It’s OK to misquote Shakespeare

Bernard Shaw did it all the time. He said he (Shaw) had the superior mind. Shaw even misspelled Shakespeare’s name, dubbing him Shakespear. I suppose when you write with the panache Shaw did, you can get away with anything.

I might rewrite a great line if it needs editing. For example, Raymond Chandler, describing Moose Malloy in Farewell, My Lovely, says, “he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

That might have worked in 1940, but “a slice of angel food” sounds incomplete today. At least it does to my ear. So I amended Chandler’s line to read “as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.”

Sue me, but that sounds better in our time. I just looked it up and noticed a British journalist had taken that exact same liberty. I suspect Chandler wouldn’t mind. Raymond Chandler was an erudite bugger — he was at Dulwich a few years after Wodehouse — and knew that ours is a supple, living language.

Shakespeare himself changed stuff whenever it suited him. He borrowed, stole and copied other writers freely, and didn’t give a rat’s ass about propriety.

At twelve I rewrote Keats’s line in On Seeing the Elgin Marbles to read “like a sick eagle longing for the sky.” I thought it better than “like a sick eagle looking at the sky.” What can I say, I was an opinionated jackass back then. Come to think of it, I still am.

I used to know a WhirlyGirl at Apple. Her name was Diane Tapscott. Wonder if it’s the same person.

By the way Gutbloom, why is the word athenaeum misspelled in that little logo thingy on your masthead? Is it named after the Athanaeum Club in Melbourne (christened, no doubt, after a few beers) or the Athanaeum Pub in Manchester (ditto)? Or was it named in honor of the Daily Athanaeum, once the proud newspaper of West Virginia University?