Eno's sense of humour

[Mr Craig Clark]

Joe Varo wrote:

You write:

> I vaguely recall having seen Eno on the Letterman show quite some time 
> ago and he did have quite a sense of humor.

Eno's sense of humour is quite legendary: he is fond of playing odd 
pranks. To take an example I only twigged to recently: a number of
his recordings feature sleeve notes by someone called C.S.J. Bofop - 
the letter before C is B, the letter before S is R, etc. 

My favourite example is the talk he gave some years ago at the Metropolitan 
Museum of Modern Art. He explained that he'd decided to liberate 
Marcel Duchamp's _Fountain_ from the pseudo-mysticism surrounding its 
status as Art by returning it to its original function. That is to 
say, he took a piss in the controversial urinal-as-art-object. He 
then gave a very serious talk about how one way to resist the 
deplored "commodification of art" was to do as he had done: he had 
not commodified Duchamp's work, but had rather "re-commode-ified" it. 
An odd, somewhat laboured, but IMHO nonetheless brilliant pun: it 
could almost be one of Pynchon's.

Craig Clark

"Living inside the system is like driving across
the countryside in a bus driven by a maniac bent
on suicide."
   - Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"