Gedoodles: From Bad to Verse

By Harry M. Geduld

Gedoodles is the first of Harry Gedulds two volumes of mainly comic verse. It also contains a revised Obituary, (written by himself), and a short story entitled The Keepsake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468530742

Harry M. Geduld

According to the impeccable authority of the Indiana University Administration, Harry M. Geduld, now a DEmeritus Professor, is notorious as the only faculty member who did NOT create FIlm Studies at IU, having spent his 34 years at the University doing nothing. He was also the long-forgotten Chair of Comparative Literature, responsible for the department's Dark Age (1990-1996). Most of the numerous books, articles and reviews ascribed to him were probably ghost written by his two doggies, canine geniuses known as Gedoodles poodles.

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Contents

By The Same Author

MY FAMILY MOTTO:

DEDICATION

INSPIRATION AND RESPONSE

PREFACE

A MIX OF LIMERICKS

FIRST FOREWORD

SECOND FOREWORD

CURIOUS COUPLETS

EVEN WORSE VERSE

VERBICIDE; A NOIR NOVELLA

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter four

MY FIRST REVIEW, ETC.

FIRST REVIEW

GEDULD’S REVISED OBITUARY

THE KEEPSAKE

The Keepsake

By The Same Author

Published Books:

Prince of Publishers

James Barrie: A Study

Filmguide to Henry V

The Birth of the Talkies

Chapliniana

Purim Spiel: Thirty Short Stories

Dogspeare: Thirty More Short Stories

Chutzpah Sauce: Four One-Act Plays and Two Interludes

The Final Solution of the German Question: Two Plays

From the Heart: Biographical and Autobiographical Memoirs

Books Edited:

Bernard Shaw’s Rationalization of Russia

Film Makers on Film Making

Focus on D.W.Griffith

Authors on Film

The Definitive Jekyll and Hyde Companion

Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story

The Definitive Time Machine

The Literature of Mystery and Detection (44 volumes)

As Advisory Editor:

The New York Times Film Encyclopedia (13 volumes)

As Co-Editor with Ron Gottesman:

Sergei Eisenstein and Upton Sinclair: The Making and Unmaking of ‘Que Viva Mexico!’

Guidebook to Film: An Eleven-in-One Reference

An Illustrated Glossary of Film Terms

The Girl in the Hairy Paw

Robots, Robots, Robots

Playing to the Camera (also co-edited with Bert Cardullo and Leigh Woods)

As Co-Editor with David Y. Hughes:

A Critical Edition of H.G.Wells’s War of the Worlds

As Series General Editor or General Co-editor (totaling over 80 volumes):

Visions Series (IU Press)

Filmguides (IU Press) General co-editor with Ron Gottesma

Film Focus (Prentice-Hall) General co-editor with Ron Gottesman

Perspectives (G.K.Hall) General co-editor with Ron Gottesman

GEDOODLES

or From Bad to Verse

Being the literary lapses

of

Harry M. Geduld

With his Revised Obituary and a Short Story

"These are wordages of the unzipped Geduld…

to outpour perverse new verses… to seek out new idiocies…

to boldly say what no man has said before."

A Hamage Book

MY FAMILY MOTTO:

Mit Geduld boi’ert men durch afileh a kizelshtein

(With patience you can even drill through granite)

DEDICATION

Oscar Wilde said, To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. In that amorous spirit this book is dedicated to

ME

with love

(I can’t think of anyone more deserving)

INSPIRATION AND RESPONSE

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

— Dorothy Parker

And girls don’t go

For guys with B.O.

— Harry Geduld

PREFACE

If you’re after intellectual muscle,

Don’t read me – read Bertrand Russell.

A MIX OF LIMERICKS

FIRST FOREWORD

Michael A. Allen and Michael Cunningham, in their 1999 edition of Webster’s New World Rhyming Dictionary , describe the Limerick as the only fixed form indigenous to the English language. Note that! THE LIMERICK IS OUR LANGUAGE’S ONLY FIXED VERSE FORM! (Yes, pace Shakespeare, the sonnet, for example, isn’t indigenous to English.) That being the case, we may be entitled to question why the Limerick is often dismissed as a debased verse form. I suspect that the reasons for its rejection are: (1) that it is popular – which most modern poetry is not. (2) that it is generally comic, satirical, and frequently scatological, which — as far that last is concerned — makes it poetically and politically incorrect… (Although… hush! let us whisper that Chaucer, Shakespeare. Swift and numerous other English writers right down to modern times indulged in scatology.) And (3) that its objective is to amuse rather than exalt; the snobbish assumption being that amusement is inferior to exaltation.

So at this point, if the reader seeks to be exalted rather than amused, I would urge him or her to proceed no further.

Incorrigible readers who do proceed further, might like to consider a take on the Limerick that is quite different from that of Allen and Cunningham: i.e. my own view that the Limerick is the short story in its most concise form, encapsulating plot, theme and characters and a surprise denouement in a mere five lines. So turn over in your grave Guy De Maupassant!

I must add that the following Limericks are entirely the work of Yours Truly. They are not to be found in any other collections of Limericks.

Let me also confess that following the august examples of Coleridge, De Quincey and Aldous Huxley, most of my Limericks were the unexpected outcome of a dubious pharmaceutical indulgence. In one of my weaker moments, a huckster of so-called ‘Health Food’ induced me to sample a substance called Gingko Biloba. While I consumed it on and off for nearly four weeks, as many as twenty Limericks a day poured out of me quite effortlessly. Later, being warned that the substance was pernicious, I stopped taking it. Whereupon my apparently bottomless Limerick well immediately dried up — much to the delight of my long-suffering wife to whom I had been reading my Limericks aloud at every inconvenient opportunity.

P.S. Prosodically-minded readers will notice that, although I have maintained the basic rhyme scheme of the Limerick, I have sometimes experimented with the metrical structure.

SECOND FOREWORD

Let me warn you – I’m not respectable

And not Politically Correctible;

But those who are, according to rumor,

Usually lack a sense of humor.

My verse at times is distinctly crude-ish –

It’s not for the squeamish or the prudish,

But you won’t be disturbed by what I say

If you don’t turn a hair at Rabelais,

And if you continue herein-after

Some of my verse may arouse your laughter.

So please view my book from that perspective:

Amusing you is my main objective.

Now, since you’ve been patient long enough, here comes –

MY MIX OF LIMERICKS…

1.

The cops haven’t caught the escapist

Who’s become a notorious rapist.

The Catholics knew

He must be a Jew.

And the Protestants said, He’s a Papist.

2.

A barbarian noted