Newspaper hero provides comfort this weekDate: 4/5/2018 I’m suffering from the onset of burn-out this week. Every now and then, I just get tired of the routine: deadlines, deadlines and deadlines.
A vacation is in order in the next six or eight weeks.
So, this week I go to a place of comfort with this column. You see, I am a romantic when it comes to journalism. I yearn for the rough and tumble days of decades ago when dueling newspapers fought for exclusive headlines.
One of my journalism professors at UMass, Ralph Whitehead, told classes about the rules in the reporting game: if a rival reporter dropped his or her pen or pencil, kick it away from them; if there was only one telephone to call in a story, get them first and use your elbows.
Ralph was a newspaper guy from Chicago and apparently that was the Chicago way. He also told me my most important interviews would be done in bars. At the time i didn’t drink. Today, I’ve been known to appreciate a bourbon or a Scotch and while I’ve done several interviews in bars, none of them were my most important.
I was born way too late, I think.
Guys like Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Menken, Studs Terkel and Don Marquis are among my media heroes.
Marquis’ birthday was recently noted. Marquis was a fascinating journalist, humorist, novelist and playwright and he created two very memorable characters in his newspaper columns, Archy and Mehitabel. The former was a free verse poet reincarnated as a cockroach and the other was a fickle cat.
The premise was that Archy wrote poetry on Marquis’ typewriter overnight. I discovered Marquis’ as a college student and fell in love with his creativity.
Yes, I know I should be presenting some opinion this week about current events, but I’m running on fumes – that can happen occasionally in this business.
Instead I’m sharing something that gives me a little joy and perhaps it will be of interest to some of you.
So in the spirit of celebrating his birth and to expose people to a great newspaper guy, the following is the first appearance of Archy in Marquis’ column in 1916.
“One morning Don Marquis arrived in his office to find the following message on his typewriter, all in lower case. Archy, a cockroach reincarnated from a poet, had laboriously typed the message to Don by climbing upon the typewriter and jumping on the keys, one at a time. The message is all in lower case, because Archy could not operate the shift key.
The Coming of Archy:
expression is the need of my soul
i was once a vers libre bard
but i died and my soul went
into the body of a cockroach
it has given me a new outlook on life
i see things from the under side now
thank you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper basket
but your paste is getting so stale i can’t eat it
there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have
removed she nearly ate me the other night why don’t she
catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for
there is a rat here she should get without delay
most of these rats here are just rats
but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him
he used to be a poet himself
night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of it when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he has read it he sneers
and then he eats it
i wish you would have mehitabel kill that rat
or get a cat that is onto her job
and i will write you a series of poems
showing how things look
to a cockroach
that rats name is freddy
the next time freddy dies i hope he won’t be a rat
but something smaller i hope i will be a rat
in the next transmigration and freddy a cockroach
i will teach him to sneer at my poetry then
don’t you ever eat any sandwiches in your office
i havent had a crumb of bread
for i dont know how long
or a piece of ham or anything but apple parings
and paste leave a piece of paper in your machine
every night you can call me archy”
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