a tragic story

I know a tragic little story, and its two characters are TS Eliot and Groucho Marx. Apparently they were mutual fans, and had a long correspondence that was in fact started by Eliot. (He asked Groucho for a photograph; the photo lacked a cigar, and he wrote back asking for another one.)

Well, Groucho was going to be travelling to England, and Eliot invited him and "Mrs Groucho" for dinner. He was overjoyed, and wrote that the proposed meeting had "greatly enhanced my credit in the neighbourhood, and particularly with the greengrocer across the street."

But the meeting was not auspicious. According to Roger Kimball in the New Criterion (sorry: I do know this story! but, like Groucho himself, when faced with the task of airing it publicly I have swotted up), Groucho "fortified himself by reading Murder in the Cathdral twice, The Waste Land three times, and brushed up on King Lear for good measure." And after the meeting, he wrote in a letter:

"Well, sir, as the cocktails were served, there was a momentary lull. ... So, apropos of practically nothing ... I tossed in a quotation from The Waste Land. That, I thought, will show him I've been reading a thing or two besides my press notices from Vaudeville.

"Eliot smiled faintly - as though to say he was thoroughly familiar with his poems and didn't need me to recite them. So I took a whack at King Lear...

"That, too, failed to bowl over the poet. He seemed more interested in discussing Animal Crackers or A Night at the Opera. He quoted a joke - one of mine - that I had long since forgotten. Now it was my turn to smile faintly."

With this cautionary tale in mind, I direct you to my newly-updated Weblogs list in the sidebar to the right. The list contains some of the blogs I read and enjoy. They are vastly disparate, but all worth reading in their different ways. Most of them are very well-written indeed. I'd say most of them are at least sometimes funny, that being the kind of thing Ms B likes; some of them are intensely so on a near-daily basis. Some are sweet, some are literary and informative; some are literary and sweet; some are political, some political and literary, and some are political and funny. Some are about London in all her changing moods and aspects, and a couple are about my own corner of it (yes, it's all mine), N16. Some have massive readerships and some are tiny. Some are by friends, and some are by people who are becoming friends. Many of them, when I read them, give me a temporary fever that makes me think: Arghh! I must write more like this!! which lasts until I remember the tragic story of TS Eliot and Groucho.

To get you going, here are some things I enjoyed this week:

Matt from On Grub Street works near me

Erin O'Brien exposes her enemies (& do click onto her main page for a great pic of Sophia Loren staring at Jayne Mansfield's bosom)

Join Pandemian's father on the bus to hell

JonnyB looks at Ray with new respect

Girl With a One-Track Mind is shocked by the grandmas

and, as a special bonus, The Friday Thing gets to the heart of the Gordon Brown 'n' Gandhi thing

photo above cRobert Altman 2005