Maggie Peterson Mancuso

            On Saturday morning I didn’t sleep much because of the caffeine in the black tea that I’d had the night before for the first time in two weeks. I know I did sleep because I remember that I dreamed about quitting a job at the same time as a young guy with white hair. I punched his shoulder and wished him well as he was going to study in France. 

            I finished memorizing "Quand ça balance" (When Off Balance) by Serge Gainsbourg. I didn’t bother to look for the chords online because in my experience if only one set of lyrics and one video for a song are posted nobody cares about it enough to post the tabs. I worked out the four chords for the instrumental intro. The rest will probably be pretty straight forward as there’s no chorus and no instrumental breaks. 

            I weighed 89.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            Around midday I went out to No Frills where they had grapes for the first time in about a month and a half and they were also very cheap. I bought eight bags of red ones and two bags of black. I also got a cucumber, seven tomatoes, seven avocadoes, a pack of mushrooms, a pack of grape tomatoes, a jug of orange juice, two cartons of soy milk and a carton of frozen coconut milk dessert. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. I had a salad of lettuce, tomato, avocado, scallion and dill with raspberry vinaigrette for lunch. 

            I weighed 89.4 kilos at 18:00. 

            I worked on my Brit Lit 2 essay for a couple of hours. I squeezed and squished the clay of the first five paragraphs to try to knead them into a sensible shape. Here’s what I got so far: 

            Oscar Wilde’s theory of art as presented in his "The Critic As Artist” and “The Decline of Lying" can be applied to George Eliot's arguments for reality in her novel Adam Bede and her essay “The Natural History of German Life". Even though the views on art of these two authors are diametrically opposed, Eliot’s realistic portrayal of peasants is a lie and therefore it fits Wilde's insistence that the artist must distort the truth. In advocating for a strictly authentic depiction of peasant existence Eliot presents the lower class as a negative exaggeration of the middle class. As peasant life is a reality removed from her middle and upper class readership, even a realistic portrayal of the peasant would appear to her audience as an unreal exaggeration of the familiar middle class world. 

            Eliot’s perspective on the peasants is only real from a middle class perspective. While it may be more real than the painting of the “The Hireling Shepherd" as she describes it, in making it closer to the reality of middle class life she is bringing the peasants into the realm of comparison. This disassociates the peasant from the image of the happy rustic from which the middle class had been able to distance themselves in complete separation. But in presenting the peasant as more real than before, that closeness creates a distance in proximity that holds more tension than the common caricature that is fully removed from identification. This is not dissimilar in effect for the middle class of this era than Darwin’s revelation about man’s closeness to apes was for all humanity. Once the peasants are seen as real they are suddenly human, unlike the idyllic, happy shepherd. When the peasant class is shown to be similar to the middle class, this closeness allows the reader to more forcefully other it. Previously readers could admire the depictions of peasants from a safe distance, but now they are forced to like or dislike them in close literary quarters because they are set up as someone to possibly identify with in fantasy. Whether charming or disarming the peasant is nonetheless now more othered than before because he is living next door to the middle class consciousness and can now be sympathized with or scorned through a closely constructed social barrier. 

            Eliot’s writing about the peasants is not meant for the lower class but for the middle class to read. They look in and down upon a fantasized world of the poor other that has been augmented by the fetish of authenticity. The reading of the peasant's life, even if Eliot had portrayed it accurately, would nonetheless be unreal for the middle and upper class reader because it is not their reality. It is more like a type of literary Roman holiday or a historical re-enactment that the witness expects to be as authentic as possible. 

            Prior to writing about the life of peasants Eliot did not live with them and participate in their lifestyle. Even if she drew her material from conversations with peasants her perspective is still that of an outsider. This viewpoint of looking in from outside to try to discern a distant reality leads to her inaccurate assessment of the peasants as having more of a group mind than the upper classes. This idea is born out of a “they all think alike” type of racism. 

            Consistent through Eliot’s descriptions of peasants, ugliness and the lack of grace are conspicuously present (2). Although she admits that some members of the upper classes are also ugly, she does not allow that only some labourers are ugly but rather implies that they all are. Her inability to perceive beauty in the lower classes but only a charming homeliness with which she feels “delicious sympathy (Eliot 2)” reveals a bias that cannot help but skew her socially reformist intensions. The aesthetic message she conveys is that the upper classes with their occasionally unattractive members should sympathize with the always grotesque “heavy clowns” with their “rounded backs”, and “stupid weather beaten faces” of the lower classes (3). Her way to combat what she considers to be the unrealistically attractive rendering of the happy shepherd is to emphasize unsightliness and to declare that to be the rustic reality. Her insistence on describing the vulgar as both revolting and charming at the same time suggests a kind of perverse fascination on the part of the author. She wants to compel her readers to pity the boor because of his loathsome appearance. She never once truthfully declares that the lower class are just as beautiful as the upper class. In promoting the lie of the ugly bumpkin she is unconsciously creating art. 

            All day long my computer has been annoyingly slow with lots of “not responding” messages. I started a virus scan that wasn’t finished at this writing. 

            I weighed 89.7 kilos before dinner. I had a lettuce, tomato, avocado, cucumber, mushroom, scallion, dill, and scotch bonnet pepper salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing while watching Andy Griffith. But it took more than fifteen minutes to get my VLC media player working. 

            This story introduces the hillbilly Darling family consisting of Briscoe the father, the four taciturn adult sons and the adult daughter, Charlene. They arrive their beat up old truck to meet the bus carrying the betrothed of Charlene. They were promised to each other at the age of five. The truck has overheated and they’ve stopped to put water in from the city’s horse trough, which seems to be decorative and historical but not really for horses. Andy comes out to tell them they can’t park where they are and they can’t take water from the trough. As soon as Charlene sees Andy she shows herself to be an extremely aggressive flirt. Briscoe rents a room for one in the hotel and then hoists his children and their musical instruments up with a rope. They begin to play and then the clerk calls Andy. When they knock on the door Briscoe lets them in but there is only him there. Andy however knows they have all gone down the rope and so he catches them. Charlene is happy to be caught and she can’t keep her hands off of Andy. They leave the hotel but later Andy catches them in an unoccupied house. Finally Andy just invites them to his house and Aunt Bee feeds them. Andy joins them on guitar as they play some more. The next day they go to meet Dudley’s bus but they can’t find Charlene. We find her chasing Andy around the inside of the court house. Briscoe walks in just as she catches him. She says she wants Andy but when the bus arrives and Dudley shows her all the cute things he’s kept to remember her by while he was in the army, her heart turns towards him. 

            Charlene was played by Margaret Ann Peterson, who later changed her last name to Mancuso when she got married. When she retired from acting she worked for the Nevada Film Commission. She was the singer for the Ja Da Quartet which consisted of she, her brother and two of his friends. 

            She was discovered by Andy Griffith’s manager and her band guested several times on the Perry Como Show and The Pat Boone Show. They released an album entitled “It’s The Most Happy Sound”. She played Susie on the Bill Dana Show. She joined the Ernie Mariani Trio and they became a popular act in Las Vegas. 

            She and the Darlings returned several times to the Andy Griffith Show. Charlene’s brothers were played by The Dillards Bluegrass band. 

            After dinner I continued to have problems getting onto Google Chrome. The icons on my desktop just wouldn’t respond to my clicks beyond the cursor teasing me for a few seconds that something was going to happen. I got on Chrome just at bedtime and gave up. The virus scan was still going on. The next morning it showed no malware. I think I should have just restarted.