Could This Be the Funniest Book Ever Written?
Books of advice come in many forms: financial, spiritual, physical, philosophical. Novels too are books of advice, if read in a certain light. Eve Babitz understood, for example, that part of Colette's greatness is that you can open her novels anywhere and 'brush up on what to do.'
There are only two advice books I've read more than once. One is Tom Hodgkinson's 'How to Be Idle' (2004). Its title is self-explanatory. The other is J.P. Donleavy's 'The Unexpurgated Code' (1975). Its title is less so. Donleavy's book is a sendup of the form that happens to be, possibly, the funniest book ever written.
'The Unexpurgated Code' turns 50 this year. It has dropped from sight, and yet here we are at a moment when the world could use it. It's a book to turn to when you need a little pick-me-up. It is Bolivian marching powder for the spirit. Its table of contents alone is more happily anarchic than most books in their entireties. Here are a few of Donleavy's 270 topics:
'Upon Placing the Blame for Venereal Infection,' 'Upon Embellishing Your Background,' 'Upon Being Unflatteringly Dressed in an Emergency,' 'Upon Your Spit Landing on Another,' 'Upon Fouling the Footpath,' 'Upon Heaping Abuse on the High and Mighty,' 'Upon Being Exorcised' and 'Upon the Nearby Arrival of a Flying Saucer.'
Donleavy is best known as the author of 'The Ginger Man,' his tumultuous 1955 comic novel about Sebastian Dangerfield, an American student living in Dublin. (Sample sentence: 'All I want is one break which is not my neck.') He is also the author of many other novels, plays and books of stories. His novel 'A Fairy Tale of New York' (1973) inspired the title of the song by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl that helps make Christmastime bearable.
Donleavy was born in Brooklyn, to Irish immigrants, and grew up in the Bronx. He was the son of a firefighter. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he spent the rest of his life in Ireland. He was rarely photographed in anything other than layers of tweeds, so that he resembled a walking advertisement for 18-year-old Tullamore Dew.
Battered copies of 'The Unexpurgated Code' pass among admirers like samizdat. The reason isn't merely that it's funny. The book clocks the absurdities of human conduct like few others. It takes note of the chutes and trapdoors and ladders and ejection seats involved in all human discourse. It says: We're all miserable bipeds struggling for a bit of breathing room, so you might as well have a sense of humor about it all.
If you have been excluded from parties you wish you'd had the chance to boycott, if you lack long shanks, if you dine too often at low tables at bad addresses, if you feel as dented as a discarded ping pong ball, if you are not a member of the dividend-drawing classes, well, recall that Philip Larkin advised in a 1941 letter that 'stupid ills need stupid remedies,' and turn to Donleavy.
A few weeks ago, in a restaurant, I was snubbed — in front of my family! I found out later that it was an entirely accidental snubbing, and all is well, but it stung at the time. When I got home that night, still smarting, I consulted Donleavy. Here is a bit of his advice in 'Upon Being Snubbed,' which cheered me up instantly: 'Take solace from the fact that it is unlikely that you will ever be kidnapped.' You will not find such counsel in Miss Manners.
You can flip to almost any page in 'The Unexpurgated Code' and be reduced to helpless laughter. If you are not to the manner born and feel the need to defend your lineage, Donleavy writes, rummage around in your past: 'Someone must have been something once.' He adds: 'If you have received a Red Cross Life Saving Certificate, riposte pronto with this information.'
If you are stranded at a party with no one to talk to, 'this is a time to laugh lightly for no reason at all. Or for the reason that you have dumped your champagne in a flower pot and the plant keeled over. Ignore any askance looks.'
A section titled 'Upon Making the Contract for the Rubout' is a favorite. Here is Donleavy:
One of his imagined heavies is named 'One Fingered Legs Apart Vinnie.'
Donleavy covers a good deal of standard etiquette-book topics — how to behave at the table, the hair salon, the theater, the class reunion, the bank and while sick. ('Sneezing is one of the best ways of widely spreading your germs if this is what the people around you deserve.') But it gets risqué. There are sections on orgies and masturbation and voyeurism and how to behave in a porno theater.
There are also discourses on flatulence, notably as a method of communication between spies, on nose-picking and on the squeezing of pimples and blackheads. The latter maneuvers should be confined to people you know well, he writes, 'although it is also one of the fastest ways to get to know someone better.' There are many strange chambers in this nautilus spiral of a book.
Some of the finest sections are on suicide, execution ('Relax and wait. Most things will be taken care of for you') and death in general. He recommends that, if you learn you have but a short time to live, you 'do not rush out to a night club or the latest celebrity joint and scare the hell out of everybody.'
In your grief, do not jump onto coffins that are being lowered because 'with some of the cheaper materials they are using these days, your feet could go right through the lid and your possibly muddy shoes land with the most grossly embarrassing results on the corpse.'
Donleavy's book is a subversive companion piece, of sorts, to Nancy Mitford's 1955 essay 'The English Aristocracy,' which alerted the terrified world to the distinctions between 'U' (upper class) and 'non-U' language. Donleavy's book feels Anglocentric, yet he told The Paris Review that Americans are snobbier than Brits.
Donleavy's book is one for the world's underdogs, its confirmed pullers of social boners, those who sense they are too often taking a worsting from reality. It might make you indescribably happy. Indeed, there is a section titled 'Upon Encountering Happiness.' It reads, in full: 'Be wary at such times because most of life's blows fall then.'
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Controversial Country Star Makes Bold Statement About 'A Wife's Job'
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It's the Perfect Time For a Pulp Reunion
It's a comeback that fans have spent years praying for: the return of Pulp. Thirty years after Jarvis Cocker sang 'Let's all meet up in the year 2000,' the beloved Britpop band are finally back. Even after their wildly successful reunion tours in 2011 and 2022, nobody dared to hope for a new album from the band who made Nineties classics like Different Class and This Is Hardcore — until now. But their brilliant new album More is coming in June. 'It's 24 years since we did a record,' Cocker says. 'Which mystifies me, really.' Pulp had a historic run as the great British band of their generation, with Cocker as one of rock's genius storytellers and thrift-store trash-fashion icons. They kicked around for years as an indie band nobody cared about, in the tough Northern steel town of Sheffield. They finally blew up in the 1990s Britpop explosion, with the sex-and-shopping hit 'Common People.' But they always had their own style — Seventies glam-rock meets Eighties synth-disco glitz, in the alley between the library and the goth club. With his trademark bitchy wit, Cocker turned ordinary slice-of-life details into classics like 'Disco 2000' and 'Do You Remember The First Time?' More from Rolling Stone Watch Bob Dylan Perform a Stunning 'All Along the Watchtower' With Billy Strings Watch Bob Dylan's Shocking Cover of Ricky Nelson's 'Garden Party' Bob Dylan Covers the Pogues, Resurrects 'Mr. Tambourine Man' at Stunning Tour Launch But on More (out June 6) Pulp are boldly exploring the unknown: adult life. 'Someone told me the album is 'age appropriate,'' Cocker says. 'I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or not, but I guess I have to — I am an adult.' Today, Cocker is sitting in Katz's Delicatessen, the most legendary eatery on the Lower East Side. At 63, he's every inch the ultimate English rock-star gentleman, on a cold and rainy afternoon. He's eager to try his first taste of New York deli food — cheese blintzes and chicken soup. The deli is bustling, with a line around the corner and a famously fearsome staff, yet something about the legendary Jarvis charm makes them uncharacteristically glad to let him relax and chat for a few hours. Nobody recognizes him, but it doesn't matter. It's a law of nature: nobody ever complains about having him in the room. (He gets excited when he notices we're sitting under a framed photo of Jerry Lewis, and snaps a picture of it — the only time he even takes out his phone.) A few of the new Pulp songs are old sketches they finished up; most are totally new, fine-tuned at soundchecks and rehearsals on the band's 2022 reunion tour. ''Grownups' is the oldest one on the record,' he says. 'It's always been called 'Grownups' but I just could never get the words written. So it's kind of a relief that after nearly 30 years I've managed to write some words for it.' He blows softly on his hot soup. 'I suppose maybe that was it. Maybe the song decided to grow up.' Band reunions are often a bit sad — somebody needs money, or somebody's got hurt feelings. But this one has its own warm and benevolent spirit. Pulp remains a band of lifelong hometown friends, with the core of Nick Banks on drums, Mark Webber on guitar, Candida Doyle on keyboards. They're now expanded as a ten-piece band, with a prominent string section. The mid-life love ballad 'Farmer's Market' sums up the mood of the new album. 'We thought we were trying on dreams for size,' Cocker sings. 'We didn't know that we'd be stuck wearing them for the rest of our lives.' Pulp ran out of steam in the early 2000s, but they all moved on with their lives. Yet Cocker has remained one of global pop's most-wanted men. His band Jarv Is did the excellent 2020 album Beyond the Pale, with the quarantine anthem 'House Music All Night Long.' He's teamed up with everyone from Nancy Sinatra to Chilly Gonzalez, even playing the Hogwarts prom in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He became a longtime U.K. radio DJ, with his 'Domestic Disco' broadcasts, and published the memoir-manifesto Good Pop/Bad Pop. He's dabbled in weird underground projects like his art-perv electronic duo Relaxed Muscle, with his friend Jason Buckle — who now plays in Pulp. The biggest catalyst for More was the death of an old comrade — longtime bassist Steve Mackey, not just a Pulp member but a right-hand-man for much of Cocker's solo career. 'When Steve passed away, it's a kind of cliche, but it gives you a reality check,' Cocker says. 'It made us realize that we had a chance to be creative. We had time to create something, while we could. If you're still around, you've still got that opportunity to make things, so this is the time.' So he convened his old mates. 'I said, 'Let's meet up early next year and just have some rehearsals. Everybody brings some ideas and let's see where we can get. And that's how it started off really. No pressure — we weren't signed to a label or anything. Just to see if we can do it.' One of the wonders of the 2022 reunion tour was that audiences went bonkers for the new tunes. 'We've brought these songs, some of which are very old, back to life,' Cocker said at their New York show, before going into every audience's six least-favorite words: 'So how about a new song?' That's where people usually dash to the bar or a bathroom break. But these crowds cheered — screamed, really — at getting to hear new Pulp material. Especially the Bowie-style synth-glam anthem 'Spike Island,' where he looks back on the dashed rock-star dreams of youth ('I was born to perform, it's a calling'), and how they fizzled out. As he sings, 'The universe shrugged, then moved on.' 'I suppose another part of it is the fact I got married in June,' he says. 'We'd been together for a long time, then in 2018 we split up for a year, then we got back together. I was very lucky that I managed to revive the relationship. Dealing with changes is the trick of life — not that I claim to know what a trick of life is—but from experience, I think that's what it is. I've always had this thing that I don't like change. But you have to try and ride it, rather than get submerged by it.' They knocked out the album in just three weeks — a big change from the old days. 'It was very quick to do it, although some of the songs have been around for a long time,' he says. 'I think the band were in a bit of shock at how quick it was, probably even more than me, because they always had to go through the pain of waiting for me trying to write the words, trying to get that right. So they were bracing themselves for that again, but then it wasn't like that. So yeah, I take that as a sign that it was a ready-to-happen kind of thing.' Cocker has been a promiscuous collaborator over the years. Yet More has the distinct Pulp sound, evoking the shabby-glam swish of His 'N' Hers or Different Class. 'I think the main thing that makes Pulp sound like Pulp is that Nick the drummer plays extremely loudly, and that makes everybody else have to make themselves heard. So it's always got quite a lot of energy because people are actually frantically trying to make themselves heard over the top. And obviously Candida's got issues with movement' — she's had arthritis since her teens — 'so she has to make her parts work with what she's capable of doing. So you get all those things that everybody has, to make it work with the other people, and that gives it a certain sound. I'm glad we've got them. You can sometimes get frustrated — all drummers are always getting told off for speeding up. But 'Common People' speeds up something ridiculous, like 20 BPM. That's what gives it its energy.' Producer James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines DC) didn't try to cover up the band's idiosyncrasies. 'When we started off, that was the only way we knew how to do it anyhow,' Cocker says. 'And there was no such thing as Pro Tools or anything, so you couldn't massage things and make them perfectly in time. But what's the point of human music-making if it hasn't got some of that personality?' After Pulp, Cocker stayed in the public eye, but his mates went back to Sheffield and embraced ordinary life. The enjoyable 2014 doc Pulp: A Film About Life, Death, and Supermarkets has a scene where Nick Banks boasts about sponsoring his teen daughter's football team, while she rolls her eyes about 'me dad's crap band.' 'Nick's in this Sheffield band called the Everly Pregnant Brothers, who play in town,' Cocker says proudly. 'They do folk-tinged covers of famous songs, but with the words changed so it's about South Yorkshire. For instance, there's a kind of sauce in Sheffield called Henderson's Relish. They take Coldplay's 'Yellow' and changed it to 'it was all Hendo's.'' So much for rock & roll glitz. 'Candida's a counselor, talking to people who've been through stressful situations. And Mark has always had an interest in experimental film — he's published some books on that. But yeah, neither Mark nor Candida have done any musical stuff in years.' What spurred them to play again? 'I just rang them up,' he says. 'We met at my house, just outside Sheffield, and we just talked about it. Then we did have an attempted rehearsal, which luckily was not recorded with the instruments in my living room. We played four songs or whatever, and we just said, yeah, let's try it out. I dunno — maybe we did it out of curiosity.' The last Pulp tour, in 2011, was devoted to playing the hits — they took pride in refusing to flog a new album, simply aiming to do right by their songbook. But it was also about unfinished emotional business. 'It was my attempt to tidy up,' Cocker admits. 'I thought that Pulp kind of fizzled out in a not-so-good way. Also [guitarist] Russell [Senior] had left the group and I kind of felt bad about that.' Senior was a major creative force in the band until 1997, when he quit at the peak of their fame; he's now a local antiques dealer. 'We invited him back,' Cocker says, recalling the 2011 tour. 'He did play with us for a while, then he was coming to America, but he won't go on a plane anymore. He tried to get on a boat, but that wasn't available either. He just gave it up.' Anyone lucky enough to have seen that tour can tell you it was a triumphant success, musically, commercially, and emotionally. 'I thought that was going to be the full stop,' Cocker says. 'To finish it in a nice way and make it a pleasurable memory, rather than a slightly painful memory. Which it DID do.' For the core quartet, there's a shared history that goes back decades. 'That's the good thing about it,' he says. 'Because we don't really hang out as friends. We might see each other, but before we started playing again, it might have been once or twice a year. So it was a pleasure to realize that we could still play together and make something together. I think everybody's been quite happy about that.' Certainly, the warmth in their onstage camaraderie is palpable even from the audience. 'I'm glad that it comes across like that — maybe we're just naive,' he says. 'I saw Fleetwood Mac with Lindsey Buckingham, before he got chipped out again. I could see why he was slightly irritating, overzealously talking to the audience, and you could see the rest of them. [Loud sigh.] We're lucky that none of us has pissed the others off. Too bad. We're still talking to each other.' Pulp have always had a tight connection with their hometown, which inspired tributes like the 1992 electro-sleaze cult fave 'Sheffield: Sex City.' One of the More highlights, 'My Sex,' describes how he and his sister grew up there, raised by their working-class mother, in a female environment. 'I grew up in a neighborhood where all the men were gone,' he recalls. 'All the dads left. My dad, my auntie's husband, my mom's best friend's husband, they all left. It seemed like they all disappeared at the same time — maybe there was a couple months. But my mother's brother had died, so the only male in my life at that point was my grandfather. And I couldn't imagine him having sex, basically. So I was going through puberty and I wanted to find out about it, and so I found out by listening surreptitiously to what my mom was talking about with her friends. They were trying to date together, so they would talk about what was going on. And so I learned about stuff through them, a very female perspective.' That became part of his adolescent sexual confusion. 'It was difficult enough for me anyway, to start dating, because I was quite shy,' he says. 'But those mixed messages certainly didn't make it any easier.' Yet that's always been a crucial part of what made Cocker an icon and an unlikely sex symbol — unlike a lot of his fellow Nineties Britpop stars, he always had a fascination with female characters, in classics like 'Inside Susan' or 'Underwear.' 'I always made friends with women easier than I did with men because I had more experiences of hanging out with women, and that's okay,' he says. 'I've written songs from a woman's perspective, presumptuously, because I don't know exactly how it feels to be a woman. But a lot of those songs are really me commenting on my own actions from a female perspective.' One of his newfound inspirations on More is a rock poet he'd never given much attention until lately. 'I started listening to Bob Dylan, for the first time,' he says. 'I started on the train. It was practicalities, because the Victoria line is really noisy. You can only bear it if you ride with your fingers in your ears. So I thought instead of doing that, I could listen to Bob, with Blood on the Tracks. I got hooked on 'Tangled Up in Blue,' and then what's the next one — 'Simple Twist of Fate.' He tells you a story in such a magical way.' For a fan as eccentric as Cocker, it figures that he'd schedule his teenage-Dylan-freak phase for his sixties. 'I started listening because I saw him in London, on the Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. The stage was very dark, but I liked that — you felt like you were watching a seance, like they were trying to make contact with some spirits. He was playing the piano, just leaning on it. He did that song 'Key West' and that was just the most amazing song — it seemed so on the edge of disappearing. I looked up Key West — it's almost like an island, isn't it? But I still don't know what that song is about. 'Murder Most Foul' — when I first heard it, I really couldn't believe it.' For such a staunch advocate of pop trash, Cocker is surprisingly tuned out from modern radio. The airwaves are full of young stars spinning narratives with a Jarvis-style eye for junk detail, from Chappell to Billie to Olivia. But asked about any of them, he smiles politely and says 'I'll have to check that out.' (Just to pick the most glaring example, 'Pink Pony Club' is a Pulp banger if there ever was one.) 'I've got no knowledge of modern pop,' he admits. 'I used to listen to the chart show in the U.K. — it was always on Sunday — but I haven't done that probably this millennium. So my picture of pop is a very antiquated one. Taylor Swift, I heard her because Mark's daughter really likes her — he's taken her to see her sometimes. I don't really know the songs.' He's bemused to learn that young fans are discovering Pulp on TikTok. 'Really? I've never even been on TikTok. I tried Twitter first and I absolutely couldn't stand that — I was gone within half an hour. But Instagram I liked — it's like sending a postcard.' But the timing for More is perfect, especially in America, where Pulp are far more famous now than they were in their lifetime. Cocker is openly baffled by the band's cross-generational appeal. 'I did put a lot of my life into writing songs,' he says. 'And sometimes my real life suffered because of that, because I would say things in songs that I wouldn't say to people I was in a relationship with. That got me in trouble. Not a nice thing to do. But the thing is, you're not really in control of it. Sometimes you sit down and try to write a song, but nothing happens. It's horribly frustrating. That's why I have tried to retire a few times, but I've always come back to it. It's like a magic trick, isn't it? You're in touch with something that you don't quite understand, and the more you try to understand it, or control it, the more it slips away. If you grab at it, it'll disappear.' 'Grownups' is a song he spent years trying to grab, but it ended up as the centerpiece of More — in so many ways, he and the song grew up together. 'I was shivering on crutches,' he sings. 'More dead than alive/It was Christmas 1985.' It's an autobiographical tale of his shambolic youth, from when he was 22. 'That was when I got out of hospital,' he recalls. 'I'd fallen from a window, and they let me out the day before Christmas. I suppose that was a step in me growing up. I'd left school and was trying to do the band and it wasn't really working. But I ended up falling out the window and that gave me quite a lot of time to lie there and think about stuff. I decided that I was going to have to get out of Sheffield and go try something else.' That winter he also entered what turned out to be a long-term romance. 'The night I describe in the song, when I went around to her house for the first time — that was a very pivotal moment for me,' he says. 'It was strange actually because the next morning there was news about the [Challenger] space shuttle that exploded. At that point in my life, I used to take any events in the outside world as portents. I was a child who thought, 'I'm going to space when I grow up!' But the fact that the spaceship blew up made me think, 'Oh, that's it. Now you're in a relationship and you can't go to space anymore.' Very immature thought patterns, anyway.' But that immature 22-year-old ended up crafting this song for years, turning 'Grownups' into a grand statement of purpose. 'The last part I finished was the spoken section about that dream of going to another planet, looking back and seeing where you come from, but you can't get back there. That was a dream I had ten years ago. It seemed to fit in with the mood. It's the oldest song, but it's also now the longest song on the record—it's got the most words in it. So at least when I finally got around to doing it, I put some work in on it.' For a career full of lucky accidents and bizarre disasters, More is a summary of how Cocker and his Pulp bandmates have traveled through the years. 'It felt quite easy,' he says, with a slightly guilt-ridden grin. 'Which might seem like I'm lazy or whatever, but that's something I've learned — when things are working properly, that's what it's like. You have to be ready to accept the message when it's there. And if you're thinking too much, then it kind of bounces off you. But if you're open to it, then it comes through, and then you alter it a bit as it passes through you. But it's not like you made it. Some of the songs are old, some are new, but it was all just ready to happen. It could only have happened at this moment, after going through all the other stuff that hasn't been that pleasurable.' It's in his nature to be wary of good fortune, but he's finally learning to accept it. 'Music is supposed to be simple,' he says. 'I mean, LIFE is supposed to be simple, but it isn't always. So it's great when it is.' Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
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July 4 band concert in need of community support
Jun. 9—MORGANTOWN — For nearly half a century, a July 4 tradition has resonated through Morgantown—not the crackle of fireworks, but the sounds of a community band playing patriotic music. However, the future of the Morgantown Municipal Band's annual concert at the WVU Creative Arts Center is at risk due to lack of funding. Since the beginning, in 1978, the band has been a staple for the city's celebrations, bringing crowds of all ages. "People really value it. It's something that's gone on for so long, " said longtime flutist and Morgantown resident Dorothy Skidmore, who has played in the band for more tan 30 years. "It's not just a concert, but a tribute to the founding of our country." This year, the concert's survival depends on raising a remaining $2, 090. Sponsorships and donations that used to come from a few benefactors have faded. "The larger sums of money just aren't there anymore. It's been reduced to piecemeal donations, " Skidmore said. "The musicians are only paid $80, and we rehearse the day before. It's not a lot, but it's still work. People shouldn't be expected to play for free." Despite their minimal pay, most musicians in the band perform out of a passion for the music and the meaning behind it. "I think I'd do it without being paid, because I love doing it, " Skidmore added. "But there are people who feel strongly that this music deserves the same support that goes to other concerts in town, especially for a national holiday like this." The concert has moved over the years, originally held downtown before shifting to the Amphitheater, and later to the shaded area outside the WVU Creative Arts Center. The band has been conducted by C.B. Wilson for more than 30 years. "He always brought this sense of reverence to the concert, " Skidmore said. "He'd have veterans in the crowd stand when their military branch's anthem played, like 'Anchors Aweigh' for the Navy. It made the audience feel like they were part of something greater." Efforts to secure support and sponsors have come up short, while larger groups are not having such issues, she said. "Those groups get paid thousands, and here we are struggling to find $2, 000. It's surprising because this concert is about honoring our veterans and the founding of our country. It should be something people are proud to support, " Skidmore said. The band is hoping to have enough funds raised by June 15. If the goal is not met, Morgantown may experience the first Independence Day in nearly five decades without this concert. "This isn't just music. It's a celebration of freedom, of history, of community. And it would be heartbreaking to let that fade, " she said. Checks may be written to the Monongalia Symphony Orchestra, with the Morgantown Municipal Band cited on the "for " line and sent to 433 Western Ave., Morgantown, WV 26505. Questions may be directed to Elaine Riffle at 304-288-2034.
