TPPM Barthelme: "Melancholy"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Melancholy. As any Elizabethan could tell you if
they all weren't dead, melancholy is a far richer and
more complex ailment than simple depression. There is
a generous amplitude of possibility, chances for
productive behavior, even what may be identified as a
sense of humor. Barthelme's was a specifically urban
melancholy, related to that look of immunity to joy or
even surprise seen in the faces of cab drivers,
bartenders, street dealers, city editors, a wearily
taken vow to persist beneath the burdens of the day
and the terrors of the night. Humor in these
conditions leans toward the anti-transcendent; like
jail humor and military and rodeo humor, it finds high
amusement in failure and loss, and it celebrates
survival one day, one disaster, to the next."

http://www.vheissu.org/bio/eng_barthelme.htm

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/barthelme.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_barthelme.htm


Melancholy

Main Entry: mel·an·choly
Pronunciation: 'me-l&n-"kä-lE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -chol·ies
Etymology: Middle English malencolie, from Middle
French melancolie, from Late Latin melancholia, from
Greek, from melan- + cholE bile -- more at GALL
1 a : an abnormal state attributed to an excess of
black bile and characterized by irascibility or
depression b : BLACK BILE c : MELANCHOLIA
2 a : depression of spirits : DEJECTION b : a pensive
mood

Main Entry: mel·an·cho·lia
Pronunciation: "me-l&n-'kO-lE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Late Latin, melancholy
: a mental condition characterized by extreme
depression, bodily complaints, and often
hallucinations and delusions; especially : a
manic-depressive psychosis
- mel·an·cho·li·ac /-lE-"ak/ noun

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary


"As any Elizabethan could tell you ..."

Burton, Robert.  The Anatomy of Melancholy.
   Ed. Holbrook Jackson.  New York: NYRB Books,
   2001 [1621].

http://www.nybooks.com/shop/product?product_id=2


"... if they weren't all dead ..."

Cf. "jail humor and military and rodeo humor" ...

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