<
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2022/07/20/e-e-cummings-and-krazy-kat/>
"In 1910, a mouse named Ignatz first beaned Krazy Kat with a brick. The plot of
this comic strip, centered on a “heppy go lucky kat,” is simple. Krazy Kat
loves Ignatz Mouse. Officer Pup loves Krazy Kat. Ignatz Mouse hits Krazy over
the head with a brick; Officer Pup pursues and usually arrests Ignatz Mouse;
Krazy, to whom the brick seems to be a sign of love, is ecstatic. A small heart
pops up above his head. The cartoonist, George Herriman, twisted and tangled
the three-lover triad and cat-mouse-dog triad and spent thirty-one years
retying the same surreal knot. You know what will happen in any strip of
Krazy
Kat—the same sequence reoccurs eternally—but somehow there is still room for
unexpected delight.
E. E. Cummings was one of the
Kat’s biggest fans. In 1922, he wrote from
Paris to request clippings from friends in America. (“Thank you moreover for a
Kat of indescribable beauty!” he wrote to an obliging friend.) In his 1946
introduction to the first edition of the collected strips, Cummings wrote that
the brick unleashed joy within the “ultraprogressive game” of the real world,
with its preestablished rules, of which it flouted the most sacred: “THOU SHALT
NOT PLAY.” (Winnicott defines
play as “the continuous evidence of creativity,
which means aliveness.”) Herriman gives pleasure without the instant
gratification of a punch line, undercutting the expected gag trajectory. The
brick hurtling across the page doesn’t end the joke; games end, but play is
infinite. There is no winner, and if there is, it is Krazy, who, for private
reasons, interprets the brick as love."
Via Esther Schindler, who wrote "This is far deeper than I expected."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
