Incipient Vulgarity

[Steelhead]

Does anyone go off like t-that Henry Carr in Tom Stoppard's Travesties,
which happens to take place in that Zurich, and involve such luminaries of
that Moment In European Time as Lenin, Tristan Tzara, and James Joyce.
Here's a sampling of invective that puts even Mascaro and me to shame:

Carr (excoriating Tzara--My God, you little Romanian wog--you bloody
dago--you jumped-up phrase-making smar-alecky arty-intellectual Balkan
turd!!! Think you know it all!--while we poor dupes think we're fighting
for ideals, you've got a profound understanding of what is *really* going
on, underneath!--you've got a phrase for it! You pedant! Do you think your
phrases are the true sum of each man's living each day?--*capitalism with
the gloves off?--do you think that's the true experience of a wire-cutting
party caught in a crossfire in no-man's land?--Why not infantile sexuality
in khaki trews? Or the collective unconscious in a tin hat? It's all the
rage in Zurich!--You slug!....And what brings you here, my dear Tristan?

Tzara--Oh, pleasure, pleasure...What else should bring anyone anywhere?
Eating as usual, I see, Henry?

Carr--I believe it is customary in good society to take a cucumber sandwich
at five o'clock. Where have you been since last Thursday?

Tzara--In the public library.

Carr--What on earth were you doing there?

Tzara--That's just what I kept asking myself.

Carr--And what was the reply?

Tzara--"Ssssh!" Cecily does not approve of garrulity in the Reference Section.

Carr--Who is Cecily? And is she as pretty and well-bred as she sounds?
Cecily is a name well thought of at fashionable christenings.

Tzara--Cecily is a librarianness. I say, do you know someone called Joyce?

Carr--*Joyce* is a name which could only expose a child to comment around
the font.

Tzara--No, no, Mr. Joyce, Irish writer, mainly of limmericks, christened
James Augustine, though registered, due to a clerical error, as James
Augusta, a little known fact.

Carr--Certainly I did not know it. But then I have never taken an interest
in Irish affairs. In fashionable society it would be considered a sign of
incipient vulgarity with radical undertones."

Heh, heh.

Steely