I just noticed that it was one year ago yesterday that Three Percent went live. (E.J. and I “practiced” for a while, but unless you’ve scoured the archives, you probably never saw those posts.)<\/p>\n
Ironically—well, maybe—the first post was actually a rant about how stupid it was that Grey’s Anatomy<\/i> was nominated for an Emmy, but Lost<\/i> wasn’t. (I still totally stand by this. And I feel vindicated that this year both Lost<\/i> and Mad Men<\/i> are nominees for Best Drama series, whereas Grey’s Anatomy<\/i> is nowhere to be found . . .)<\/p>\n
That first post was appropriately titled Not Necessarily the Place For It<\/a> and following in that vein, I think today’s the perfect day to write about this awesome, recently resurrected hoax that sort of, tangentially, relates to translated literature.<\/p>\n Back in 1999, Josh Glenn was the publisher of Hermenaut,<\/i><\/a> one of my favorite magazines of all time, and a sort of precursor to N+1.<\/i><\/a> Anyway, in 1999, Josh published a “Fake Authenticity” issue that contained excerpts from supposed correspondence between Samuel Beckett and Ernie Bushmiller, the creator of the Nancy<\/a> comic strip. <\/p>\n In Beckett’s supposed letters, he praises Bushmiller for creating such a great existential comic, and offers up a few suggestions for plot lines. Here’s Bushmiller’s “response”:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know how well they\u2019re going to work. I think the problem you\u2019re having, Sam, is the same problem any literary man might have. You\u2019re not setting up the gags visually and you\u2019re rushing to the snapper. It seems to me you\u2019ve got the zingers right there at the beginning, in panel No. 1, and although I have to admit you got Nancy and Sluggo in some crackerjack predicaments, I don\u2019t see how they got there.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n For instance, putting Nancy and Sluggo in the garbage cans is a good gag, but in my opinion, you can\u2019t have them in there for all three panels. How did they get there? Same thing when you had them buried in the sand. I like to do beach gags, but I don\u2019t think that having Nancy buried up to her waist in the first two panels and then up to her neck in the third one is adequately explained, and I\u2019ve been at this game for a while now. Also, why would Sluggo be facing in the opposite direction when he\u2019s talking to her?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
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