BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (12)
By:
August 8, 2022
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, delivering brief remarks on mottos, mantras, speeches, slogans, and other words to live by. Series edited by Adam McGovern.
“‘SHUT UP,’ HE EXPLAINED.”
“‘Shut up,’ he explained.” One sentence sums up the brilliance of the writer and his subject. The writer: Ring Lardner from his 1920 book, The Young Immigrunts. The subject: a father. Or perhaps it was Ring Lardner proclaiming his own brilliance as a writer and a father? I’ll get to that in a minute.
But first: My husband’s grandfather was actually a young immigrant. “From the shtetls of Bârlad!” I exclaim, when Adam worries if he’ll get to Rite Aid in time for his multi-vitamins. Grandpa Froim (aka “Joe”) was a teen when he left Romania, 27 when he set up a barbershop in Spokane, 34 when he married the former Rose Axelrod in Chicago, 35 when his first child was born, and 51 when his fifth, Vivienne Joy, arrived.
“The mouth must talk!” Froim would tell his kids when he was driving. This may be a translation from Romanian or Yiddish, or Yiddish to Romanian to English, I’m not sure. Something got lost along the way, but a turn of phrase got picked up that I thought wildly profound. “‘The mouth must talk’ — what a unique way Romanians see the world,” I marveled. But Froim was not expounding the essence of the mouth, as Adam explained, Froim was trying to say…
The Young Immigrunts was often incorrectly attributed to Ring Lardner Jr., which is understandable because Ring Sr. attributed the book to Ring Lardner Jr., who was then four. (Ring Jr. would eventually write M*A*S*H after being blacklisted. Whoa, did America try to shut him up.) Also, their names are both Ring Lardner. But that was the point. Ring Sr., a sportswriter and satirist (who, like the recently deceased Roger Angell, backs up my conviction that sportswriters are the best writers, ask Homer) was telling the story from Jr.’s point of view. Hence the spelling of the title, and this passage, which takes place after Father has had it while driving from the “bureau of Manhattan” through the “grand concorpse”:
Are you lost daddy I arsked tenderly.
Shut up he explained.
Well, the Bronx will do that to you.
BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Ran Xia on BLACK CROW BELIEFS | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on LEFT-CORNER BRICK | Andrea Diaz on JOY IS RESISTANCE | Lynn Peril on TO THINE OWN SELF | Miranda Mellis on THE FUTURE IS PASSÉ | Bishakh Som on LET THE WEIRDNESS IN | Lucy Sante on FLAUBERT’S PERFECT WORD | Stefene Russell on CRYSTAL SETS | Crystal Durant on LIFE IS A BANQUET | Adam McGovern on EVERY MINUTE AN OCEAN | Josh Glenn on LUPUS LUPUM NON MORDET | Heather Quinlan on SHUT UP, HE EXPLAINED | Adrienne Crew on WATCH YOUR PENNIES | Art Wallace on COME ON AND GIVE A CHEER | Julia Lee Barclay-Morton on WILLIAM JAMES, UNADAPTED | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on TO EACH HIS OWN | Nikhil Singh on ILLUMINATE OR DISSIPATE? | Mimi Lipson on CHEAP FOOD TASTES BETTER | Kahle Alford on NOT GONNA CRACK | Michele Carlo on YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT | Marguerite Dabaie on WALKING ON WATER | Raymond Nat Turner on TRYIN’ AND TRANEIN’ | Bob Laine on WHEN YOU GROW UP | Fran Pado on THE SMILEY EMOJI | Deborah Wassertzug on PLACING YOUR BETS. PLUS: BLURB SERIES CODA by Lisa Levy.
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