Quickly (1 February 1956)
The Village Voice, 1 February 1956; transcription provided by Jerry Lucas; proofread against the source 2026-06-01.
Column Four
This week the first half of Quickly has been considerately supplied by Kenneth J. Schmidt of the Village, who has written what I believe is a most amusing parody of my second column. So let us go into:
Burp: A Column for People Who Can Read
by Normal Failure
A WARNING: The column this week is easy. I wrote it slowly because that’s the way I think. If you don’t have a strong stomach and a weak mind I suggest you pass me by. But if you do concentrate on this, please have the decency not to pass it along. Bear in mind the pursuit of happiness and let it go at that.
THOUGHT
Like when you see someone on the subway with a shoe on his ear. You think: “How strange, the shoe-strings aren’t tied.” You tell the stranger and he ties the shoestrings. Your original thought spurred the stranger to action. This can be called communication.
LIES
Like when I write something and expect people not to believe it. (Even though it’s true they shouldn’t believe it, because when I wrote it I thought it was a lie.) This is my favorite type of communication. One where truth and un-truth are indistinguishable.
POWER
Like when I write a truly great book and feel like a crumb because the only ones who can read it are people. Why do I write? Because I want to influence a great number of people in a relatively short time. Social communication. Ugh! What I wouldn’t give for one really smart monkey. I’ll bet he could grasp my awkward, half-formed, or even totally inarticulate opinions. This can be called tele-communication.
OBSCENITY
Like when you’re at a gay party in a cozy Village apartment and the hostess asks do you find it “stuffy”? You want to communicate freely, soul to soul, as it were, and bounce a few four-lettered words off her low-slung brow. Instead you say politely: “Gosh no, it’s delightful. Like one huge armpit.” This is called tactful communication.
With this worthless epistle come to a close, I promise next week to offer some diversion. Perhaps even an eructation or two. If I say so myself, I am rather good at that.
Thank you, Kenneth. You’re a friendly sort.
Now, to pick up my column again:
LIVING ROOM TALK—for very slow readers
When a columnist with his ever-sensitive teeth on the public pulse begins to realize he is just a touch don’t you know disliked, why then if he is really a columnist and has his eye on the main chance, he sits down and writes a column about his family, preferably about his children.
Since the situation may conceivably apply to your most Humble Hostile Servant, m’self, I am obliged to take the side of prudence, and so present the following sentimental dialogue between my tough two-fisted little daughter Susan, age 6, and your beloved Narcissist.
(SCENE: Living room at the Norman Mailers. Susan is, as always, watching television. I hover in the background, reading a copy of the Voice. As is my habit, I read from bottom to top. The tension mounts.)
“Susie,” I say inquiringly, “why do people go to war?”
“Because, Daddy-O,” she pipes at me, “they get tired of staying at home.”
At this point my daughter furrowed her brow, as if to declare cease to all the retcheries of man, and in her childlike voice which has the cold thrumming tones of the hippest hipster on the psychopath side, she said: “And while we’re at it, you were most uncool to point out so cruel to the paying gentry about how they are mentally nopotent and under-ushered in their pleasures.”
“Yes,” I said sadly, “no one forgives you for reminding them of that.”
“Illimate horror, indeed they don’t.” And in the tones of sternest grandmotherly scorn, she lashed me with: “Man, play it cool with those squares in the Village, because they are most unhip”—and here Susan came out of her murderous gloom, and with the brightest tinkling merry old child’s laugh, she repeated: “Because they are most unhip, and you, mon chou, was a pint over on the uncool side.”
SO—NEXT WEEK—FOLLOWING HIS DAUGHTER’S ADVICE, THE VILLAGE VILLAIN WILL BE BACK WITH A FEW COOL INSULTS, AND A COLUMN OR TWO FROM HIS LATEST TOME: “THE NIHILISTIC IDEALISM OF A DIALECTICAL EXISTENTIALIST.” AND IF HE IS IN THE MOOD, HE WILL DEMONSTRATE, CONTRARY TO HERR DOKTOR KENNETH J. SCHMIDT, THAT LIES AND TRUTH ARE PERHAPS IMPOSSIBLE TO SEPARATE, AFTER ALL, AND THEREFORE MUST BE CONSIDERED PROVISIONALLY, IN THE WORLD OF EVENTS, AS BEING THE SAME THING.