Isegoria

Jim Varney’s Ernest Goes to Camp has been locked away in the Disney vault alongside Song of the South:

If an out-of-touch portrayal of Native Americans was the only mark against Ernest Goes to Camp, it would be streaming today; after all, Ernest Goes to Africa, is on AppleTV. The problem isn’t how the film depicts Native Americans, it’s who is playing Chief St. Cloud that’s the problem. Iron Eyes Cody, a veteran of Hollywood Westerns going back to the 1940s, plays camp owner Chief St. Cloud, and the controversy over him has doomed the film to obscurity.

Ernest Goes to Camp was far from the first film to cast Iron Eyes Cody as a Native American, and chances are, you know him from the famous “Crying Indian” commercial about littering. A close friend of Walt Disney, Iron Eyes Cody was Hollywood’s go-to for Native American roles, but in 1996, it was revealed that his real name was Espera Oscar de Coti, and he was Italian. This was after he spent decades living as a Native American, wearing “traditional” outfits in his daily life, and fooling everyone, including Disney. Espera denied this claim until he passed away in 1999, despite his family producing a baptismal certificate with his real name.

Dwarkesh recently interviewed the inimitable Gwern — who (a) wanted to remain anonymous and (b) isn’t comfortable speaking to an audience, because of the “deaf accent” he retains from growing up with impaired hearing: “In order to protect Gwern’s anonymity, I proposed interviewing him in person, and having my friend Chris Painter voice over his words after. This amused him enough that he agreed.”

After the episode, Dwarkesh convinced Gwern to create a donation page where people can help sustain what he’s up to.

I recently listened to and enjoyed an audiobook version of King Solomon’s Mines narrated by Patrick Tull, who has narrated the Master and Commander series and other very English works:

It is one of the first English adventure novels set in Africa and is considered to be the genesis of the lost world literary genre. It is the first of fourteen novels and four short stories by Haggard about Allan Quatermain.

I was shocked by how little I remembered from reading it decades ago, and then I checked my bookshelves. I’d only read the first sequel, Allan Quartermain, and H. Rider Haggard‘s other famous work, She. She is one of the handful of books that Tolkien explicitly acknowledges as an influence, but King Solomon’s Mines is obviously an influence too — and on Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, etc. Any D&D player will nod knowingly at our hero following an old scrap of a map to an isolated kingdom with a mine full of treasure.

The isolated kingdom does not belong to dwarves or elves, in this case, but to Africans, the fictional Kukuana tribe:

Indeed, in Kukuanaland, as among the Germans, the Zulus, and the Masai, every able-bodied man is a soldier, so that the whole force of the nation is available for its wars, offensive or defensive.

I got a chuckle at that comment about Germans.

Anyway, Quartermain’s role in the big battle reminded me of Bilbo’s in the Battle of Five Armies:

All I can remember is a dreadful rolling noise of the meeting of shields, and the sudden apparition of a huge ruffian, whose eyes seemed literally to be starting out of his head, making straight at me with a bloody spear. But — I say it with pride — I rose — or rather sank — to the occasion. It was one before which most people would have collapsed once and for all. Seeing that if I stood where I was I must be killed, as the horrid apparition came I flung myself down in front of him so cleverly that, being unable to stop himself, he took a header right over my prostrate form. Before he could rise again, I had risen and settled the matter from behind with my revolver.

Shortly after this somebody knocked me down, and I remember no more of that charge.

As you may recall, Bilbo spots the eagles before suffering a similar fate:

“The Eagles!” cried Bilbo once more, but at that moment a stone hurtling from above smote heavily on his helm, and he fell with a crash and knew no more.

Later, Quartermain’s companion, Good, gets brutally stabbed with a spear:

Before we had gone far, suddenly we discovered the figure of Good sitting on an ant-heap about one hundred paces from us. Close beside him was the body of a Kukuana.

“He must be wounded,” said Sir Henry anxiously. As he made the remark, an untoward thing happened. The dead body of the Kukuana soldier, or rather what had appeared to be his dead body, suddenly sprang up, knocked Good head over heels off the ant-heap, and began to spear him. We rushed forward in terror, and as we drew near we saw the brawny warrior making dig after dig at the prostrate Good, who at each prod jerked all his limbs into the air. Seeing us coming, the Kukuana gave one final and most vicious dig, and with a shout of “Take that, wizard!” bolted away. Good did not move, and we concluded that our poor comrade was done for. Sadly we came towards him, and were astonished to find him pale and faint indeed, but with a serene smile upon his face, and his eyeglass still fixed in his eye.

“Capital armour this,” he murmured, on catching sight of our faces bending over him. “How sold that beggar must have been,” and then he fainted. On examination we discovered that he had been seriously wounded in the leg by a tolla in the course of the pursuit, but that the chain armour had prevented his last assailant’s spear from doing anything more than bruise him badly. It was a merciful escape. As nothing could be done for him at the moment, he was placed on one of the wicker shields used for the wounded, and carried along with us.

This might call to mind Frodo’s experience in the Mines of Moria:

But even as they retreated, and before Pippin and Merry had reached the stair outside, a huge orc-chieftain, almost man-high, clad in black mail from head to foot, leaped into the chamber; behind him his followers clustered in the doorway. His broad flat face was swart, his eyes were like coals, and his tongue was red; he wielded a great spear. With a thrust of his huge hide shield he turned Boromir’s sword and bore him backwards, throwing him to the ground. Diving under Aragorn’s blow with the speed of a striking snake he charged into the Company and thrust with his spear straight at Frodo. The blow caught him on the right side, and Frodo was hurled against the wall and pinned. Sam, with a cry, hacked at the spear-shaft, and it broke. But even as the orc flung down the truncheon and swept out his scimitar, Andúril came down upon his helm. There was a flash like flame and the helm burst asunder. The orc fell with cloven head. His followers fled howling, as Boromir and Aragorn sprang at them.

[…]

‘I am all right,’ gasped Frodo. ‘I can walk. Put me down!’

Aragorn nearly dropped him in his amazement. ‘I thought you were dead!’ he cried.

[…]

‘I am all right,’ said Frodo, reluctant to have his garments touched. ‘All I needed was some food and a little rest.’

‘No!’ said Aragorn. ‘We must have a look and see what the hammer and the anvil have done to you. I still marvel that you are alive at all.’ Gently he stripped off Frodo’s old jacket and worn tunic, and gave a gasp of wonder. Then he laughed. The silver corslet shimmered before his eyes like the light upon a rippling sea. Carefully he took it off and held it up, and the gems on it glittered like stars, and the sound of the shaken rings was like the tinkle of rain in a pool.

‘Look, my friends!’ he called. ‘Here’s a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle-earth would be riding to the Shire.’

‘And all the arrows of all the hunters in the world would be in vain,’ said Gimli, gazing at the mail in wonder. ‘It is a mithril-coat. Mithril! I have never seen or heard tell of one so fair. Is this the coat that Gandalf spoke of? Then he undervalued it. But it was well given!’

‘I have often wondered what you and Bilbo were doing, so close in his little room,’ said Merry. ‘Bless the old hobbit! I love him more than ever. I hope we get a chance of telling him about it!’

There was a dark and blackened bruise on Frodo’s right side and breast. Under the mail there was a shirt of soft leather, but at one point the rings had been driven through it into the flesh. Frodo’s left side also was scored and bruised where he had been hurled against the wall.

Earlier in the story, our heroes must impress the natives with their magic, and they threaten to put out the sun. The old eclipse trope? I had to look it up, and King Solomon’s Mines was published in 1885, four years before A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, so add Twain to the long list of authors inspired by Haggard.

The audiobook I listened to was apparently based on an early edition of the book, because Haggard went on to change it to a lunar eclipse in later editions, after realising that his description of a solar eclipse was not realistic.

As I’ve noted before, Valentine’s Day is an odd holiday. Saint Valentine is the name of fourteen different martyred saints — and the one whose feast falls on February 14? We don’t know anything about him, beyond his name, except that he was born on April 16 and died on February 14. And he was removed from the Catholic calendar of saints in 1969.

In fact, it doesn’t look like Saint Valentine was associated with romantic love at all until Geoffrey Chaucer wrote Parliament of Fowls in 1382 in honor of the first anniversary of the engagement of King Richard II of England to Anne of Bohemia:

For this was Saint Valentine’s Day,
When every bird cometh there to choose his mate.

And that reference probably was not to February 14 — mid-February is an unlikely time for birds to be mating in England — and Chaucer appears to be making up a fictional tradition that never existed.

The notion caught on though, and we see it mentioned in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and John Donne’s Epithalamion a couple hundred years later.

Around that time Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene gave us a rhyme that should sound familiar:

She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,
And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.

It inspired the modern cliche Valentine’s Day poem, which appeared in Gammer Gurton’s Garland in 1784:

The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it shou’d be you.

Interactive books weren’t a completely new idea before Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), but they weren’t popular:

There was a romance novel from the 1930s, where the reader decides which suitor the protagonist marries with dozens of possible endings. Several high-concept stories arrived by the 50s and 60s, like Raymond Queneau’s surreal Story As You Like It or Robert Coover’s explicit and unsettling The Babysitter. Celebrated for their uniqueness, none of these caught on beyond their novelty, and were purely adult fare. It wasn’t until a lawyer teamed up with a young writer to find a way to bring this idea to bookshelves across the country.

Edward Packard came from a family deep in the legal business, but practicing law was never something he truly cared about. While his passion was writing, Ed’s children’s books were never picked up by publishers. His fate changed one evening in 1969 while making up a bedtime story for his two daughters about a character named Pete. Struck by writer’s block, Packard couldn’t figure out how to progress the tale and asked his kids what should happen next. When both girls answered differently, he realized Pete was never the protagonist – it was his kids living those adventures firsthand in their imaginations. Immediately, Packard knew he was onto something.

Ray Montgomery had just started Vermont Crossroads Press in 1970, after cutting his teeth writing roleplaying scenarios for Clark Abt, a pioneer in educational games. The Yale and NYU grad had aspirations larger than his employer and ventured out to make a name for himself in publishing. When Packard walked into his office with a draft of Sugarcane Island in 1976, Montgomery saw great potential that perfectly aligned with his interests. “I Xeroxed 50 copies of Ed’s manuscript and took it to a reading teacher in Stowe,” Montgomery said in an interview from 1981. “His kids — third grade through junior high — couldn’t get enough of it.”

Sugarcane Island became the best-selling book of the upstart publisher, moving over five thousand copies, but they were still an unknown entity in a crowded landscape.

It was this point where things started to get messy for Packard and Montgomery. Both writers saw a a potential for larger success beyond the small Vermont publishing house, and the two pursued greener pastures, independent from each others ventures. Packard published two CYOA-style books in 1978 under Harper imprint, Lippincott. Meanwhile, Montgomery’s agent managed to obtain a six-book deal from Bantam in 1979, with the caveat that Packard must be involved. Cooler heads prevailed, and the duo came together to split the deal and workload.

Similar to the origin story of Sugarcane Island, Packard turned to his kids for story ideas. His daughter, Andrea, told him about her summer escapades spelunking, and her desire to wander solo to explore more. She imagined a tunnel that could transport her to another time or place, and her dad loved it! Andrea scribbled more notes, and ultimately ideated the first published CYOA book, “The Cave of Time.”

[…]

A fortuitous mistake resulted in Bantam overprinting this inaugural entry, and the publisher remedied its overstock by donating 100,000 books to schools and libraries throughout America. This charitable act guaranteed their target audience would have no problem discovering the book, transforming CYOA into a household name practically overnight.

[…]

Sales dwindled until the company flew the white flag in 1998, ending with book #184, Mayday, which Packard co-wrote with the person responsible for the very first title in the franchise, his daughter Andrea.