MRS. OGI ORDERS JAZZ
Says Mrs. Ogi: “Well, I see you are having your way.”
Now this is a sore subject in the cave. Each of the residents is
absolutely certain that it is always the other who has his or her way;
and each is able to cite chapter and verse, and frequently does so.
However, at present Ogi has a guilty conscience, so he speaks softly. “I
am almost through with my explanation of industrial evolution.”
“Almost!” sniffs Mrs. Ogi. “How much more?”
“Well, I have to show how successive classes emerge and acquire power--”
“Until at last we see the inevitable triumph of the proletariat and the
establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth! That will be so new to
your readers, and so delightfully exciting! And meantime they sit and
wonder when the scandals begin.”
“Scandals?” says Ogi. “Have I said anything about scandals?”
“You tell your readers you’re going to turn the artists’ pockets inside
out and show what is in them! If you don’t do it, they’ll say, ‘This
show is a frost!’”
I mention that Mrs. Ogi was brought up in exclusive social circles,
where never a breath of slang could pass her lips without some female
relative raising a finger and whispering: “Hush!” But times are
changing, and marriage becomes more and more a lottery.
Says Mrs. Ogi’s husband: “Of course I intend to muck-rake individual
artists--”
“Which artists?”
“Well, I have to begin at the beginning--”
“But you’ve already begun with the beginning of the world!”
“I have to begin now with the first significant art.”
Mrs. Ogi’s snort reminds her husband of the old days of the aurochs
hunt. “What the American people want to know is how many thousand
dollars a week Gloria Swanson is really getting, and what was Rupert
Hughes’ total income from ‘The Sins of Hollywood.’ Is all that to be put
off to the end of your book?”
“But how can I deal with present-day art ahead of ancient art?”
“You make me think of those interminable English novels, which begin
with the infancy of the hero, and get through public school at page
three hundred and something!”
“But, my dear, there is some old literature that people are really
interested in. The Bible for example--”
“The Hundred Best Books! Number two, Homer; number three, Shakespeare;
Number four, Paradise Lost--”
“But you overlook the fact--the Bible is a best-seller!”
“The people who buy it are not people who read about art, or would ever
hear of a book on art theories. They are people like Mamma! Once upon a
time a book-agent offered her a set of the World’s Great Orations, and
she decided the dark red leather binding would go well with the
draperies in the drawing-room. Then a couple of weeks later came another
man, selling a set of books in dark green cloth. She decided these would
match the decorations in the billiard-room, so she bought them also, and
it wasn’t until afterwards that somebody noticed the family had two sets
of the same World’s Great Orations!”
“But, my dear, there really is literature in the Bible.”
“People have been told about literature in the Bible since they were
children in Sunday school, and there’s no idea in the whole world that
bores them quite so much.”
“But that’s exactly the point! That’s what this book is for--to show how
real literature was alive in its own day, and is just as much alive in
the present day. Don’t you see what a fascinating theme: they had in
Judea the very same class struggle--”
There has come that fanatical light into his eyes which Mrs. Ogi knows
so well; he means to make her sit and listen to a whole chapter--and
when she has the laundry to count, and the apples to boil for his
supper! “Go ahead and write it,” she says, in a weary voice. “But take
my advice and jazz it up!”
So Ogi goes away and postpones his exposition of the successive
emergence of social classes; and instead of an impressive title such as
“Agrarian Revolt in Ancient Judea,” he begins--