A poor attempt at satirizing a George Thorogood tune, I know. But I didn't want an awkward title. I was going to originally call this "a few of my favorite Scotsmen" but then I thought the English and the Irish would get ticked off (and the Welsh would probably feel that way, too, but I've already talked about them, so they haven't got a leg to stand on). If nothing else, I'm a fair man. So I said, "The heck with it. I'll do what I do best: a play on words." I thought since I'm heading to the U.K. in LESS THAN A WEEK (grooooooooooooooooovy), I'd pen a little article about some of my favorite people who are from around there. There's quite a few. I mean, I have favorite people all over the world. Miyamoto Musashi, in Japan; Fyodor Dostoevsky, in Russia; Montezuma, in Mexico (just for the name); Hypatia, in Greece; and Leonardo da Vinci, in Italy, just to name a few (and NO, I don't like him because of that stupid Dan Brown book). But I've always been something of an Anglophile. You remember how I said I'm on a secret mission to impress British folk? That's part of it. Plus it's hard not to appreciate a country where some of the world's greatest writers, poets, rock-'n'-rollers, explorers, and pirates—all folk I admire intensely—originated. So, in alphabetical order:
England - H.G. Wells
Occupation: Writer
I agonized over this decision, believe me. There are a great many English authors who made the final round. But I had to go with the ultimate. H.G. Wells, the first and greatest science fiction author, deserves far more recognition than he's gotten. (Jules Verne was Wells's contemporary, and that Frenchman wrote some excellent sci-fi too, but he was a little heavy on the description.) In all seriousness, I believe that Wells's grave should be platinum-plated. Statues of the man ought to be put up in temples, and his works fired into space on rockets for publication on a galactic scale. The reason Wells deserves such accolades is this: even now, over a hundred years after he wrote his stories, many many years after his death, the man still has the power to scare the sweet bejesus out of us. Honestly, even the dumbed-down, abridged version of The War of the Worlds I read as a kid spooked me something righteous. (The creepy black-and-white illustrations helped.) Horrific aliens fire space capsules from Mars to Earth, pop out in their unstoppable war machines, fry everybody in the vicinity, and proceed to subjugate humanity with laser beams, poison gas, and aircraft. Come on, how scary is that? It's a timeless theme, one that's been done and redone over and over again. But Wells did it first. Don't forget that the mere radio broadcast of this story, done by Orson Welles in 1938, threw the United States into mass panic. Wells's works were oddly prescient, too. The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, long before laser beams, poison gas and flying machines were anything more than, well, science fiction. In TWOTW, Wells predicted tank warfare (his visions of walking tripods armed with guns presaged the rolling war machines on the battlefields of the Great War), chemical weapons, lasers, and airplanes (not to mention space travel), and correctly anticipated, with his usual anthropic cynicism, that such inventions would be put to military use. Unlike a lot of science fiction today, Wells's actually had a point. Ol' Herbert made excoriating observations about human nature, civilization, and society in his books. The War of the Worlds used his invading army of Martians to satirize British imperialism, which had reached its peak at the time of the book's publication. In creating a technologically superior alien race, wholly without conscience, which readily subjugates those judged inferior, Wells showed up the theory of social Darwinism as the rich and privileged of Western society were applying it to society. Wells also hinted darkly at the implications and results of total war by having his Martians attempt to utterly destroy the infrastructure and population of planet Earth. As deep, observant, insightful, incisive, and thrilling as TWOTW is, my favorite book by Wells is one that no one else has ever heard of: The Island of Doctor Moreau. The gloves come off in this one. A shipwreck survivor lands on a tropical island where dwell an enigmatic doctor, his alcoholic assistant, and a race of strange half-men, half-animals. The castaway, named Edward Prendick, first believes these strange creatures to be men, surgically altered by Moreau into beasts; but he later finds out that the reverse is the case. Moreau is a vivisectionist, and through a process of painful trial and error, he has transformed mindless beasts into a travesty of humanity. These half-beasts talk, make primitive tools, walk upright, build houses, cook, even have a religion of sorts. But the beast inside them refuses to be quelled. Infractions are common. The beast-men occasionally lose control, kill animals for food, suck up drink, run wild, break the Law which they have established among themselves. Constant surgeries are required to keep them tame. Moreau, like a vengeful god, summons these transgressors back to his lab, its name whispered among the beast-men: "The House of Pain." All hell breaks loose when a particularly vicious specimen escapes the laboratory and runs wild on the island. The beast-men revert back to beasts, the protective compound burns down, and Prendick is forced to live like a beast himself, hunting and fishing, fighting off the savage and horrific inhabitants of the island, trying to build a raft and escape. Escape he does, but he is never quite the same. He now sees the primitive in the eyes of every man he passes on the streets of the civilized world. He understands now just what a thin line separates the rational, sentient human being from the ravening monster, the savage, the primal thing lurking in the hearts of humans. With The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells simultaneously reinvented the mad scientist archetype, skewered the callous, sinful, bestial side of Victorian society, and wrote a chillingly good piece of science fiction. For writing some of the most intelligent and meaningful essays on humanity, and couching it in some of the most creepy, engrossing and masterful science fiction on the planet, H.G. Wells is my favorite English person. Well, aside from Princess Eugenie Victoria Helena Mountbatten-Windsor of York, that is.
HONORABLE MENTION: Cuthbert Collingwood (Admiral of the British Navy, noted for his service in the Napoleonic Wars and his association with Lord Nelson; biggest Geordie hero besides Brian Johnson); Queen Victoria (grandmother of Europe, come on); Emma Watson (enough said); Douglas Adams (galactic hitchhiker); Gertrude Bell (explorer extraordinaire); Sir Tim Berners-Lee (without whom I would not have a blog, nor an Internet to write it on); John Cleese (and the rest of the Monty Python bunch, including Terry Gilliam, who's American, and Terry Jones, who's technically Welsh...but John's my favorite. Silly walks, dead parrots, albatross, argument clinics, "and now for something completely different"). And, of course, no list of awesome English folk would be complete without that king of renegades, the eminently quotable, fantastically witty, hard-drinking, hard-fighting bad boy, the Man Himself, Winston Churchill.
Ireland - George Bernard Shaw Occupation: Playwright
I love this guy. I really do. A wit to rival Samuel Johnson, and facial hair to blow Mark Twain, Santa Claus and Friedrich Nietzsche out of the water. And, kind of like H.G. Wells, he was something of a misanthrope. But he was a smart-ass on top of it, which is the best of both worlds. He was primarily a playwright, and used his characters as his own personal mouthpiece, dispensing various ribald pearls of wisdom unto the unwitting world. You should have heard some of the things that came out of this guy's mouth:
"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…"
"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."
England - H.G. Wells
Occupation: Writer
I agonized over this decision, believe me. There are a great many English authors who made the final round. But I had to go with the ultimate. H.G. Wells, the first and greatest science fiction author, deserves far more recognition than he's gotten. (Jules Verne was Wells's contemporary, and that Frenchman wrote some excellent sci-fi too, but he was a little heavy on the description.) In all seriousness, I believe that Wells's grave should be platinum-plated. Statues of the man ought to be put up in temples, and his works fired into space on rockets for publication on a galactic scale. The reason Wells deserves such accolades is this: even now, over a hundred years after he wrote his stories, many many years after his death, the man still has the power to scare the sweet bejesus out of us. Honestly, even the dumbed-down, abridged version of The War of the Worlds I read as a kid spooked me something righteous. (The creepy black-and-white illustrations helped.) Horrific aliens fire space capsules from Mars to Earth, pop out in their unstoppable war machines, fry everybody in the vicinity, and proceed to subjugate humanity with laser beams, poison gas, and aircraft. Come on, how scary is that? It's a timeless theme, one that's been done and redone over and over again. But Wells did it first. Don't forget that the mere radio broadcast of this story, done by Orson Welles in 1938, threw the United States into mass panic. Wells's works were oddly prescient, too. The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, long before laser beams, poison gas and flying machines were anything more than, well, science fiction. In TWOTW, Wells predicted tank warfare (his visions of walking tripods armed with guns presaged the rolling war machines on the battlefields of the Great War), chemical weapons, lasers, and airplanes (not to mention space travel), and correctly anticipated, with his usual anthropic cynicism, that such inventions would be put to military use. Unlike a lot of science fiction today, Wells's actually had a point. Ol' Herbert made excoriating observations about human nature, civilization, and society in his books. The War of the Worlds used his invading army of Martians to satirize British imperialism, which had reached its peak at the time of the book's publication. In creating a technologically superior alien race, wholly without conscience, which readily subjugates those judged inferior, Wells showed up the theory of social Darwinism as the rich and privileged of Western society were applying it to society. Wells also hinted darkly at the implications and results of total war by having his Martians attempt to utterly destroy the infrastructure and population of planet Earth. As deep, observant, insightful, incisive, and thrilling as TWOTW is, my favorite book by Wells is one that no one else has ever heard of: The Island of Doctor Moreau. The gloves come off in this one. A shipwreck survivor lands on a tropical island where dwell an enigmatic doctor, his alcoholic assistant, and a race of strange half-men, half-animals. The castaway, named Edward Prendick, first believes these strange creatures to be men, surgically altered by Moreau into beasts; but he later finds out that the reverse is the case. Moreau is a vivisectionist, and through a process of painful trial and error, he has transformed mindless beasts into a travesty of humanity. These half-beasts talk, make primitive tools, walk upright, build houses, cook, even have a religion of sorts. But the beast inside them refuses to be quelled. Infractions are common. The beast-men occasionally lose control, kill animals for food, suck up drink, run wild, break the Law which they have established among themselves. Constant surgeries are required to keep them tame. Moreau, like a vengeful god, summons these transgressors back to his lab, its name whispered among the beast-men: "The House of Pain." All hell breaks loose when a particularly vicious specimen escapes the laboratory and runs wild on the island. The beast-men revert back to beasts, the protective compound burns down, and Prendick is forced to live like a beast himself, hunting and fishing, fighting off the savage and horrific inhabitants of the island, trying to build a raft and escape. Escape he does, but he is never quite the same. He now sees the primitive in the eyes of every man he passes on the streets of the civilized world. He understands now just what a thin line separates the rational, sentient human being from the ravening monster, the savage, the primal thing lurking in the hearts of humans. With The Island of Doctor Moreau, Wells simultaneously reinvented the mad scientist archetype, skewered the callous, sinful, bestial side of Victorian society, and wrote a chillingly good piece of science fiction. For writing some of the most intelligent and meaningful essays on humanity, and couching it in some of the most creepy, engrossing and masterful science fiction on the planet, H.G. Wells is my favorite English person. Well, aside from Princess Eugenie Victoria Helena Mountbatten-Windsor of York, that is. HONORABLE MENTION: Cuthbert Collingwood (Admiral of the British Navy, noted for his service in the Napoleonic Wars and his association with Lord Nelson; biggest Geordie hero besides Brian Johnson); Queen Victoria (grandmother of Europe, come on); Emma Watson (enough said); Douglas Adams (galactic hitchhiker); Gertrude Bell (explorer extraordinaire); Sir Tim Berners-Lee (without whom I would not have a blog, nor an Internet to write it on); John Cleese (and the rest of the Monty Python bunch, including Terry Gilliam, who's American, and Terry Jones, who's technically Welsh...but John's my favorite. Silly walks, dead parrots, albatross, argument clinics, "and now for something completely different"). And, of course, no list of awesome English folk would be complete without that king of renegades, the eminently quotable, fantastically witty, hard-drinking, hard-fighting bad boy, the Man Himself, Winston Churchill.
Ireland - George Bernard Shaw Occupation: Playwright
I love this guy. I really do. A wit to rival Samuel Johnson, and facial hair to blow Mark Twain, Santa Claus and Friedrich Nietzsche out of the water. And, kind of like H.G. Wells, he was something of a misanthrope. But he was a smart-ass on top of it, which is the best of both worlds. He was primarily a playwright, and used his characters as his own personal mouthpiece, dispensing various ribald pearls of wisdom unto the unwitting world. You should have heard some of the things that came out of this guy's mouth: "I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."
"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education."
"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."
"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…"
"A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic."
"I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer."
"Lack of money is the root of all evil."
"Lack of money is the root of all evil."
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
"Democracy is a device that ensures we will be governed no better than we deserve."
"The sex relation is not a personal relation. It can be irresistibly desired and rapturously consummated between persons who could not endure one another for a day in any other relation."
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."
Shaw made one observation that both I and Robert Kennedy have used as a personal slogan:
"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"
Or here, read this one. Here I am, calling Shaw a misanthrope and Wells a cynic, and then Shaw goes and sets me straight:
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
And wait! There's more. Here I am giving George some blog love, paging through some quotes of his, and I find this. It seems as if Shaw knew I was going to be writing a blog post about him:
"Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them."
The best Shaw quote in recorded history, though, is this one, in my opinion:
"We should all be obliged to go before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation."
Shaw tickles me pink. Nobody's got the guts to say stuff like this these days and (a) really mean it, and (b) not care what anybody else thinks of you for saying it. Shaw never cared about that. He didn't think much of politics, nationalism or public education, and he made no secret of it. Yeah, sure, he was a Socialist. But he spoke his mind, wrote plays, novels, articles of all sorts, was an amateur photographer, won the Nobel Prize and an Oscar (both of which he hated), and penned most of his best works in a tiny, movable shack in the corner of his backyard. Those are all things I can identify with. For being an intelligent and prolific writer, a curmudgeonly philosopher, an eminently quotable sage, and an opinionated cuss, George Bernard Shaw is my favorite Irishman.
HONORABLE MENTION: Bram Stoker (inventor of one of the coolest literary villains of all time, Count Dracula); James Joyce (rewrote one of Homer's epics, setting it in the modern era, and was even gutsy enough to include a clinical description of the sex act, which got him banned from every bookstore in the Northern Hemisphere); Frank McCourt (rough life, good writer); Gráinne Ní Mháille (better known as Grace O'Malley, the pirate queen); and John French. Don't know who John French is? Well, I'll tell you. He was born in County Wexford. I never met anybody from County Wexford I didn't like. (Heck, I never met anybody from County Wexford, period.) Mr. French emigrated to England (Liverpool) and married Louise Woollam, a local girl. Their daughter, also named Louise, grew up and married a local bus conductor named Triple-H—ha ha, no, really, his name was Harold Hargreaves Harrison. Harold and Louise settled down in Liverpool together and, in 1943, they had a little boy, who they named George Harrison. That is why I love John French.
Scotland - John Paul Jones
Occupation: Badass
Uh, hello? John Paul Jones? Honestly, do I even need to explain this? He's every American's favorite Scot (well, except for anybody wearing a kilt). I don't care if he was a dropout. I don't care if he was a deserter. I don't care if he flogged one of his sailors to death. I don't care if he only joined the Continental Navy just to get a piece of the English. None of that matters. The guy was awesomeness incarnate, and probably would've had to hire somebody to carry his balls around for him if he didn't have the steel backbone to hold them up. He got his first naval command when the captain and the first mate of the ship he was on (the John; origin of the phrase "on the john") caught a fever and died. Most people would've been scared stiff by being thrust into a command on the open sea like that, but not Jones. He went and piloted the ship back to port, and the John's grateful owners made him the master and gave him a cut of the cargo. He buddied up with Benjamin Franklin while in France in 1778, and the two of them apparently joined a frat together. Imagine the secret handshakes they must've put on while John Adams and stood nearby and rolled his eyes. When France formally allied with the United States that same year, Jones's new ship, the USS Ranger, became the first American military vessel to be saluted by French forces. Jones got a nine-gun salute from a French flagship as he was heading out to England to terrorize British shipping. Then the Ultimate Act of Bad-Assitude took place. While in command of the USS Bonhomme Richard, running wild in the North Sea off the coast of England in 1779, Jones was engaged by the 50-gun British warship Serapis. During a rare lull in the battle, the British commander yelled across, "You blokes had enough yet?" "Are you kidding, asshole?" Jones shouted back. "I haven't even started in on you sons-of-bitches yet!" This quip is commonly edited in high school history books to read "I have not yet begun to fight!" Rock on, John. For being a feisty short guy, beating the heck out of British shipping during the Revolutionary War, having consistent problems with authority, inspiring the stage name of Led Zeppelin's bassist, and pursuing one of the most colorful and versatile naval careers of the 18th century, John Paul Jones is my favorite Scotsman.
HONORABLE MENTION: Alexander Graham Bell (can you hear me now?); John Shepherd-Barron (inventor of the ATM); Mungo Park (explorer with a cool name, first Westerner to explore the Niger River); Bon Scott (AC/DC's original front man and one heck of a vocalist and bagpipe-player); Angus Young (best guitarist EVER); John Ross (admiral and Arctic explorer); and Ian Anderson (latter-day minstrel, prog-rocker and musician more worthy of the term "poet" than any rapper who has ever lived, or ever will). And now, I'd like to leave you with another of my favorite Scotsmen.
"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
"Democracy is a device that ensures we will be governed no better than we deserve."
"The sex relation is not a personal relation. It can be irresistibly desired and rapturously consummated between persons who could not endure one another for a day in any other relation."
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth."
Shaw made one observation that both I and Robert Kennedy have used as a personal slogan:
"You see things as they are and ask, 'Why?' I dream things as they never were and ask, 'Why not?'"
Or here, read this one. Here I am, calling Shaw a misanthrope and Wells a cynic, and then Shaw goes and sets me straight:
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."
And wait! There's more. Here I am giving George some blog love, paging through some quotes of his, and I find this. It seems as if Shaw knew I was going to be writing a blog post about him:
"Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them."
The best Shaw quote in recorded history, though, is this one, in my opinion:
"We should all be obliged to go before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation."
Shaw tickles me pink. Nobody's got the guts to say stuff like this these days and (a) really mean it, and (b) not care what anybody else thinks of you for saying it. Shaw never cared about that. He didn't think much of politics, nationalism or public education, and he made no secret of it. Yeah, sure, he was a Socialist. But he spoke his mind, wrote plays, novels, articles of all sorts, was an amateur photographer, won the Nobel Prize and an Oscar (both of which he hated), and penned most of his best works in a tiny, movable shack in the corner of his backyard. Those are all things I can identify with. For being an intelligent and prolific writer, a curmudgeonly philosopher, an eminently quotable sage, and an opinionated cuss, George Bernard Shaw is my favorite Irishman.
HONORABLE MENTION: Bram Stoker (inventor of one of the coolest literary villains of all time, Count Dracula); James Joyce (rewrote one of Homer's epics, setting it in the modern era, and was even gutsy enough to include a clinical description of the sex act, which got him banned from every bookstore in the Northern Hemisphere); Frank McCourt (rough life, good writer); Gráinne Ní Mháille (better known as Grace O'Malley, the pirate queen); and John French. Don't know who John French is? Well, I'll tell you. He was born in County Wexford. I never met anybody from County Wexford I didn't like. (Heck, I never met anybody from County Wexford, period.) Mr. French emigrated to England (Liverpool) and married Louise Woollam, a local girl. Their daughter, also named Louise, grew up and married a local bus conductor named Triple-H—ha ha, no, really, his name was Harold Hargreaves Harrison. Harold and Louise settled down in Liverpool together and, in 1943, they had a little boy, who they named George Harrison. That is why I love John French.
Scotland - John Paul Jones
Occupation: Badass
Uh, hello? John Paul Jones? Honestly, do I even need to explain this? He's every American's favorite Scot (well, except for anybody wearing a kilt). I don't care if he was a dropout. I don't care if he was a deserter. I don't care if he flogged one of his sailors to death. I don't care if he only joined the Continental Navy just to get a piece of the English. None of that matters. The guy was awesomeness incarnate, and probably would've had to hire somebody to carry his balls around for him if he didn't have the steel backbone to hold them up. He got his first naval command when the captain and the first mate of the ship he was on (the John; origin of the phrase "on the john") caught a fever and died. Most people would've been scared stiff by being thrust into a command on the open sea like that, but not Jones. He went and piloted the ship back to port, and the John's grateful owners made him the master and gave him a cut of the cargo. He buddied up with Benjamin Franklin while in France in 1778, and the two of them apparently joined a frat together. Imagine the secret handshakes they must've put on while HONORABLE MENTION: Alexander Graham Bell (can you hear me now?); John Shepherd-Barron (inventor of the ATM); Mungo Park (explorer with a cool name, first Westerner to explore the Niger River); Bon Scott (AC/DC's original front man and one heck of a vocalist and bagpipe-player); Angus Young (best guitarist EVER); John Ross (admiral and Arctic explorer); and Ian Anderson (latter-day minstrel, prog-rocker and musician more worthy of the term "poet" than any rapper who has ever lived, or ever will). And now, I'd like to leave you with another of my favorite Scotsmen.
THINK WITH YOUR DIPSTICK, JIMMY!
10 comments:
You have great taste in great men. :) Enjoy your trip.
You know I've seen Dr Moreau referenced in a movie somewhere but I can't remember where. I never knew that George Bernard Shaw was so awesome. You just gave me weeks of facebook statuses. Enjoy the UK. Have a pint at the pub for me :)
Yo Dude! Where in UK you going?
If I read your post right, John Paul Jones woulda loved to give H.G. Wells a terribly hard time, and Shaw woulda cheered 'em both on, cussing all the way.
OK, maybe not. But isn't it pretty to think so?
I don't even make the Honourable (if you're going to England you'd better start spelling things correctly) Mention list.
Heartbreaking.
Dear; If I had a smidge of your talent I'd be a rich woman. A cougar, maybe. (Heck, we all have a dream!)
What a shout out! Lets hear it for literary genius. Yeah, I read the Island of Dr Moreau. But I think it was after the movie was published. Still . .
Thank you for the history lesson. It is such a treat to partake of not only your writing expertise, but to learn a bit about you in your tastes of hero's.
Totally awesome. I hope your trip is as exciting as you anticipate. I look forward to the travel post.
........dhole
Also, BTW, there's something over at my place for you. Think of it as a going away present. :)
sarahjayne: Thank you! It wasn't originally going to be all men, believe me. I ALMOST went with Gertrude Bell. Love that woman. Gotta have guts to travel the Middle East, in that day or any other. They don't treat women particularly well in that part of the world.
Claire: You're welcome! Look him up, he's a hoot. Thanks for the well-wishes. There's a pint with your name on it in Newcastle.
JP: It is pretty to think so. Thanks for the award, my friend. Appreciate the thought immensely. Rooting for you all the way in your travels, literary or otherwise.
Smithy: Hey, didn't I say that I agonized over the decision? That a multitude of English authors made the list of finalists? You were one of 'em. The only reason you didn't make the list is that you're still alive. Plus you're no Princess Eugenie.
Dhole: Well, good grief, I'm turning red now. Those were some of the highest compliments I've ever received. Thank you, a thousand times thank you! You've got plenty of talent of your own. If you didn't, you wouldn't have so many people who enjoy reading your blog (like me). And you don't need to be rich to be a cougar...you just gotta be one, hee hee.
Thanks again, friend.
Enjoy your trip! If you're still there in August, drop me a line. We're within driving distance from John Paul Jones' place.
I've always loved that justifying-your-existence quote of Shaw's. I feel very smug: I can make my own pizza, descale kettles, and French braid hair. I'm pretty sure that means I can't be made redundant.
By the way, this is the first time I've been able to access your blog's comments section! I don't know what happened before, but I could never manage to do this -- the title of your blog would come up, but not the rest of it.
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