AS that resonant lady was reading her poem in Washington at the
inauguration of President Clinton, parallel lines were running in the
opposite direction out of Glasgow South Side.
Maya Angelou's sweet concern was to write into her verses just about
everybody in the world.
For his part, Adam McNaughtan, local songster and rhymer, was more
exclusive. In a poem he says took about as long to produce as to peruse
he wants some people mentioned not at all for a while. His couplets are
for those who feel the world is too much with them. They are a
counterblast to the bad news of every next day.
His aim is to help a retreat from wars and rumours of wars. If instead
of watching television bulletins you find yourself making a mug of
cocoa, he is your man:
It's pleasant whiles to pit the world's troubles at your back,
And forget the war in Bosnia, for get aboot Iraq;
To ignore the Shetland oil slick an' the mess the country's in,
Consider not the Lilleys who nae longer toil nor spin . . .
And there are those same old names which absorb more than their share
of printer's ink:
Forget Lamont and Major, it's never them to blame,
An' the Opposition leader, the dy namic whitsisname,
An' the Scottish National Party
who've begun to flex their muscles,
To free us frae the Saxon chains an' sell us aff to Brussels.
McNaughtan recommends the protective shield of reading a book,
although buying a library of them would work better. A fire to warm the
toes is a further help. To have a glass of something sustaining is also
no hindrance, he allows.
Well, he would. Since he has about chucked the teaching, he sells
books. How in his shop window he sits with his broad back turned to the
outside world is one of the reliable sights of the changing city. But
removing a volume from his shelves can feel like extracting a drop of
his blood.
Sometimes a transfusion becomes necessary, whatever his sense of loss.
In the winter catalogue with his escapist poem resided a stray biography
of Alexander Woollcott of vague memory. Bang went #4.
Woollcott was a short, fat man with a squeaky voice who liked to claim
he was the best writer in America, except he had nothing to say. He was
a mixture of Nero and St Francis of Assisi. Now he is remembered for how
he made (or pinched) the crack that all the things he liked to do were
immoral, illegal, or fattening.
His name was a burden. It irked him how variously Woollcott can be
misspelled. And because of a youthful fondness for wearing girl's
clothes he was sometimes miscried Louisa M. Woollcott. He explained
often that he stayed single because married men make poor husbands.
Why he is being resurrected here is because this rig of the page has
been turning itself into a memorial column for the exhumed work of
defunct scribblers of yesteryear.
The biography, called Smart Aleck by Howard Teichmann, appeared about
30 years after his death in 1943. His name may always live for one
distinction in the perishable trade of journalism.
Towards the end of his life he had the arduous pleasure for a theatre
critic of playing the part of himself on the stage. With a third company
he toured gamely in The Man Who Came to Dinner. In a film Monty Woolley
played Woollcott. (Moss Hart and George Kaufman in their script also
took off Noel Coward and Harpo Marx.)
Adam McNaughtan's beguiling jingle prompted a hope that Smart Aleck
would be a reminder of more innocent times with gladder tidings, and a
quick dip suggested happy news. For the time being, however, the book
has been left behind to travel endlessly as lost property on a No. 5
bus. Two tales stick.
One concerned a New York production of George Bernard Shaw's St Joan.
Because the play's three hours and a half would run after the last
trains of suburban theatregoers, Shaw was asked to make cuts. He cabled:
BEGIN EARLIER OR RUN LATER TRAINS.
Secondly, when Harpo Marx, a great pal of Woollcott, turned up in a
dilapidated motor he was asked what the wreck was called. ''My town
car,'' Harpo replied.
''What was the town?'' Woollcott asked. ''Pompeii?''
Although not a lot to go on, it may be enough to suggest that where
jollier days, if they have ever existed, are to be found is in forgotten
pages which have not quite fallen off the shelves. On some other
Thursday, if the book comes in off the buses, there will be another
look, you bet.
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