newcritics

Every once in awhile, when The Shamus is in a ruminatin’ mood, he likes to pull down from the shelf the colorful oral musings of Mr. Ulysses Everett McGill, the disgraced lawyer, Parchman Farm convict, old-timey singer, dedicated Dapper Dan user, a damn paterfamilias and a man with the capacity for abstract thought, although he was banned for life from the Woolworth’s.

His insights on his strange odyssey with friends Pete and Delmar, and perhaps best summed up in his catchphrase “Damn, we’re in a tight spot!” were recorded for posterity in the 1930s by the archivists and folklore musicologists Ethan and Joel Coen for the “Pass The Biscuits Pappy O’Daniel Flour Hour.” (By the way, Pappy hopes you’ll eat his farina and vote for him.)

Anyway, McGill, as you will see from these collected speeches and random thoughts, was indeed endowed with the gift of gab.

Everett on work: “Say, uh, any of you boys smithees? Or, if not smithees per se, were you otherwise trained in the metallurgic arts before straitened circumstances forced you into a life of aimless wanderin’?”

Everett on follicle protection: “Say, Cousin Wash, I guess it’d be the acme of foolishness to enquire if you had a hairnet.”

Everett on a sense of place: “Well, ain’t this a geographical oddity — two weeks from everywhere!”

Everett on eating: “No thank you, Delmar, a third of a gopher would only rouse my appetite without beddin’ her back down.”

Everett on religion: “I guess hard times flush the chumps…Baptism! You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers.”

Everett on Satan: “Of course, there’s all manner of lesser imps and demons, but the Great Satan hisself is red and scaly with a bifurcated tail and carries a hayfork.”

Everett on psychology: “Well, ya know, Delmar, they say with a thrill-seeking personality, what goes up must come down. Top of the world one minute, haunted by megrims the next. Yep, it’s like our friend George is an alley cat and his own damn humours are swinging him by the tail.”

Everett on love: “Pete, it’s a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”

Everett on women: “Truth means nothing to a woman, Delmar. You ever been with a woman? Believe me Delmar, woman is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man.”

Everett on self-confidence: “I’m goddamn bonafide! I’ve got all the answers!”

Everett on progress: “They’re flooding this valley so they can hydroelectric up the whole durned state. Yessir, the South is gonna change. Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin’ basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yessir, a veritable age of reason – like the one they had in France.”

Everett on self-improvement: “As soon as we get ourselves cleaned up and we get a little smellum in our hair, why, we’re gonna feel 100% better about ourselves and about life in general.”

Ain’t it the truth, folks? Just remember that The Shamus is a Dapper Dan man. I don’t use Fop.