Copious Free Time

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Around 1956, Jean Shepherd launched a hoax on his radio show as a dig at [pseudo-]intellectuals. He made up a fake bawdy novel, I, Libertine, and urged his listeners (who were in on it) to ask their booksellers for it. The book got quite a bit of attention, and a number of Shepherd's targets pretended to know more about it than existed. Eventually, the hoax was admitted, and Ballantine Books, which had been eager to publish the book, proved still eager to publish the book. Shepherd was offered a deal, and he accepted, bringing Theodore Sturgeon in on the writing, and the two penned the tome under the name "Frederick R. Ewing," and it was published with a handsome cover by Kelly Freas.

Every so often, I look for the book. An ebook would suffice, I think, since the real paperback goes for right around $40 to $50. My quest invariably fails. (Edited to add: A great cover, too, replete with in-jokes like "EXCELSIOR" and symbolic representations of 'Sturgeon' (the fish on the sign) and 'Shepherd' (the shepherd's crook on the sign) showing Freas's puckish humor at work.)



I do feel, though, that I hit it about as lucky as I'm likely to today: there is an audiobook. Thirteen chapters, plus introduction, can be found at the Shep Archives at flicklives.com. They bear a copyright date of 2006. I see that they are also available at montclair.edu, with filesizes twice as large, or larger, so they must be better!

It's a bit late, so I'm not going to hear it tonight. But I thought I'd share what seems to be my good fortune. If any of you (Bud Webster?) knows where I can get a copy for a fraction of the prices I've found so far, I'd like to know about it.
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"I enjoyed perfect health throughout the following year, and nobody tried to assassinate me, and the one revolution that was attempted ended in a most ignominious way for its prime mover. This was Asinius Gallus, grandson of Asinius Pollio and son of Tiberius's first wife, Vipsania, by Gallus whom she afterwards married and whom Tiberius hated so and finally killed by slow starvation. It is curious how appropriate some people's names are. Gallus means cock, and Asinus means donkey, and Asinius Gallus was the most utter little donkey-cock for his boastfulness and stupidity that one could find in a month's tour of Italy. Imagine, he had not got any troops ready or collected any funds for his revolution, but believed that the strength of his personality supported by the nobility of his birth would win him immediate adherents!

"He appeared one day on the Oration Platform in the Market Place and began to hold forth to a crowd which soon assembled, on the evils of tyranny, dwelling on my uncle Tiberius's murder of his father, and saying how, necessary it was to root out the Caesar family from Rome and give the monarchy to someone really worthy of it. From his mysterious hints the crowd gathered that he meant himself and began to laugh and cheer. He was a wretched orator and the ugliest man in the Senate, not more than four foot six in height, with bottle-shoulders, a great long face, reddish hair, and a tiny little bright red nose (he suffered from indigestion); yet he thought himself Hercules and Adonis rolled into one. There was not, I believe, a single person in the Market Place who took him seriously, and all sorts of jokes went flying about such as: 'Asinus in tegulls' and 'Asinus ad lyram' and 'Ex Gallo lac et ova.' (A donkey on the roof-tiles is a proverbial expression for any sudden grotesque apparition, and a donkey playing on a lyre stands for any absurdly incompetent performance, and cock's milk and cock's eggs stand for nonsensical hopes.) However, they went on cheering every sentence to see what absurdity would come next: and sure enough, when his speech' ended he tried to lead the whole mob up to the Palace to depose me. They followed him in a long column, eight abreast, up to about twenty paces from the outer Palace Gate and then suddenly halted and let him go on by himself, which he did. The sentries at the gate let him through without question, because he was a senator, and he went marching on into the Palace grounds for some distance, shouting threats against me, before he realized that he was alone. (Crowds can be very witty and very cruel sometimes, as well as very stupid and very cowardly.) He was soon arrested, and although the whole affair was so ridiculous I could; hardly overlook it: I banished him, but no farther than Sicily, where he had family estates.

"'Go away and crow on your own dung-hill or bray in your own thistle-field, whichever you prefer, but don't let me hear you,' I told the ugly, excitable little man."

from Claudius the God by Robert Graves
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