalized version of Don Marquis where he talks about how The there in Dobbs Ferry there's a rat who uh was seen b coming out at night and and typing and that he never was able to finish what he typed because he was interrupted.

And I looked this up and there actually was a newspaper column in nineteen fifteen that claimed in Dobbs uh Ferry, which I gather is in upstate New York that there that the a rat had been seen trying to type on a typewriter. Um so using that anecdote, I mean I'm sh you know how you see these if you if you go onto Tumblr, you see these all these times, these like little

tiny little notes that appeared in the newspaper that were just completely baffling. Like wha who who reported you know, they they needed to fill exactly three quarters of a an inch of a column. I thought you were gonna say like oh these days if you go online you'll see rats typing all the time and little Instagram videos. Well if you get an infinite number of rats Yeah. Well well they write. The screenplay to Willard. I don't know. Flowers for Alginon. Why typecast them, I guess? Yeah. So...

This is written as kind of a a a spoof of that idea. The idea uh Marquis himself was a was a huge skeptic. Uh and and he was mar it's very he's a very interesting guy if you learn about his his uh his own personal history. He he he was born in a little town of Walnut, Illinois, which I find fascinating because the town you and I grew up in, Eureka, Illinois, used to be called Walnut Grove. So it's almost like we're twinsies.

Yeah. Um but uh but he he his father was a uh was a doctor and from a very early age uh Marquis was uh subject to sites of extreme violence. instrumental in having someone put in jail for killing his wife because he came to the scene uh where she was dying and discovered that she'd actually been beaten up by the guy. Marquis found a person who had hung himself at one point hang hanged himself, as they they always say, as pedants always say. Um and

There is a weird violence that runs through these uh these sketches. You know, the there's characters are peripheral characters are constantly being introduced only to be Eden. by the end of the column or something like that, you know, and the the and there's just and and Mahibel herself, um, when she's jilted by one of her Tomcat lovers pretty much eviscerates him, like the scratches out his eyes and cuts him up into ribbons. Um

it's it's like it in some ways it's a little shocking. But on the other way uh on the other hand, a lot of humor from this time, uh and and again I'm thinking about like newspaper strips from this time were were extremely violent. Yeah. I had an interesting reaction'cause like particularly the um Mahetabel and her kittens uh w I found just disturbing uh perhaps as a a cat lover especially uh with two in the house, despite my mild

allergies. But also uh it's um On the one hand, it gets a lot of mileage from or maybe not mileage, but uh you get a lot of allowance because these are animals and their ways are not our ways like uh like a cat may uh not care for its kittens and we don't have the same moral feeling about that as uh If, you know, we we see a a a human not caring for their child, but On the other hand, these are anthropomorphized animals and and clearly actual

the parallels parallels are being drawn to actual people or you know, people in general. Uh I mean, so It is difficult to have this poem about one of the main characters perhaps. Killing her last batch of children. Uh even though it is Uh funny and illuminating of of things. Right. Well... A lot of the h the humor in Mahida Bell comes from the fact that she is trying to project the air of being a refined lady.

And she's trying to re uh reflect uh this idea of being a bon vivant. Um but She is also an alley cat. and she uh comes from uh you know, a background of easy violence uh which in which she is completely at home. Uh the first time she's introduced Archie uh is uh asking Don Don Marquis, the the fictionalized version of Don Marquis, to please uh put the cat out and and have it chase rats because she tried to eat him.

So from the be from the get go, Mehibel is uh something of a frenemy to to Archie. the two develop a certain kind of interesting rapport because uh Archie himself being as he says, a reincarnated free verse poet. uh has this very sardonic view of human history, of human art uh achievements. He's constantly you know, in s in some ways he sounds like a grumpy old man. Um and but

And in some ways he's reflecting Marquis's own kind of jaundic view of human history. But Marquis himself was also a uh a highly progressive guy. And uh also he was a a a big drinker, which he he may come f uh out in the fact that many of his uh writings were about prohibition and what a mistake it was. B but um but but Archie's is it's Archie has a certain bemused interest in Mahitabelle's life and Mahitabelle likes Archie because Archie listens to her.

Yeah, and there's a pathos to metaboles like striving for more and but but I think it's interesting that uh there is a parallel being drawn, like it is like because she's a street cat, it's sort of a sense of like, oh, you know, she had a hard upbringing. She's not an advantaged cat. Um all this stuff. And so it it asks you like when there is like something sort of shockingly violent, it asks you to empathize with that, um, because

You're coming from a place of some understanding, even though it can be shocking. And I think it empathetic uh to while still like m having uh jaundice dark uh comedy.

Right. Well a lot of the effect of these pieces, these these sketches, comes from the fact that the characters are putting on certain airs, they're they're they're they're they're having philosophical discussions about the nature of life, the nature of beauty, the nature of art. at the same time that they are engaged in life and death struggles with each other. Um, one of the the ones that I I sent you is actually one of my favorite ones.

is about a a spider and a fly and the argument the the the spider has caught the fly in its web and the fly says, you know, don't don't kill me because I serve this greater good, I go around, I spread disease and that uh that thins the herd from weaklings and it makes sure that human beings don't overtake the earth. So I'm very practical and I serve a purpose in in in in the world. And the spider says, you know, maybe you're valuable in a pedestrian

sort of utilitarian sort of way, but I produce beauty. I I I spin these webs and they're they're marvels of of of art. You know, my my life is is is

spent in in the search of of of truth and beauty. And so the fly eventually says, I I guess you're right. And he's like And he's getting ready to get eaten and he says to the spider, But I could have made a better case for myself if I had more time to speak and then the spider says, Yes, but in the end it would have been the same as if neither of us had spoken at all.

And th the the the line that always stuck with me i is the ending line by Archie where he says, It gives me to furiously think on the uh futility of art. And uh th that's the kind of um You know, it it's funny but it's also uh absolutely true, you know, that that ultimately e people can make whatever cases they want to lie in in about their about who's in the right, but it's always going to be the stronger that will prevail. Yeah. I mean well you're talking to a uh someone who

wrote for the Daily Show for about a decade and I may have like entered the job with some idea that like, oh, you know, you can change your some minds through this. And like, no, you can't There's no use to it other than sort of a a release val valve, I think, because as you know, modern life has taught us Facts are not going to get anyone to change their mind. Facts will cause them to dig their heels in deeper. Yeah.

I mean a lot of those a lot of my favorite pieces I I realized as as I was looking through and trying to decide what I wanted to focus on. I realized that a lot of them were pretty brutal and they all ended with somebody being eaten. Or burning.

Right. Yes, yes. Or burning out burning themselves up in a in in a flame. There w there was a um th the one of the other ones that I like the best is this one about a Robin eating an angle worm and the angle worm in the robin's stomach is slowly being dissolved or becoming part of the robin and he s he starts to take the robin's side

And start to say how wonderful the world is, you know, now I'm th everything is right, I'm becoming part of the the Robin, how good that is. And then the Robin is like s singing, saying, Yes, everything's right in the world and of course gets eaten by Mahidabelle and Th part of that is the th there's a constant fra refrain in these things about the way that people will justify their actions with um Principles that are on their own side.

Yeah. I mean also well also this one sort of spoke to me by uh the uh This is gonna sound darker than I uh intended to. I'm not I'm not I'm not planning on uh self harm or anything, but the appeal of uh sort of g the the giving up moment being being overcome, you know, the appeal of of that in a way. Like I recently was thinking like I was I was thinking, Oh, you know, like I'm so Sort of

I focus so much on how I haven't lined up another like writing job since like for for for quite some time now. You know, I've got the podcast that's great. But some writing job I haven't done that and like maybe I'd be happier if like I just gave up. And the you know, like the sense of like like there's a Yeah. like acceptance, you know, I'm like, oh, you know, is this

Is this like a very like uh um enlightened uh Buddhist uh opinion that I've come across, uh with regard to my own ambitions? Or is this depression? It's so hard to It's so hard to tell one from the other. Is this a good idea or Sadness talking.

First of all, uh don't give up and and second of all any anyone out there listening to my podcast, all all all twelve of you who listen to this podcast. If any of you have a writing job, you know, you can contact Dan uh at the flophouse dot com. Um but uh yeah I I You know, you mentioned uh the the sketch in which someone burns themselves up. That's the sketch about a moth going to a flame.

And Archie's asking the moth, What is it with you guys? Why do you always have to run into a flame? And the moths is saying, you know, we moths seek beauty. We we seek to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We would rather live a beautiful life and and die than live forever and not be part of that beauty. and he immolates himself. And and Archie has an interesting point at the end where he says he doesn't believe

the idea that you need to be part of beauty and and and kill yourself. He's like, I would rather have ha twice the life and half half the happiness But he says, on the other hand, I wish I w I wanted something in my life as much as that moth wanted to burn himself up.

Yeah. No that's it's an interesting sort of poem'cause it's n uh you know, it reveals like Uh you can argue about this one way or the other like There's no there's not really a good answer here but but uh the the desire is is something we can all understand.

Right. Well the the as you mentioned, the the the there is a brilliance to being to using animals here to um because it does allow him to go a lot darker and a lot more cynical.

uh than people would uh put up with for with with human characters. Um say here for anyone who's not familiar uh Dan mentioned that the the way these are ostensibly written is that Archie goes to a manual typewriter uh in the newsroom at night and throws himself with all his weight against one key at a time to type out these these pieces. And because the the the conceit is that he's unable to use the shift key, so everything is in lower cases, he doesn't use punctuation and he has difficulty

finding the right ti uh way to to hit the carriage return. All these things together add up to a a parody in some way of E. E. Cummings. Um the they they look very like E. E. Cummings poems. Um and Uh Marquis himself as a poet was a little bit skeptical about uh free verse, which was becoming very popular at the time. This was the era of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot.

Um and uh but but they these do feel like poems as you read through them. I I think one of the things I will say about that though is These uh usually poetry is supposed to be spoken aloud. The idea is that the the poet writes to towards um towards speech. But in the case of these, I think that they they gain so much of their effect from the arrangement of words on the page. uh that that I actually think that trying to speak these aloud

robs them a lot of their effect because then they just become sentences. They just become kind of prose actually if you read them aloud because there's so many lines that use enjamnit enjamnament. And there's so many lines that are, you know, uh I if if you I I've I've you know, when I was um in college I I I used one of these pieces as a um a a as as a monologue for my acting class and it was a mistake because doesn't work as a spoken words piece, I don't think.

That's interesting'cause I was reading it this morning thinking like, Oh, I wonder if this would be a good monologue for an audition Well you can try. Well I don't have anything wise up.

We you you mention all these adaptations and there is I'm trying to remember his name. I don't I forget it but on uh there's a guy who actually does like a one man show uh doing readings of these and and acting out these characters on stage. And yes, the the the movie I sent, Shinbone Ali, is the final animated version of a musical version that was loosely based on this album. Um there have been all these attempts to uh a adapt

bits and pieces of this into other media. I haven't seen them all, so I can't really speak in a blanket way. But I always think, you know, like the the the the um Shinbone Alley, the c the animated film Um, I feel like if I hadn't known the original source material, I would be pretty happy to find this as a as a weird example of n early in the seventies animation. But as it stands, I feel like it's so it gets so much wrong about the source material.

It's like a completely different s you know, it th th you mentioned that Mel Brooks had a hand in writing some of it. It feels more like that. It feels more like that frantic, goofy s Sid Caesar sketch comedy type thing. Um well I'm gonna watch it. Well well I don't want to discourage anyone from watching, especially since you can watch it for free uh uh on on YouTube.

Uh I feel like I'm I'm running out of things to say about this already and I and I feel bad because I these sketches were very uh important to me growing up. They really showed to me how humor could be weird and avant garde and and yet so grounded and so it felt so real. You know, Shinbone Alley, uh where a lot of this takes place is an actual alley in Greenwich Village.

Uh I assume you can go there today. I don't know if there's any markers there uh marking uh Archie Mehdevel. I think that there should be. You say it's grounded and I realize that you know, I haven't I haven't read newspaper columnists of the day. Not really. You know, like I uh who was who was the guy who guys and dolls. Yeah, he he started out as a newspaper guy, right? Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of people do.

So in a way when I say these things I'm just going off of an impression of like the way this stuff must have been, like my idea cobbled together from like maybe like uh this or that paragraph I've read of this sort of thing and seeing stuff like uh guys and dolls or uh or you know, um

I've s sort of lost my train of thought. I'm talking about old newspaper oh, like watching old movies where like that are in newspapers, like screwball comedies, like my idea of what all this is stuff is, right? But like it feels Like these are little dispatches from neighborhoods in New York. Only they're about animals. Like it it does feel still like these are little newspaper sketches that are close to the ground and you know, speak to some sort of hard scrabble like New York local life.

But it's you know, a cockroach talking about various bugs and and and st alley cats and such. I I l I lived in New York for a few years when I was a kid. I don't I don't I live in in Boston now and we're supposed to hate New York, of course, but uh I I go down to New York often. I I visit you, I visit the museums there. We're coming down this week and my uh Marina and I are coming down. What?

Yeah. Yeah. Uh very specific to New York and and in a weird way it feels very specific to Greenwich Village. uh in a way that I can't explain because I'm not really a part of that whole scene. And, you know, m in some ways my vision of Greenwich Village is more close to the madmen area of Greenwich Village when it became like the haven for weirdos and uh bo bohemians.

You're imagining uh Audrey Hepburn in like a a skin tight black bodysuit. Right, of course. Yes. Definitely. And someone playing uh Broncos, yes. Some of the the later columns, Archie and Mahidabel would travel abroad or you know, they they went to D C at one point, Washington D C. They went and they did like little dispatches from around the the globe.

And those are fun, but they don't ever f quite feel like the reality of of of these ske New York based sketches. Um And uh it it's it's very weird in some ways to talk about uh the adventures of a cockroach and an alley cat and say, yeah, that really is this snapshot of n of Greenwich Village in the nineteen twenties, in a in a very specific way.

I think that even though we have accurately described what this is, um it still would seem absolutely bonkers to anyone unfamiliar with this stuff, uh Uh uh you know, just hearing us talk about what this is and what it feels like and the permutations of it, um must sound like madness. So I I that's all just wind up to say, like, I kind of understand even if it's important to you, like not knowing what else to say about it because I think it's the sort of thing that people have to just read.

Right. Well well very much like uh George Harriman's Crazy Cat, if you if you try to explain the premise to people, it's it makes no sense. And the the idea of that being a newspaper strip that lasted for decades makes no sense. Yeah. Wildly popular string. Well, yes. I think there people will always be finding these pieces then and and always be reading them as long as uh we we continue to uh survive as a species and

Who knows how long that will be, given the way the world is and all, and I'm sure Archie would agree with me there. But um but I I I do find them to be something uh that that I find rejuvenating to return to again and again. Uh and and so I I I would encourage anyone skeptical, anyone who hasn't read the books, you know, you can find

The the the collection is now in the public domain. You can find free copies of it on the internet. You can certainly get it out of libraries. I I just just read a few of these and see if if it isn't your thing.

Yeah. Well, Dan, I'll I'll see you uh what, th Friday? Yeah. Yeah, well, by the end. By the time I uh I I end up uh editing this and and and pu eventually publishing it, it will probably be months down the so Well I mean let me know all the same'cause I try and put these things in our newsletter. Okay, I will. Okay. Well that that's it for the podcast. Thanks for watching.

The guest host Dan McCoy. If you have an idea for a book, story, poem, or anything else to cover on a future Or if you'd like to suggest a guest host. If you just want to say hi, you can see that. More dot literature at gmail dot com with me at my blog at johnmcquary dot org. The incomparable store. The sophomore lit theme song is by Malcolm Nygaard. This podcast is brought to you by the Incomparable Network, more smart and funny pop culture podcasts.

At the incomparable dot com Oh I thought you were I thought you were stopped because you were talking about other things. Well, I'll just reconstitute that with what I have on Okay. Okay. Well, thanks so much. And uh this was a this was a fun talking. The Incomparable Podcast Network. Become a member and support this show today. The Incomparable.com slash members.