Course Change
Somewhere in Lynn Johnston’s original run of Elly in night school, Elly went from Creative Writing to Contemporary English. I do not have access to the original collection to see if what has happened is a change from one semester to another. I don't know if today’s reprint in For Better or For Worse is due to a mistake Lynn Johnston made originally, or if this mistake is one caused by taking two reprints separated in time in their original publication and then putting them closer together in time in their modern publication order. I suppose the other possibility is that Lynn decided she wanted to make a joke about how people consider contemporary English to be smut books, and simply changed the night school class subject to accommodate the joke.
If you assume that Elly is now taking contemporary English, the next question to ask is “Where did John get the idea that contemporary English is smutty?” Looking at this syllabus from a Contemporary English course and also this one, you can tell that some of the books listed have their moments of smuttiness (if you are familiar with the books). I wonder if the point Lynn Johnston is trying to make is that contemporary English books may have smut in them, but it is not something you would recognize from the title of the book.
More amusing than this outrageously fascinating speculation is the idea that John Patterson, desperate for smut, would seek it out in Elly’s school books. I can just see it now:
Elly Patterson: John, what are these stains on my copy of Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon?
John Patterson: Stains? What stains? I don’t see any stains.
Elly Patterson: You were the last one who had my book. You said you were borrowing it to read in your train room.
John Patterson: Oh, that’s right. I must have gotten a little train grease on the book.
Elly Patterson: But this stain is kind of white and sticky. It doesn’t look like train grease.
John Patterson: Well, this is a special kind of train grease, that only I use in my train room, when I get lonely.
If you assume that Elly is now taking contemporary English, the next question to ask is “Where did John get the idea that contemporary English is smutty?” Looking at this syllabus from a Contemporary English course and also this one, you can tell that some of the books listed have their moments of smuttiness (if you are familiar with the books). I wonder if the point Lynn Johnston is trying to make is that contemporary English books may have smut in them, but it is not something you would recognize from the title of the book.
More amusing than this outrageously fascinating speculation is the idea that John Patterson, desperate for smut, would seek it out in Elly’s school books. I can just see it now:
Elly Patterson: John, what are these stains on my copy of Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon?
John Patterson: Stains? What stains? I don’t see any stains.
Elly Patterson: You were the last one who had my book. You said you were borrowing it to read in your train room.
John Patterson: Oh, that’s right. I must have gotten a little train grease on the book.
Elly Patterson: But this stain is kind of white and sticky. It doesn’t look like train grease.
John Patterson: Well, this is a special kind of train grease, that only I use in my train room, when I get lonely.
posted by howard at 11:45 PM
7 Comments:
The Woman Warrior from the first list is one of my favorite books. It might teach Elly a thing or twenty, if she could actually read and comprehend it.
Also, the thought of John using Song of Solomon as pornography is hilarious! I had to read it my senior year of high school, and I liked it. I can't remember any sex scenes, but that was a long time ago. Too bad Elly didn't take early English literature instead, so John could get his hands on some John Donne. Or better, a Classics course. He'd never let the works of Sappho and Ovid out of his little train room.
I noticed that your scenario at the end was well in-character with what we've seen so far; Elly is the sort of woman who would believe Phantom Limb when he said that those hard chunks were tears and John is the sort of man who'd do this.
Somewhere in Lynn Johnston’s original run of Elly in night school, Elly went from Creative Writing to Contemporary English. I do not have access to the original collection to see if what has happened is a change from one semester to another. I don't know if today’s reprint in For Better or For Worse is due to a mistake Lynn Johnston made originally, or if this mistake is one caused by taking two reprints separated in time in their original publication and then putting them closer together in time in their modern publication order.
It's a mistake she made originally. The original sequence was:
1. Elly and the continuing-ed catalog, where she tells John she is enrolling in creative writing (no reference to "next semester")
2. Connie and Elly over coffee: Elly telling Connie she's planning to "pick up* the credits [she's] missing" instead of getting a job.
3. Elly's encounter with the professor who is teaching the class she's in: "there are always a few housewives looking for a change..."
4. The strip where Mike is letting puppy-Farley lick-lick-lick him, but goes "Yecch" when Lizzie gives him a kiss.
5. The "one cookie" single-panel strip
6. Elly advising Michael that he is "loving [Farley] too much."
7. Today's reprint.
Then we go through the whole holiday season with Phil and Connie, and it isn't until after Phil leaves in January that we actually see Elly in her class, with the professor who made the "housewife" comment. The two strips right before that are: (1) a strip where Elly appears to be doing homework (peering into a notebook; handling Roget's Thesaurus) as Michael tries to get her attention. "Michael, you are asking for a SMACK!" "Oh. I was hoping for a hug." [gobsmack](2) A strip where Elly looks at the snow outside and seems to be trying out her "creative writing" language: "-Stark bare branches against a canvas of white, grey skies, icy drifts sculptured by the wind!"
I think "contemporary English" was both a brainfart on Lynn's part and her desire to get that joke in overriding her flimsy grasp on continuity.
*As an aside, I've decided I hate Elly's use of "pick up"; she "picks up" advice from her mother, the credits she's missing, and, in a later strip, "the education [she] missed" (this in a thought bubble). If you want to be a writer, Elly, vary your language better.
To Clio--forgot to say yesterday: Connie is a radiology technician.
April
"icy drifts sculptured by the wind"
Sculptured?!
I'll admit that "verbing" nouns has been around for centuries even if it seems like a modern phenomenon, but can't think of any examples where a noun is used as a verb when there's a perfectly good verb already.
**checks OED**
Hang on..."sculptured" is a verb. The most recent example of it being used as such, however, is dated 1875 in McIlwraith's Guide Wigtownshire. The verb "to sculpt" is the modern version, with examples dating back no earlier than 1864 and continuing to the present.
Well, she wanted her strip to seem timeless...
Well, she wanted her strip to seem timeless...
LOL. If Elly were the religious sort, Lynn could have her doing penitence instead of penance. :)
aprilp_katje
Then we go through the whole holiday season with Phil and Connie, and it isn't until after Phil leaves in January that we actually see Elly in her class, with the professor who made the "housewife" comment.
I guess the question this time is whether Lynn Johnston is going to do the same timeline, or push the classroom strips earlier. With the Connie / Phil holiday already used, then it does allow Lynn the opportunity to produce more classroom-related material if she wants.
I think "contemporary English" was both a brainfart on Lynn's part and her desire to get that joke in overriding her flimsy grasp on continuity.
It certainly would not be the first time Lynn altered continuity in order to make a bad joke.
I guess the question this time is whether Lynn Johnston is going to do the same timeline, or push the classroom strips earlier. With the Connie / Phil holiday already used, then it does allow Lynn the opportunity to produce more classroom-related material if she wants.
You know, when Lynn did the new-run where Elly complains that the course she wants is not available until the following semester, I thought she'd actually realized that she had originally shown the course starting in January even though Elly had been shown enrolling and buying books in (I think) October. I thought she was actually doing what she'd claimed she would do--use the new-runs to fill gaps and explain things that didn't make sense in the original run. But then she went ahead and had Elly start the class after all. So she made matters worse.
It certainly would not be the first time Lynn altered continuity in order to make a bad joke.
True that. Silly me--I thought LJ might actually drop the "contemporary English" strip--when I was operating under the delusion that her "next semester" strip actually served a "continuity" purpose
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