The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1937-09-16

y
committed suicide.
And just as the av- Irwin S. Cobb
erage graveside eu-
logy is belated plea for the defense,
offered after the evidence is all In,
so an epitaph is an advertisement
for line of goods which perma-
nently has been discontinued.
Somehow this burying ground
stuff reminds me of hired critics of
other mems efforts. The difference
between professional book review
ers and the other obituarians is that
the latter do their work after you
pass on, but the reviewers can't
wait until you're dead to write your
literary death notice for you.
Maybe critics are to authors what
f1eas were to David Harum's dog;
they keep authors from brooding on
being authors.
Catching Barracuda.
T EO GARLIC is quite a yachts
Imam when not acting for the
screen or leading parades. He's our
champion parade leader. It's got
so they don't dare let colored fu-
neral go past his house for fear he'll
rush right out and head the process
sion.
On one of those days when there
wasn't a parade, he took Victor
Moore and me out on his boat. We
caught mess of slim, yet fragrant
fish. Leo called them barracuda,
but, with their low retreating fore
heads and greedy jaws, they looked
more like shyster lawyers to me
the kind who chase ambulances and
eventually get disbarred.
Glad, Mad Artists.
II ERETOFORE, the glad, mad
geniuses, who produce master
pieces of sculpture and painting
which resemble nothing on heaven or
earth or in the waters below except
possibly some bad dream which
these parties had once while feel
ing pretty bilious, have depended
upon the ultra-ults among the intelli-
gentsia for support.
But now one hears divers million
aires may endow for them an aca-
denny or a gallery-or possibly it's
an asylum for the more violent
cases. Anyhow, there's money be-
hind the cult, and when money gets
behind a thing in this country, it
usually flourishes, provided the
money doesn't get too far behind,
as happened in 1929, when the rest
of the country was trying to figure
out what had become of the deposits
and investments, which we, of the
sucker class, had entrusted to our
leading financial wizards.
Still, we of that same ignorant
mass-group do not have to buy ex-
amples of this new school. We don't
even have to look at them unless
we're in Germany and are escorted
to the official state-run display by
regiment of Nazi storm-troopers.
And, aside from their ideas of
what constitutes art, it's said that
some of the artists themselves are
not really dangerous, merely annoy
ing in an itchy sort of way. In
other words, they're all right if you
don't get one of 'em on you.
Pugilistic Authors.
TN ALWAYS missing something.
On the occasion of one really his
toric battle between a brace of dis
tinguished writer's, I yawningly left
the scene before Messrs. Sinclair
Lewis and Theodore Dresser quit
swapping hard words and started
swapping soft blows.
And it was just my luck to be out
here recently when Ernest Heming-
way threw a book-or maybe it was
publisher; anyhow some such
hard, knobby object-at Mr.. Max
Eastman and Mr.. Eastman retort-
ed with tremendous push which
damaged Mr. Hemingway not at all.
The typical writer, no matter how
red-blooded his style may be, packs
all his wallops in his pen and never
! in his fist. There have been excep-
/ lions. OIlCG 1eCA DSdCIi SlCCliCo oOI
a night club all by himself, but his
opponents were hoodlums, not fell
| low-writers. He had something SUBJ
stantial to work on.
Some of my belligerent brethren
| in the writing game never lose an
argument, but, on the other hand,
none of them ever won a fight.
! Neither did their literary opponents.
In fact, next to the average profess
sional pugilist, can think of no one
who, in the heat of combat, equals
writer for showing such magnifi-
cent self-control when it comes Ell
Their to inficting personal injury or
sustaining same.
IRWIN S. COBB.
@-WNU Service.