Another swampish July will soon be upon us, bringing with it the promise of sweltering heat, golden pitchers of ice-cold lemon-ade administered to me in enema-form, and the nightmarish prospect of sunlight which lasts until nine o’clock at night. Monstrous! When I was a lad, it was dark from five in the evening until noon the next day, and the July temperature never exceeded fifty degrees on Professor-Doktor Fahrenheit’s scale. I am certain that the world is hurtling ever closer to the Sun, overbalanced as it is on one side by the overbreeding of the fecund Hindoo, but at present there is little I can do about it.
Still, if July is the cruelest month, it at least provides some relief in the form of the annual re-drilling of my cataracts. This irrigation, performed by the able hands of Doc McGillicuddy, prevents my eyes, swollen as they are with a milky, bilious substance, from bursting in the cruel heat of summer, running down my face and pooling in my lap.
As the publisher of the Republic’s greatest news-paper, my entire life and livelihood have been shaped by the printed word. However, I still enjoy it immensely, no matter how cruelly it has twisted my life and I believe books may be the salvation of our vile populist society, once the bad ones have been collected in great piles and set alight, and, of course, once G.K. Chesterton is hunted down and shot.
Here is my reading-list for the next six weeks:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds by Charles Mackay. A valuable primer for the management of large populations.
The Rivet In Grand-Father’s Neck by James Branch Cabell, which I chose on title alone.
Delta Of Venus by Anais Nin. I love a good strapping travel book.
The Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum. A nightmarish cautionary tale of agrarian revolution–complete with a hideous tin ro-bot!
Flowers In The Attic by V.C. Andrews. An endearing naturalist perspective on child-hood–somewhat twee, but undeniably heart-warming.
The Book of Leviticus.
Goddamn The Lot Of You, my autobiography. I have been told it was written by ghosts, and the super-natural intrigues me.
These books should occupy your feeble minds for the rest of the year; and, come to think of it, what I read is none of your God-damned business any-way.
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
