Drawing by Darwin Leon
EPISTLE TO MS. BBOCCHINO
ON RED HERRING COUNTER-CRITICAL METHODOLOGY
BY
DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS
Dear Ms. Bbocchino:
Thank you very much for your critique of my remarkable essay, 'Against Constructive Criticism,' as follows:
‘Mr. Walters, you wrote, “If it were not for his beating about the bush, the world would still be flat and man's life would be terrifyingly stunted.” I will say that maybe this waitress got that one. However you chased red herrings all over your criticism of the construction criticism of your meandering work? What has the medical credentials of a critic like Doctor Cynica or the expertise of a grammarian got to do with your complete lack of focus or that your work is not an easy read. Yes, you have a talent for words. I hope you continue writing. But maybe you could try a little humility or at least enough sophistication to avoid appearing defensive about your work. I am, however, just a waitress from Alabama who attended public schools, so don't take me too seriously, although it would be cool if you devoted as much time trying to tear me apart as you did the good doctor who bothered to criticize you, if that would make me famous? Sincerely, Ms. Bbocchino’
Yes, I would make you famous if I could. No, I would not make you so by tearing you apart.
As you can see for yourself, I have put your stage name, just as you wrote it, at the top of this billing. I will be glad to change it whenever you wish. However, by that time you might already be famous, not because of my agency, but because nearly all famous Hollywood actresses were waitresses at one time or another, hence you might be discovered any day now.
No, I shall not tear you up, because I was once a dishwasher, a busboy, a waiter and a bartender: I know better than to torment someone who might be serving my food to me. Allow me to give our audience three examples of what might happen to people who torment waitresses, not that you are capable of committing such unethical disservices to your own customers. The following acts were all performed by June, a waitress with whom I happened to be in love.
1. A drug pusher frequented W.M. Tweed’s, the Upper West Side restaurant where June worked, in between his drug runs from South America and Mexico. He was a real hot shot, or so he thought, and he had a habit of groping waitresses. Well, one day he pinched June on the breast as she was serving him a Mexican Pizza covered with hot cheese, so she shoved the Pizza right into his face. He screamed bloody murder before he was taken to the hospital. Given his risky profession, he did not bother to sue the restaurant. June was suspended for three days.
2. A cranky lady, as part of her daily ritual, came in early every evening, sat down at a table, and ordered coffee. She rarely ordered anything to eat. She always left a quarter tip. She invariably complained that the coffee was cold and sent it back. One evening, June put the cup of coffee in the oven for awhile, then placed it on a cold saucer, set it down in front of the lady, and warned her twice that it was very hot. Her warning went unheeded. The lady’s scream resounded throughout the premises when she picked up the cup. The boss had to get some ice for the burned hand. June was suspended for one day, which happened to be her busiest one.
3. Four drunken, loudmouthed yuppies came in. They all ordered the chef's famous chili. They gave June a very rude time, and sent the chili back, claiming it did not have enough cumin in it. So June opened up four cans of dog food in the kitchen, dumped in the requisite spices, heated up four bowls of dog-chili and set them down in front of the yuppies. They ordered more, and when they left they asked for the recipe. This was in fact a very common fate of yuppies who invaded uptown restaurants in those days.
So please excuse me, Ms. Bbocchino, I shall refrain from cutting you up, for I love and fear waitresses because of the foregoing sort of experiences, which do occur every day across this great nation of ours.
As for Doctor Cynica, please be informed that I thought her comment criticizing my excellent essay entitled 'Grammar' was a joke, because her quote of Safire did not appertain to it and, besides, as everyone knows, Mencken and not Safire, as she had it, is the real expert on grammar. I checked with other critics who also thought someone was playing a joke on me. So that gave me the idea to launch my Red Herring in accordance with my Red Herring Critical Methodology.
Now I congratulate you for using the expression 'Red Herring', which demonstrates that you got the gist of the difference that Mencken drew between a bad and a good critic.
Subsequent to the publication of my essay, I discovered that there really was a Doctor Cynica, and that the doctor's criticism was not intended as a joke. I had a couple of regrets, but decided to play the whole thing to the hilt. Still, I want to assure you, if I had known all this beforehand, I would not have penned my essay, so she has my gratitude.
Furthermore, I now realize the doctor was only making her critical rounds of literary sites: I am sure she thought she was following the injunction to "Do no harm", despite the hurt feelings she has provoked. Moreover, since we usually learn our grammar from our mothers, a woman is entitled to do some henpecking once in awhile just to stay in shape, is she not? Keep in mind here, however, that I lost my mother at an early age. Then I lost the foster mother who had given me the run of the house and the town. I wound up in the hands of a lady who resented me very much and who constantly nagged me and much more: I am somewhat touchy in the henpecking area.
Thank you for the advice on being humble and sophisticated, but I prefer to be myself, to tell the truth. I am a proud man. I had to be proud to grow up as a street urchin after running away at age thirteen to the streets of Chicago, where I enrolled in the School of Hard Knocks. It appears that I will graduate pretty soon, and my only regret is that I will not be here to see my diploma. So please do not fret over your Alabama public school education. I am sure it will suffice just as well as my Kansas grammar-school education. In any event, I think you might now understand why I consider Grammar to be my mother, and you might also better understand my tribute to her in the little essay Doctor Cynica criticized, 'Grammar'.
By the way, I, like many who have served in the food service industry, am a trained actor, so I can act humbly and sophisticatedly on the stage, and I can do so whether or not the humility is hypocritical, as it usually is in real life, and whether or not the sophist I play is a wise man like Socrates, or a damned liar such as Plato castigated.
Speaking of sophists, I might have become a mighty fine lawyer under the right conditions. As for medicine, I never had much interest in doctoring. Although I realize that both doctors and lawyers serve society well, I have made many objections to their fees, such as the one I made when I tried to open a bank account in Brooklyn. The bank representative said I would have to have letters of recommendation from a doctor and a lawyer in order to open a new account. I exclaimed, "From two of the biggest crooks in town!" I was asked to leave the bank. I had no problem opening an account with Chase Bank in Manhattan without such letters of reference, and was glad to move to Manhattan shortly thereafter.
Now, then, have I left anything out? Oh, yes, there is the matter of readability. I'm fortunate to be barely understandable given my limited education. Nearly every book I have studied was a hard read: anything else bores me terribly. I suppose I express myself accordingly. Please excuse me then, for I am set in my ways and would not change them if I could.
As for my lack of focus, I used to have a keen focus when I was a dancer in New York. I told my father about my focus and about what I focused on. And I told him how and why all the straight dancers vied for the same perspective behind a great dancer named Jennifer: she wound up going to Hollywood to be in a film. My father wrote this little poem about my focus:
What Has God Wrought? by R.B.C. Walters
Jennifer's Ass is so divine
A mortal man on viewing it
Might feel himself so blessed he can endure
Living in the city.
For he, commuting to and fro,
Always knows his ride
Takes him to see the Ass
Or from a fresh recollection
Of having seen it.
But now the Ass, alas,
Has moved to California.
In closing, I must admit that I have lost my focus since Jennifer left town. Yes, I have turned to more abstract and obscure subjects. In all events, please know that I am,
Sincerely yours,
David Arthur Walters
The Red Herring Critical Club
