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| Anthem • Cuisine • Home Theater • Libations • Lines • Night Reading • Poetry |
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| "Lines" Because every cad should have a few at his mental fingertips. "I want my dark lady, I want my angel — I want my tempter … I want my inspiration, my folly, my happiness, my divinity, my madness … my day's wage, my night's dream, my darling and my star …" — George Bernard Shaw The most disgusting cad in the world is the man who, on grounds of decorum and morality, avoids the game of love. He is one who puts his own ease and security above the most laudable of philanthropies. - H.L. Mencken Let not women's weapons, water-drops Stain my man's cheeks! - Shaskepeare, King Lear, ii,4 He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man. - Dr. Johnson So began a series of excursions to all the dubious haunts where the great unwashed go to amuse themselves... - Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami Never sleep with a woman who has more problems than you do. - Nelson Algren Bring on the dancing girls. - George Sanders, Memoirs of a Professional Cad The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. - William Blake, Proverbs of Heaven and Hell Life is too short for ugly women. - Ernest Hemingway Being all-rite is a dismal way to spend your life, and guys are not equipped for it, anyway. We are lovers and artists and adventurers, meant to be noble, free-ranging and foolish, like dogs, not competing for a stamp of approval, Friend of Womanhood... Years ago, manhood was an opportunity for achievement, and now it is a problem to be overcome. - Garrison Keillor, The Book of Guys The older I grew, the more what attached me to women was intelligence. - Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life, Vol. XI I laugh when I hear certain women calling men whom they accuse of inconstancy "perfidious." They would be right if they could prove that when we swear to be true to them we intend to fail them. Alas! We love without consulting our reason, and our reason has no more to do with it when we stop loving. - Casanova, Life, Vol IV, p. 184 That's a nice little nothing you're almost wearing. - James Bond, Diamonds are Forever Alas the love of women! it is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing. - Byron, Don Juan, Canto ii, Stanza 199 Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after. - Don Juan, Canto ii, Stanza 178 I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination. - Terence, Eunuchus, Act iv, Sc. 7, 42. When the candles are out all women are fair. - Plutarch, Conjugal Precepts Let still the woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women's are. - Twelfth Night, Act ii, Sc. 4. Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climaz was at hand. Later, they dined at a restaurant quite near the flat. - Anthony Powell, Afternoon Men Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion; love is consolation in desolation; it is the sole medicine against death, for it is death's brother. - Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life New York had the iridescence of the beginning of the world - F. Scott Fitzgerald Their parents die - the ordinary disaster - Martin Amis, The Information Between the idea and the action lies the shadow. - T.S. Eliot We're automatically inclined to liken others to ourselves, and later it turns out we're far from the truth. - Edward Limonov, It's Me, Eddie 
Night Reading
Not all the Cad's books are for show... About Harry Towns (1974). Bruce Jay Friedman "Is a book about a man who believes (almost) in the glamour of his own life," says the jacket copy on my 1974 edition. "Harry Towns is a Young Man in his forties, an engaging fellow, a more or less successful screenwriter, more or less successfully living out an American male fantasy of our time. We begin by casually seeing through him, we end by profoundly feeling for him." The greatest author photo of our time. Afternoon Men. (1931) Anthony Powell Dissolute Brits drink, dance and trade dry asides. The British A Sun Also Rises, under the visible influence of Hem. Almost all dialogue, with occasional lapses into prose. Best description of bad sex ever. "Slowly, but very deliberately, the brooding edifice of seduction, came into being, a vast Heath Robinson mechanism, dually controlled by them and lumbering gloomily down vistas of triteness. With a sort of heavy-fisted dexterity the mutually adapted emotions of each of them became synchronized, until the unavoidable anti-climax was at hand. Later, they dined at a restaurant quite near the flat." Powell, Afternoon Men" The Appreticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) Mordecai Richler Canadian content! Ambitious Jewish kid from Montreal makes good. Extremely funny. Not a bad movie with Richard Dreyfus in the role of the Canadian Sammy Glick. Bardot, Denauve, Fonda: My Life with the World's Most Beautiful Women (1986) Roger Vadim. How"s this for a photo caption: "Brigitte - at 17." Bel-Ami. (1885) Guy de Maupassant Young rake from the provinces comes to Paris and rises through the ranks of journalism and society buy seducingthe boss's wife. Written when Mauppassant was dying of syphillis. The Bell Jar (1971) Sylvia Plath Best crazy chick novel ever written. Bright Lights, Big City (1984) Jay McInerney. Still good. And short! A Child of the Century (1954) Ben Hecht. The Chicago newspaperman who co-wrote The Front Page. And that takes up about two pages of his astounding TK-page life story. Chump Change (1996) David Eddie My friend, and a Cad cameo. Don Juan (1819-24). Byron "Alas the love of women! it is known To be a lovely and a fearful thing." Esquire's Handbook for Hosts (1949) Essential, essential reading. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971). Hunter S. Thompson One of the great first sentences: "We were somewhere around Barstow at the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold..." And one of the great opening quotes: "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." Dr. Johnson Four Blondes (2000) Candace Bushnell. Because Cads dig some chick lit. The Girls from Esquire (1936) Truth and fiction from the magazine by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Budd Schuburg, Martha Gelhorn... Part One: "Woman: The Necessary Evil." High Fidelity (1995) Nick Hornby Because Cads dig chick lit. History of my Life (1785). Giacomo Casanova "The older I grew, the more what attached me to women was intelligence." How Boys See Girls. (1991) David Gilmour Canadian content! A tight, painfully observed novel of middle=aged sexual obsession. It's Me, Eddie (1983) Edward Limonov Exiled Russian poet and sexual omnivore shambles his way through 70's New York low and high life in platform books. Lucky Jim (1954). Kingsley Amis. The funniest comic novel, maybe ever. Certainly the best hangover description. Memoirs of a Professional Cad (1960). George Sanders. British character actor born in Russia and kicked out of Argentina for duelling. Enters All About Eve with Marilyn Monroe on his arm. Voice like a dry martini. Also played Mr. Freeze on Batman. A master of world-weary ennui. Suicide note: "I'm bored." Money (1984). Martin Amis. Still his best. The Moon and Sixpence (1919). W. Somerset Maugham "Why do nice women marry dull men?" "Because intelligent men won't marry nice women." Also this: "I have read desultorily the writings of the younger generation. It may be that among them a more fervid Keats, a more ethereal Shelley, has already published numbers the world will willingly remember. I cannot tell. I admire their polish-their youth is already so accomplished that it seems absurd to speak of promise==I marvel at the felicity of their style; but with all their copiousness (their vocabulary suggests that the fingered Roget's Thesaurus in their cradles) they say nothing to me; to my mind they know too much and feel too obviously; I cannot stomach the heartiness wit hwhich they slap me on the back or the emotion with which they hurl themselves on my bosom; their passion seems to me a little anaemic and their dreams a trifle dull. I do not like them. I am on the shelf. I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment." The Moon's a Balloon (1972). David Niven. His first memoir. Pure charm. Patrimony. (1991) Philip Roth Clearly reported and moving "true story" of his last year with a dying father. Portnoy's Complaint. (1996) Philip Roth Two words: The Monkey. "She has on her an ass with the swell and the cleft of the world's most perfect nectarine!" A few more: "...torn by desires that are repugnant to my conscience, and a conscience repugnant to my desires." (His version of the Viennese Quack's theorem: "Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love.") Private Parts(1993). Howard Stern The second greatest author photo ever, on the original hardcover. Scoring: A Sexual Memoir (1972) Dan Greenburg What happened to this guy? Shopgirl (2000). Steve Martin "She is falling in love, and she fully expects her love to be returned once Mr. Porter comes to his senses. But right now, he is using the hours with her as a portal to his own need for propinquity." Swell: A Girls Guide to the Good Life (1999) Cynthia Rowley & Ilene Rosenzweig A couple of swell chicks offer life lessons on whistling for a taxi and duking a maitre d'. One of them is the heroine of Cad. The Sun Also Rises (1926). Ernest Hemingway The original. The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin' (1997) Bill Zehme Life lessons from the Chairman, related by his most faithful scribe. What She Saw... (2000) Lucinda Rosenfeld Men are her Table of Contents. Women (1978). Charles Bukowski. "Lydia jumped up on the coffee table. Her bluejeans fit tighter than ever. She flung her long brown hair from side to side. She was insane. She was miraculous." You'll Never Make Love in this Town Again (1995) Robin, Liza, Linda and Tiffany Sample chapter: "John Ritter: Nine and a Half Hours."
Poetry
Every Cad should be able to quote a few lines of verse, even his own juvenalia. |
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| A.E. HOUSMAN (1859-1936) |
A Shropshire Lad XIII When I was one and twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs aplenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty, And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. |
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| GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667) |
A Lover's Resolution Shall I wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are? Be she fairer than the day, Or the flowers meads in May, If she be not so to me What care I how fair she be? Should my heart be grieved or pined 'Cause I see a woman kind? Or a well dispos&eagrave;d nature Joine&eagrave;d with a lovely feature? Be she meeker, kinder, than Turtle-dove or pelican, If she be not so to me, What care I how good she be? Shall a woman's virtues move Me to perish for her love? Or her well-deserving known Make me quite forget mine own? Be she with that goodness blest Which may gain her the name of Best If she be not such to me, What care I how good she be? 'Cause her fortune seems to high, Shall I play the fool and die? Those that bear a noble mind, Where they want of riches find, Think what with them they would do That without them dare to woo And unless that mind I see, What care I though great she be? Great, or good, or kind, or fair, I will ne'er the more despair; If she love me, this believe, I will die ere she shall grieve. If she slight me when I woo, I can scorn and let her go For if she be not for me, What care I for whom she be? |
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| RICK MARIN (Age 7) |
Lighting is Frightening Lightening is frightening Through the night Lightening is frightening And very bright. |
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