Profiles in Nonsense: The Butcher Goes Tiki Bar!

We continue our explanation of the Dramatis Personae of The Hunting of the Snark with some really snappy blather …

Cry havoc and let slip the hunters of Snark! Eschewing your petty considerations of "written texts" and "logic" we slide comfortably into the heavy, lead-weighted boots of the Butcher … or as he’s better known to Snarkologists — the Frankensnark!

The Butcher started off in life as a lower-case butcher in Wagga Wagga, Australia and through steady application rose through the ranks of Victorian society to become the notorious Tichborne Claimant. We see the Butcher, in the above drawing, as he appeared to the Fellowship of the Snark, his well-inked, crystalline noggin filled with but one idea, that of Snark.



And there in lies our story, the saddest story I’ve ever told, in fact … you see, several years of debauchery behind the cold-cuts display in Wagga Wagga left the Butcher looking a trifle plush, so much so that he was forced to conceal his considerable girth behind the name of Arthur Orton,and when pressed too hard, he would even emit a squeaky, rubbery-duck sort of noise that sounded suspiciously like a certain Tom Castro.

He continued on as a butcher until he worked his way further up the British food chain to Sir Roger Charles Tichborne, a sort of proto-Bertie Wooster lost at sea as the result of navigating with a perfect and absolute blank of a mind. Tichborne’s elderly mother, suitably impressed by the startling resemblance between her epicene, educated and polylingual long-lost son and the obese, crass and monolingual Butcher, promptly welcomed him back into the well-upholstered bosom of the family.




Things would have been quite jolly for Butcher and Mum if some nosey-parkers hadn’t upset things and started a court case, claiming that this Butcher-Orton-Castro-Tichborne wallah was not whom he claimed to be! Things came to a pretty sad end for B-O-C-T, for to be honest, he both looked and acted the part of an incredible dunce to perfection and was eventually defrocked, denamed and deprived of his liberty.

This illustrator has chosen to flesh out the Butcher as an Easter Island moia, another antipodean enigma with beady little eyes that always look the opposite way and appear unaccountably shy, especially when any beavers heave into view. Could it be that Mister Castro is somewhat put out by the mere presence of his anagrammatized nemesis, Castor? Or is it because this illustrator simply can’t be bothered to draw expressions and prefers instead to guzzle lager on the beach whilst his Assamese nautch-girl-cum-receptionist throws another snark on the barbie?

This is your Year of Snark!

I apologize for the lack of posts, I am swamped with freelance. And yet, even in the midst of chasing pelf, one's thoughts still turn to Snark Hunting …

Despite those pesky so-called appearances everyone's so hung up about, The Hunting of the Snark is a classic of the psychedelic canon, and despite its author's so-called intentions too. Lewis Carroll is usually regarded as the very model of a Victorian button-down just-give-us-the-facts-ma'am but his Snark is a dead give-away that in the field of semiolinguistic trippery, the Admirable Carroll was certainly waving his freak flag high!

Let's see … in the Snark we're trying to chase down certain imaginary creatures which may or may not totally freak you out and even blow your pretty little mind … and meanwhile, we have the most respectable members of society publicly flipping out with giant forks and bars of soap and even bits of salad while humming Gilbert & Sullivan airs, trying to count with their fingers in a purple haze of numerical discombobulation and even tripping, yes, tripping backwards in the bounciest of anapestic rhythms.

I could say more but why bother when Melville House says it so much better?

Profiles in Nonsense: Canadian Snark!

For the past few weeks, we have been dishing up the dirt on each of the ten members of the Fellowship of the Snark. This week’s dish is the Beaver, the only Canadian member of the crew, the only female, and the only whiskey drinker …

A SNARKHUNTER'S PROFILE …
THE BEAVER

HOME : Pacing on the deck, making lace in the bow, anywhere but Mississauga.

AGE : 42, eh? Sexier in French, though … quarante-deux, euh?

PROFESSION : Hunting the Snark in a safely multicultural, environmentally-friendly and totally rapturous Canadian way whilst ensuring that there are no dismal surprises.

HOBBIES : Let’s see … chewing export-grade softwood lumber, lacing and pacing (see above), saving ‘em all from wreck, I dunno, sometimes I lose count.

LAST BOOK READ : The Hunting of the Snark, but all in pictures for kids who can't read good and wanna learn to do other stuff good too.

LAST ACCOMPLISHMENT : Procuring a second-hand dagger-proof coat and insuring my life in some office of note because a certain somebody won’t convey another certain somebody in a separate ship.

QUOTE : "I’ve learnt in ten minutes far more nonsense than all books would have taught me in seventy years".

PROFILE : Counts with her fingers, likes it all in a "popular style" … just your average girl-next-door thinking of nothing but Snark …

SCOTCH : Cutty Snark, what else? Cheers, eh?

Profiles in Nonsense: The Dialectical Banker

Our on-going exposé of the Snark Hunters participating in my GN version of the Snark continues with the Banker …

… a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

The Admirable Carroll devoted an entire Fit to the Banker, the notorious Banker’s Fate of Fit the Seventh in which this paladin of capitalism was reduced to busking for rupees on the streets of Old Delhi.

Before he took up busking, the Banker Marx made quite a splash as a caged attraction in the Snark Circus with which I fleshed out my version of Fit the Fourth. In this panel, we see the Banker as he

… endorsed a blank cheque (which he crossed),
And changed his loose silver for notes.

Those of our readers who have ever been employed as buskers in a British financial establishment or even as Belgian Surrealist financial establishment will instantly spot the significance of the Banker endorsing a blank check and then crossing it, a bit of complex British financial skulduggery involving a stale and phlegmish sight gag redolent of the vaudevillian buffoonery of certain other, far more talented artist.

However, those of our readers who can employ their cognitive skills to better purposes will brush all of that aside and demand to see the management. What the blazes is going on here, they will sputter over their breakfast kippers and stockinged tart, there’s a d***** bolshevik in my Snark!



Alas, they are correct! Our Banker is being played by none other than Karl Marx and I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about it. You see, what we have here is a collection of disparate Victorian stock characters hunting an imaginary beast, a beast of a bogey-man, one might say. One might further add that without this bogey-man our B-Boyz would be unemployed and reduced to busking toute de suite; a similar situation to 20th-century Capitalism’s stormy relationship with its favorite bogey-man, Karl Marx.

Of course, this artist is not suggesting for one moment that the entire globalized, capitalistic network of intricate financial arrangements which has wreaked such havoc on so many lives can in any way be compared to High Nonsense. As the Americans say, that would be beyond my pay-grade. Gosh-darn-it, I’m just a plain ol’ artist — another college-educated busker working the subway platforms of Capitalism.

Profiles in Nonsense: The Billiard-Marker

This week’s episode of The Hunting of the Snark is pleased to present you with Snark Hunter Number Six, the Billiard-Marker!

When the Billiard-Marker is not busying himself keeping score in Victorian pool-halls, he’s available for cameo, walk-on roles in such popular thrillers as Conan Doyle’s "The Greek Interpreter ", where he appeared as an extra in a scene involving Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes and the Boots (duly noted by Martin Gardner, the Herodotus of Snarkology).

Keen-eyed Snark watchers will also remember his scene-stealing appearance in Fit the Fourth of The Hunting of the Snark, where he chalked the tip of the Bonnet’s nose, with hilariously predictable results as we can see in this illustration.

In his spare time, the Billiard-Marker enjoys gardening, cooking, reading the novels of Pierre Loti and attending Carrollian events dressed up as Raymond Roussel, the French novelist and poet whom Louis Aragon dubbed "the president of the republic of dreams." The Billard-Marker has garnered numerous awards and citations for his pitch-perfect, Rousselian rendition of le non-sens haut …

"I shall reach the heights; I was born for dazzling glory. It may be long in coming, but I shall have greater glory than that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon … This glory will reflect on all my works without exception; it will cast itself on all the events of my life … no author has been or can be superior to me … as the poet said, you feel a burning sensation at your brow. I felt once that there was a star at my brow and I shall never forget it."



The Billiard-Marker has been known to finish up his Rousselian "performances" by placing a hot casserole dish upon his head and then mailing electric heaters to any friends desiring souvenirs of tropical India, all whilst employing detective agencies to search out and hire suitable illustrators for an alexandrine, protohypertextual epic endowed with a crushing five-fold level of nesting texts.

We’ll be right back with our first question for the Billiard-Marker, after this important message …

Profiles in Nonsense: The Broker AKA Erik Satie

The Broker (far right)

In our economically blighted times, when the very mention of Brokers and their fiscal ilk makes even the staunchest of capitalists wobble somewhat at the knees, it behooves us to remember that Lewis Carroll thought it prudent to include a Broker amongst the Fellowship of the Snark. We see a picture of the Broker above, in the midst of some menacing spade-work in Fit the Fourth.

The Broker’s job description is minimal : he is charged with valuing the B-Boyz goods. Beyond that, the Admirable Carroll can add little else and nor should he, since the Research Department here at The Hunting of the Snark is perfectly capable of adding it all up on their own.

The Broker’s resemblance to the French musical gadfly, Erik Satie, is compelling evidence of something or the other. The Assamese nautch girl in charge of the investigation managed to curtail her lascivious gyrations long enough to unearth further details of Satie’s involvement in late Victorian financial nonsense:



« … if memory serves, Satie enjoyed creating miniscule models of houses shaped out of lead, which he kept in a cabinet in his home. He would periodically advertise these houses in the local newspaper — making no mention of their actual size — and would take great delight in ushering the prospective home-purchaser into his parlor, and there solemnly presenting him with the unexpected lilliputian house. »

This crackalackin’ summation of the essential nature of the global financial industry was then collated and cross-referenced with additional information concerning the mysterious Monsieur Satie which had been slipped anonymously into the go-go boots of the above-mentioned Assamese nautch girl in a rare, stationary moment …

Item : Erik Satie … this mysterious person who founded his own religion, The Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus, Leader.

Item : Erik Satie … who took up smoking to give his physician extra income.

Item : Erik Satie … whose 14-hour long solo piano masterpiece, Vexations, (which Gavin Bryars described as a sort of "Ring des Nibelungen des pauvres"), initiated the modern use of boredom as an artistic strategy.

Conclusion? Don’t be fooled by the sloppily inked moustache and glasses, nor even by the phony, Brad-Pitt-style French accent — Erik Satie was a dangerous character and unsafe in elevators and department stores, with or without Muzak. His appearance in this version of the Snark as the Broker is a shocking reminder of the grim human cost of applying Carrollian Nonsense to global financial strategies. In a world where millionaires weep, we all weep!

Profiles in Nonsense: Boot of the Brute

 Melville House is the publisher of my GN version of The Hunting of the Snark, which
makes perfect sense when one considers that their eponymous hero, Herman Melville, knew a thing or two about fruitless quests for annihilating animals. Melville chose to clothe his Boojum in the blubbery lineaments of the fat, white whale, Moby Dick, and he also made certain that the whale's pursuers got a snootful of insane, nonsensical, contradictory ravings from their leader, Cap'n Ahab. In these critical matters, it's quite obvious that Melville was plundering Carroll's Snark in a classic example of what literary scholars call Anachronistic Plagiarism.

None the less, I'm in a forgiving mood today, and so we'll put aside these petty insinuations concerning the Second Greatest American Novel and move on to the far more pressing matter of Snarkian Ontology, exemplified here in the unassuming person of the Boots, seen above. Carroll makes little mention of this rather pedestrian character except for some perfunctory business with a spade in Fit the Fourth, and some commentators have even insinuated that the Boots did not really exist or that he might have been the actual murderer of the Baker, sharing as he does a "Boo" with the dreaded Boojum.

To all that I say phooey. However, drawing phooey is a bit trickier and it was only after considerable research by my crack team of crack-head researchers that we came up with a solution to all of the above: the Boots was Charles Darwin!



Carroll was probably present at the infamous 1860 debate on Darwinism between T.H. Huxley and Soapy Sam Wilberforce; we know that he owned and read Darwin's works; we even know that he and Darwin corresponded but we are uncertain as to the Great One's exact opinion on Natural Selection.

Well-oiled Carrollians suspect that he disapproved of this logical undoing of the basic tenets of all revealed religions on mainly philosophical grounds. Carroll's faith was unshakeable and more importantly, the Master of Nonsense certainly would have understood the difference between Faith and Logic as far as religions go, a simple mental operation which still seems beyond the limited cognitive abilities of many noisy commentators upon the subject today (so much for evolution, eh?). What might have perturbed Carroll could have been the spectacle of publicly quarreling over such private matters, and hence, our choice of Darwin as the Boots.

Both Darwin and the Boots lurk in the shadows of Victorian England and the Snark alike. The former utterly and categorically demolished the logical basis of organized religion almost apologetically, the latter utterly and categorically demolished the logical basis of Carroll's Snark almost apologetically. Both belief systems of religion and Snark are solely premised upon revelations, the verbal revelations of a god or a poet who presents us with a priori facts about the fictional Multiverses they have created. Carroll's colorless, practically blank persona of the Boots is a dead giveaway that there really is nothing going on here, that the Snark is just a sound and fury signifying nothing.

Nature and poetry alike shun vacuums, they make such an ontological mess of things and clever, up-to-date gods and poets alike eschew 'em. There's nothing worse than Nothing in the midst of your Something, it's a dead giveaway that you really are up to Something and that's the very last thing you want your acolytes and readers to suspect. Fictional suspension of disbelief and all that, don't you know.

In short, there's something going on here, as usual. I'll leave it to the Carroll boffins to sort out the sticky details of all of the above revelations, for now, just take my word for it.