Friday, July 20, 2018

Blind Item #8 - Dead Poets Society - A Dancing Boy Blind

The one about strange and sinister goings on in the production of a certain near tv series based on the works of a permanent A list novelist is coming (release is next week, I believe), but here's another one:

On the 21st day of the first month in the year of our Lord, 2008 (as he might say), I and many others lost an important mentor, teacher, and spiritual adviser. He was also a writer, and friend of many in the old elite, penning memoirs about more than one of those friendships. (His obit was published in the west coast paper of record sixteen days later.)

What he didn't and couldn't say in one of those memoirs, largely because of the widow, but also because propriety didn't allow it, is what or rather who inspired one of the several most famous English language literary works of the last century. It was a poem, pioneering in form, with enough allusions to keep scholars busy for decades, and probably longer. It was also what the author's life had become, in his view, after the loss of this one person.

The person in question? A boy, who his friend - my teacher - guesses was probably sixteen at the time they first met. It's unclear when the physical part began (probably two years later, when he had finished school), but not what happened next: he enlisted, as so many of his fellows had, and was killed in a gas attack on the western front before his twentieth birthday.

By the time the friend met him, he was still pious, but drinking too much, and wandering, in that state, to a certain part of the capital city. The young men he picked up sometimes stole from him, sometimes pitied him, but rarely recognized him (it's not like most of them read books).

How do I know?

After I turned eighteen, I was invited to lunch at the famous LA chili establishment, where I met the friend's secret husband for the first time - an old Hollywood man named Maurice. After several drinks, followed by several more, he told me this story, and others (to come)... I immediately ordered a phone (do you remember when you could order a phone at restaurants?), and dialed my soon-to-be college roommate, with whom I'd been coincidentally arguing about this very subject for several weeks by letter. It was at least half-like that scene in the most famous movie by the accused but apparently not so disgraced director his backers won't give him money - the part where they're waiting in line - but for real. 

69 comments:

  1. I wonder if the blind to come is about Mr. Mercedes (AT&T Audience Network) or Castle Rock (Hulu).

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  2. Well, with this blind it's time to look ahead to the weekend. I think I'll do the smoked BBQ thing.

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  3. This blind is confusing.

    Seems like Dancing Boy's blinds set you up for a part 2 that never comes.

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  4. More dancing boy bullshit. How great.

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  5. I love Mr. Mercedes! I hope season two is as good as season one!

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  6. None of these blinds ever make any damn sense. It's like word salad.

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    1. Word salad - LOVE that description!!!

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    2. @MyTwoCents

      Word salad is a symptom of schizophrenia...

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  7. Hemingway, ha I'm first with a partial answer

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  8. But I wouldn't be surprised I'm wrong

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  9. I was thinking Capote, but I don't think there were any secrets there...

    I have no idea. I tried to start with determining who died on 1/21/08, but came up short. Meh.

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  10. I think this was written well. No guesses of course, but I think it's pretty well written.
    That said, I think I'm going whale watching with my boy(thanks Groupon!)

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  11. I was thinking James Joyce or Walt Whitman. Probably way off.

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  12. Its a poet not a prose writer.

    Ginsberg, for Howl, which is one of the most important poems of all time

    other revolutionary poets: TS Eliot, whose poems like The Waste Land was filled with tons of imagery and references.

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    1. Thought Ginsberg and Howl too.

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  13. The last line is about Annie Hall.

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  14. The poet is probably Yeats.

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  15. Or maybe Stephen Spender. Don't have time to puzzle it out though.

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  16. I don't know the secret husband or literary work, but the mentor/writer/poet should be straightforward to determine.

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  17. I'll try translating again. A writer died on Jan 21, 2008, and his obituary was published on Feb. 6 in a west-coast newspaper (LA Times?). He was a mentor of DB. He wrote the memoirs for several old elites. One of those was an author who wrote a poem full of allusions which is considered a major English literary work of the 20th century. What he didn't write in the memoir was that the poem was inspired by the loss of an underage boy the author had a sexual relationship with (if you believe he waited until the boy was 18, I have a bridge to sell you). The boy enlisted in the military and was killed in Europe at age 19, so that must have been WWII. The author became a heavy drinker and had a habit of picking up young men in the capital city of his state.

    DB learned this when he met the secret husband (Maurice) of the memoir writer, who filled him in. He immediately called a friend (who would soon be his college roommate) he'd been arguing about this with, and it was like a scene from a movie. Because of course it was. The movie was made by a disgraced director who is still getting funded, and has a scene where people are standing in line.

    Translation over. No luck finding a writer who died on that date. Dunno about the poem, doesn't sound like my kind of thing.

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    1. You're the best Cail, thanks for the translation

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    2. Cail, if you post on every DB blind from here on out; I'm going straight to the comments. Thank you.

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  18. I got the feeling that the mentor/memoir writer was a different person from the poet.

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  19. Thanks for the translation, Cail. I came straight to the comments in hope of someone deciphering what I already knew would be nonsense so I appreciate the translation into human-speak!

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  20. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  21. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  22. Think I found the mentor.

    Burton Hatlen

    Burton Norval Hatlen (April 9, 1936 – January 21, 2008) was an American literary scholar and professor at the University of Maine. Hatlen worked closely with Carroll F. Terrell, an Ezra Pound scholar and co-founder of the National Poetry Foundation, to build the Foundation into an internationally known institution.

    Hatlen was seen as a mentor by several of his former students, most notably author Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha King. In a postscript included in his 2006 novel, Lisey's Story, King said of Hatlen, "Burt was the greatest English teacher I ever had."

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_Hatlen

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  23. gas death..the front...World War One....no idea though...Eliot or Pound wrote obtuse poems...

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  24. Burton Hatlen Obituary:

    https://web.archive.org/web/20080302041533/http://bangornews.com/news/t/city.aspx?articleid=159261&zoneid=176

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  25. The poet being Ezra Pound, the fascist? Great.

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  26. Eliot isn't so bad. Pound is damn near impossible without a full degree in Pound (which was probably his egotistical intention.) Pound was also a Fascist, so there is that.

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  27. I love Eliot but I've hardly ever been able to get into Pound.

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  28. Good find, @Beyond EMF. Hatlen was married twice, but I guess that doesn't rule out a "secret husband." So the next question would be whose memoirs he wrote.

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  29. @Beyond EMF sounds right. Hatlen / Pound.

    "Pound was deeply affected by WW1 He was devastated when Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was killed in the trenches in 1915. He published Gaudier-Brzeska: A Memoir the following year, in reaction to what he saw as an unnecessary loss."


    Also thanks @Cail for the translation!

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  30. If you study Pound, you're going to study Eliot to some degree, and vice versa. Eliot, however, converted to the Church of England, lived in a capital city, and was a heavy drinker. He (with The Wasteland) fits the description of the poet to a T. Scholars have speculated that he was bisexual (and afraid of being so). So I'm leaning there, and to Burton Hatlen as the writer.

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  31. thanks cail,its much clear now

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  32. He certainly seemed to cover a lot of Pound's work, that's for sure...

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  33. Looks like I had the wrong war. I was assuming WWI was too long ago, but should have done the math.

    Pound spent his final years in Italy, so the capital city where he picked up "young men" may have been Rome.

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  34. Thanks @Cail. Took some work, for sure.

    Curious about Maurice.

    Perhaps Maurice Evans?

    http://gayinfluence.blogspot.com/2012/01/maurice-evans.html

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  35. Or if not Rome, maybe the capital city of a province or state, whatever they call them over there.

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  36. Wonder if this is Burton Hatlen? Hmmmm....he wrote only one book of poetry called "I Wanted to Tell You."

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  37. Hatlen wasn't the poet, nor was he the secret husband. He wrote a memoir about the poet.

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  38. Thanks Cail. I wonder if the UN needs you as a translator. At least DB used some commas, for once.

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  39. I can solve one: the famous L.A. chili establishment was Chasen'S!

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  40. Stop posting these blinds. Dancing boy blinds are incoherent shit.

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  41. Gas wasn't used in WW2. Only WW1.
    Jean Verdenal? (except he was 25 when he died)

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  42. "It was what the author's life had become.."- "The Wasteland".
    But Jean Verdenal was killed at the Dardanelles aged 25 so perhaps not Eliot.

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  43. Eliot, I guess. His life became a Waste Land" after the loss of his beloved.

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  44. It could be referring to the time Pound spent in Washington DC where he was institutionalized after ww2, before returning to europe

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  45. Ezra PoundMeToo #MeToo HASHTAGMeToo jibber dee jooooo, yet another incoherent DB blind whoop a dee doo!

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  46. Definitely "The Wasteland" because of the mention of all the allusions that would keep scholars busy for decades. T.S. Eliot.

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  47. I haven't read the blind, just the comments, but if we're looking for a 20th century writer who was a soldier and had gay affairs, Gore Vidal may fit.

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  48. I like the Ezra Pound/Gaudier-Brzeska guesses, but as far as I can tell, Gaudier-Brzeska was not killed in a gas attack.

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  49. sorry Joe...the famous chili restaurant would be West Hollywood's Barney's Beanery

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  50. I've never had California chili. What's in it? From the name, Barney's Beanery, there must be beans.
    I'm not a chili purist in any way, but many believe that "real" chili is made with meat and NO BEANS. At least in Texas.

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  51. @Cail, thanks for the translating the word salad!

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  52. T.S. Elliot, maybe the Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock? The rest of it, I have no idea.

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  53. Written to suggest T.S. Eliot / The Wasteland .. . . After reading his biography, I would believe he was closeted.

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  54. Sorry Sara but Joe is definitely right with the famous Chili restaurant which was Chasen's -- absolutely without a doubt.

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  55. Robert Frost and poet Edward Thomas both were married but spent a lot of time together between 1913-1917. Frost talked about the relationship calling 1914 "their year". Seems a strange phrase for just friendship.

    Edward Thomas died in the Battle of Arras in 1917. Frost and his wife were friends with Thomas's widow Helen but Frost became displeased on Helen Thomas's book about Thomas. The first where she seemed to defend Thomas's love for her AS IT WAS and her 2nd book WORLD WITHOUT END brought Frost's scorn.

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  56. Robert Frost. https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/555959/robert-frost-road-not-taken/

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  57. Another Dancing Boy blind, more like another too long piece of dancing garbage.

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