Flip Wilson

I've always thought there was poetry in prose.  And when I come across it, I like to preserve it, commit it to memory.  It can make for some great pieces of conversation when brought up at the right time.  Image is everything. So is timing.

That fellow John Barlett surely thought along these same lines when he set out to compile his book of  'Familiar Quotations.'  There have been many editions of this book, and I distinctly remember a story a few years ago by the then-current editor on what criteria to use to keep adding to the book.  "Go ahead, make my day" is certainly not Shakespeare, but someone did write it, and someone did memorably say it.  Why not include it?

While that academic debate likely continues, I set out a few years ago to compile my own quotation book, containing phrases I read or heard that I thought were especially memorable, profund, sounded good, or just plain made me laugh.  Something is brought to mind.

I haven't been directly updating this "book" of mine much lately.  Russell Baker once wrote me that Commonplace books were hardly ever published. But he also at the same time sent me examples of what he was compilng.  I felt in good company.  And the blog has somewhat taken over for memorializing phrases.

An example of something I added to the 'Personal Book of Quotations' (everything needs a title) was the following:

Sleek, slinky creatures crowd the bar at Vandam. With a Darwinian instinct for social display, they perch on the tall stools and preen, agreeably conscious that they have chosen a flattering setting.
--Restaurant review, NYT, July 21, 1999

There may have been a picture, but I thought this was a great way of saying there were some very long-legged, attractive women hanging out at the bar.  You have to admit, it's a literary wolf-whistle. And then some.

The reaction to phrases continues, and I recently found one from what I would think might be considered a surprising source--James Balwin writing about boxing.  But there it is, in 'At the Fights,' an anthology of essays and stories from a wide variety of writers, all having something to say about boxing.  Mr. Baldwin's covers the first Floyd Patterson/Sonny Liston fight in 1962, held in Chicago.

Patterson's training camp scene is described.  But the poetry really sets in when Mr. Baldwin describes some of the entourage filling up the place:

"There were hangers-on and proteges, a singer somewhere around, whom I didn't meet, owned by Patterson, and another singer owned by someone else--who couldn't sing, everyone agreed, but who didn't have to, being so loaded with personality--and there were some improbable-looking women, turned out, it would seem, by a machine shop, who didn't seem, really, to walk or talk, but rather to gleam, click and glide..."

Gleam, click and glide. That's all you need.

I date myself every day I wake up, but if anyone remembers Flip Wilson in the 1970s on his show doing his Geraldine imitation--the saucy lady who fresh-mouths the world--then you can remember seeing someone who "gleams, clicks and glides."

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