A House With No Right Angles
How much stock could a Klopstock stock, if a Klopstock could stock klop?
Welcome to December. The arrow of time implies that this calendar year will soon be over, but I’m not sure I believe it. This year has sorely tested my belief in a lot of things.
But not you, my loyal subscribers! As a reminder, you signed up for these here Fabulist Rabbit Holes during a period of increased activity, as I hawk my book to all those Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Bloody Sunday, Cyber Monday, Taco Tuesday, Wembling Wednesday, and Thermodynamic Thursday shoppers. So pick up "NOVEL ADVICE: Practical Wisdom for Your Favorite Literary Characters" as a gift for dozens of your loved ones.
Aside: for years, I used the word “wemble” in conversation, only to receive blank stares. It means to dither, to agonize over making a choice. I picked it up from Wembley on Fraggle Rock, the foremost wembler of his day.
Some say that wemble isn’t a real word, and was totally invented for the show. Others differ. But if it isn’t a real word, it should be.
Klopstock!
I’ve been starting to hear from people about their experiences reading the book: which characters they loved, which they were surprised by, and which ones they’d never heard of. This is a good excuse to begin talking about some of the entries in the book and why I chose them.
In my first year of college, I took a class in western literature. The instructor was a bright-eyed, Marx-bearded, enthusiastic German named Peter Werres. Every class was a delight, less for the subject matter and more for the asides and odd turns of phrase that he’d would pepper into his lectures. I sat next to Yvonne - she had a half-mohawk and I had a half-crush on her. We would share a laugh whenever Prof. Werres would talk about the house he owned in West Virginia with no right angles, or how once a year he would take all of his belongings out of that house, put them on the front lawn, and then put them all back inside in different places.
But our favorite joke came when we read Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther.”
“Sorrows” is one of those books that was a huge blockbuster in its day, but has fallen out of the top rungs of the canon. It’s sort of a literary version of a song by the Cure. Werther is so in love with Lotte, and she is so perfect for him, but she is married to another, therefore Werther is so depressed and the only way to relieve his agony and do right by all involved is to kill himself. Werther is kind of a drip. In a pivotal moment, Werther and Lotte are watching the aftermath of a storm, and with tears in her eyes she says the one word every young 18th century German longs to hear: “Klopstock!”
Huh?
Prof. Werres proceeded to instruct us about the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, his epic poem “The Messiah,” and its romantic influence on Goethe. But none of that really mattered next to how funny it was to emotionally exclaim “Klopstock!” Which we proceeded to do as much as possible. For the reset of the semester “Klopstock!” became the equivalent of “aloha” or “smurfy” - an all-purpose reply to any situation. Late for class? Klopstock! Hung over from a late night? Klopstock! Try it, it’s a fun work to say out loud. For added emphasis, try it with a German tang - “klop-shtock!”
The class ended, we went our separate ways, and the klop-stocking came to an end. I wonder whatever happened to Yvonne, or if she recalls Klopstock the same way. It always stayed in the back of my mind somewhere, a discarded remnant of an old joke, waiting for its moment to flare back to life. Initially, when I was looking at characters to include, and wanting to include non-English language writers, I looked at Goethe’s Faust for somewhere in the Education section. But Faust is kind of an asshole, and plus his issues with trusting a deal with the devil had a lot of overlap with Orpheus. And that’s when I remembered “Klopstock!”
I didn’t know it back in Prof. Werres’s class, but there’s another reason that moment in the book stuck with me. So often, the challenge of reading literature from a different time period is that the language, the customs, the modes of expression are so unfamiliar that it’s difficult to connect the characters and stories with the way we live now. But if you can get the right translations, frame it in the right contexts, sometimes these moments open up to show you how people don’t really change, no matter when or where they live. The Klopstock moment is really about connecting through pop culture. It’s about how you find affinity with someone because they love the same band you do, or have the same books on their shelves, or want to binge watch the same tv shows. It’s a moment of connection through media that is just as real in the 1770s as it was when I was taking that class in the 1990s, and just as real as it is on Tumblr or TikTok today. If Friedrich Klopstock wasn’t actually the Robert Smith of his day, the metaphor is close enough to work.
I’m getting ready to do a reorganization and overhaul of my office, and in tribute to Peter Werres, I think I’ll take everything out of the boxes and drawers they’ve been shoved in, pile them on the floor, and then put them all back in different places.
5th Wall Forum
This weekend, some of the leading practitioners in immersive tech and live theater are getting together for a new event, the 5th Wall Forum. This is my favorite kind of conference, bringing together people from disparate fields and formats and seeing what amazing new things come out of the collisions. It’s the sort of thing we were trying to do back when we did Transmedia Los Angeles. I’m hoping to catch some of the event on Friday - if you do too, say hi!
Meme Basket
More Yapping
Last time, I mentioned a scheduled appearance on Amazon Live with Lea Little for Monday 11/30. That’s been postponed to Monday 12/7 at 10am Pacific. I’ve got a couple of other interviews lined up, including one I’m very excited for — but since it’s not yet confirmed, I’m not going to share those details yet.
Keep On Klopstocking!
- Jay