Complete Review of The Fool by Enid Welsford

My review of The Fool by Enid Welsford includes my first introduction to the hardcore history of fools and jesters. Did you know that in ancient Greece, funny people used to just hang out around the baths, waiting for the popular rich people to come by and invite them to parties? They’d get a free meal out of it, most likely a swank place to stay for the night, hang out with some other rich people, and all they had to do was make asses of themselves.

Then there were the philosophers who would pretty much just gate-crash for the same reason. Sure, they weren’t invited, but they were entertaining, so no one complained too much if they ate all the marinated nightingales. Sounds a little bit like parties I’ve been to in LA. The drunken idiot making a fool of himself gives everyone someone to laugh at, so when you do something drunk and stupid, hardly anyone notices… Yep. I think I’ve been that person before, too…

My Review of The Fool by Enid Welsford

The Fool by Enid Welsford book cover included in my complete review of The Fool by Enid WelsfordI’ve finished reading The Fool: His Social and Literary History by Enid Welsford, first published in 1935. It’s a fairly really entertaining dissertation–and not just because it’s about jesters and fools (which, honestly, you’d have to be a pretty boring writer to ruin that topic). Enid’s got a snappy sense of humor. She delves into some crazy speculation about the fool as poet and clairvoyant towards the end of one chapter, and ends by saying that she won’t go further on the topic. “But here I must bring my conjectures to a close lest I, also, aspiring to clairvoyance, attain to the cap and bells.” (Wow. Do I need to footnote that in a blog?) I mean, that’s funny stuff!

My other favorite part of this book so far? In her introduction, she’s pointing out that the fool has always interacted with an audience. Which is true. Her concern? Charlie Chaplin. He doesn’t have an audience. He doesn’t know if he’s being funny or not and can’t feed off of the laughter or comments. She’s afraid that with the new dawn of movies and the silver screen, the fool will disappear forever. I hope she didn’t lose too much sleep over it, because her fools are alive and well and living in LA.

Coffee and rain.

Nothing screams, “Hey, write a book!” like Portland in fall.

It’s warm enough that I can have the window open and listen to the pitter-patter drizzle outside, but still appropriately gloomy to make me want to stay inside and drink hot things out of big mugs with caricatures of dead writers on them.  The perfect storm, if you will.

Research

So my fabulous writing group (of one) pointed out to me that I really needed to do research on jesters.  Actually, what she said was that I must have done research, but it didn’t come through.  Sorry!  So she shamed me into it, pretty much.  Because I haven’t really done any.  Which is surprising, considering how much I like doing research.  I mean, I really dig it.  I remember back when I was a wee lass and went to the library for the first time and was taught about those huge, olive green index books of magazine articles.  I swear, it felt just like finding the hidden treasure.  Find the proper book for your topic, find the proper article, write down the name and secret number, give it to the librarian.  Librarian disappears into the bowels of the library, communes with the oracle, and comes back with the exact article you need.  If you’re lucky, it’s on micro-fiche and you get to go into the magic room where it’s turned into a legible copy of an old magazine.  That’s some serious satisfaction.

I suppose I should be a little more irritated by how easy the Internet makes things these days, if that’s what I loved about doing research.  Got a question?  Just ask Google.  Google will defer to Wikipedia and three seconds later you have your answer.  No olive green tomes, no librarian, no oracle, and the answer may or may not be right (because, after all, it’s Wikipedia) but you have your answer.  Like now, for example.  Listening to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” and she mentions Sister Sadie.  OK.  Who’s Sister Sadie?  I’ve heard the name before.  Hell, I even had a tall black guy in a trench coat call me that one day when I was walking outside my old apartment on Morrison.  “Damn, girl, you look just like Sister Sadie!”  What does that mean?  What does Sister Sadie look like?  Was it a compliment?

But I digress.  Point being, I can just go to Google right now and find out all about Sister Sadie and Nina Simone.  No mystery, no wondering, no speculating…  BUT there are moments of satisfaction.  Where research takes a bit more effort than I thought it would.  One of the books I’d like to read is by Robert Armin, one of Lord Chamberlain’s Men who apparently took the role of the fool in Shakespeare’s plays and turned it from funny servant to court wit, and he wrote an advice book back in 1608.  Fabulous!  I’d love to read that.  And with the Internet so handy, I’ll just Google it and…  Oh wait.  So nothing on Amazon.  Nothing on Alibris.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  But hold on.  There’s one copy somewhere in Rhode Island for sale on Tom Folio for…oh, let’s see.  Fifty dollars!?!  And that’s not counting shipping and handling, of course.  Well, I’ll bookmark that page and continuing looking.  And then I find one at a library.  Perfect!  They have a program where I can check out the book and they’ll mail it to me and….are you kidding?  The library is in Canberra.  That’s right.  Canberra.  As in Australia.  Seriously a WTF moment.  They won’t send me the book, but they’ll make a copy of it for me and mail it to me for another…oh, around seventy-five dollars.  Really?  Let’s check out one last source…

And this is where the really humorous part comes in.  The last place I check researches all of the libraries in your surrounding area.  Top of the list?  That’s right.  Reed College.  Reed College library has a copy.  The place where I spent three years cramming in an English degree and have avoided like the plague for ten years has a copy available of the exact book I want.  So now I go consult with the oracle myself.  Establish my identity as an alumna, obtain the mystical ID card that will grant me access to the stacks (God, I do admit–I love the stacks in the Reed College library…), and withdraw the sacred text from its place on the shelf.  Treasure found.