"Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mind-trips to the nth degree."

Said Bob Dylan in 2009, quoted in "John Prine, One of America’s Greatest Songwriters, Dead at 73/Grammy-winning singer who combined literary genius with a common touch succumbs to coronavirus complications" (Rolling Stone).

I don't know exactly why Bob Dylan said that; I didn't really follow John Prine. If you think someone who loves Bob Dylan would love John Prine, you don't know enough about Bob Dylan. And I don't know much about John Prine. I had to scan the article to be reminded of song titles. The one I know is a song I particularly dislike, "Hello in There."

To widen my understanding I read the lyrics to" "Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore." The first thing I see the sneering at Reader's Digest that was common circa 1970s:

While digesting Reader's Digest in the back of a dirty book store
A plastic flag, with gum on the back fell out on the floor
Well, I picked it up and I ran outside, slapped it on my window shield
And if I could see old Betsy Ross I'd tell her how good I feel
But your flag decal won't get you into Heaven anymore
They're already overcrowded from your dirty little war
Now Jesus don't like killin', no matter what the reason's for...

Reader's Digest comes up in a Bob Dylan lyric. Compare:

As his fist hit the icebox
He said he’s going to kill me
If I don’t get out the door
In two seconds flat
“You unpatriotic
Rotten doctor Commie rat”
Well, he threw a Reader’s Digest
At my head and I did run
I did a somersault
As I seen him get his gun...

As I said, I don't know much about John Prine, and I'm sorry to see that he has died, of whatever cause. His work is more notable the random fact that his death has come from the disease that completely preoccupies us.

I see I have a tag for Reader's Digest. I'll have to publish this post so I can click on the tag and see why. I used to have a job where the work was reading magazines, and Reader's Digest was one of the magazines. Maybe I've blogged about that. You know, educated people in America used to look down on their fellow citizens who subscribed to Reader's Digest, but look what we read today. Edited down snippets and headlines.

"One afternoon in August 1937, Ernest Hemingway strode into the New York office of a Scribner’s editor and slapped a book across Max Eastman’s face."

"He then 'bared his chest to Mr. Eastman and asked him to look at the hair and say whether it was false'... Next, he 'persuaded Mr. Eastman to bare his chest and commented on its comparatively hairless condition.'... Hemingway was simply very pissed off about a manhood-challenging review that Eastman had written for The New Republic four years earlier. Writing about Death in the Afternoon — a nonfiction account of the bullfighting traditions of Spain — Eastman repeatedly jabs at Hemingway, saying 'the only simple thing' about the book is Hemingway himself, and alleging that his literary style is the equivalent 'of wearing false hair on the chest.'"

From "The Review That Caused Hemingway To Slap the Critic in the Face with a Book."

Nice picture at the link of Hemingway sucking in his gut and looking in the mirror at his bare torso... bear torso.

No one speaks of hairy chests as the mark of manhood anymore. I watch baseball games and mute that commercial for a nose-hair trimmer that the male model uses not only in his nose and on his ears and at his nape but also on his chest. A dinky battery-powered hair trimmer on his chest.

And of course, no one admires masculinistic writers who stride into the offices of publishers and slap critics in the face with books. I doubt if it was ever admirably manly to behave like that. The verb "slap" gives it away. Well, at least he strode. He didn't slink or sidle, which is, perhaps, how today's male author would approach a publisher.

By the way... who was Max Eastman? He turns up in what might be one of your favorite books, F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom":

It is pathetic, yet at the same time encouraging, to find as prominent an old communist as Max Eastman rediscovering this truth:

“It seems obvious to me now — though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion — that the institution of private property is one of the main things that have given man that limited amount of free-and-equalness that Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough Marx was the first to see this. He is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms. It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market.” [Max Eastman, “Socialism Doesn’t Jibe with Human Nature,” Reader’s Digest, July, 1941, p. 39.]

Slow. Maybe he needed a good slap in the head with a book. Please, no violence. Slap somebody in the head with a book today only metaphorically. And — late clue to Hemingway —  "wearing false hair on the chest" was a metaphor. I hear the ghost of Hemingway — metaphorical ghost — saying "Fuck metaphor!" — "fuck" being, of course, another metaphor. Man and metaphor. It's a tricky business.

ADDED: That reference to Reader's Digest (where Eastman published his "Doesn't Jibe" piece) in the context of hitting somebody with a book got me thinking about Bob Dylan's "Motorpsycho Nightmare":

Well, he threw a Reader’s Digest
At my head and I did run
I did a somersault
As I seen him get his gun...

It's the old farmer who tries to hit Bob with the Reader's Digest and who (like the King of America) threatens him with a gun, and — resonantly enough — what enrages the old farmer is Bob's statement "I like Fidel Castro and his beard." Now, that doesn't mean Bob Dylan is a communist. Bob just needed to come up with something to say that would strike the farmer as "very weird" because he wanted to get thrown out. We all know Bob Dylan is right wing.