Creighton University

A first surprise here is that I had not heard of this book previously -- or the five volumes that follow it!  Perhaps that publication date of 2022 is really accurate.  A second surprise is the sheer quantity of Rothschild's output, even within this first of his six volumes of "Foibles."  There are 100 stories on 217 pages.  They are listed by number in the opening T of C.  Before that there is "A Helpful Guide for Reviewers" that includes this statement: "A heady and confusing mixture of lullaby and bloody lie, of melody and malady, a position between composition and decomposition."  I tried and enjoyed the first five.  The grasshopper in GA admits his MO but moves away quickly while a cow comes by and crushes the anthill and most of the ants.  "Hop it while you get the chance."  (There is, or course, always a moral.)  Just after his brilliant statement of non-productivity to the productive bee, a butterfly is netted and skewered by a collector.  The fox bargains for grapes by offering insurance for the farmer's hens -- and then comes back at night, makes off with two hens, and cooks himself some coq au vin.  The randy hare spends the whole race trying to mount the tortoise sexually and comes in at the finish still clinging to the tortoise's rear quarters.  Some of Rothschild's language gets colorful.  I suspect that later fables here veer into less Aesopic territory as they go along.  More on that when we get the further volumes in the series.

This second volume of presently six begins with a witty comment on one critic's description of Rothschild's tales as "Kafkaesque."  Rothschild agrees: "When one bears in mind that Kafka was apparently a manic-depressive confused Jew, with deep identity and sexual problems, was constantly sick and is now dead, then I think that sums up the quality of these tales precisely."  The T of C shows that this volume's 235 pages have another 100 stories, numbered consecutively after the first volume's 100.  I was determined to pursue stories fashioned from Aesop's but I found only one.  I will try to report on five stories per volume.  My first is #114: "The Boar."  It has all sorts of fun with puns fashioned from that simple name, right down to the moral.  Is that a typo in "then"?  "It is better to keep your head as a Boar, then have your head hung on a Board" (33).  I tried next the one Aesopic parody, "The Wolf Who Cried Boy!" (#166).  It reverses the traditional fable cleverly and moralizes "No-one likes a Wolf who cries "Boy!"  I enjoyed the last three stories in this volume.  "In the Bag!" (#198) has fun with wordplay surrounding tea and how it gets into tea-bags.  "A Saucy Story" (#199) is similar: about condiments in little sachets at cashiers in fast-food restaurants.  The moral: "Licking leaking liquid Oelek liquor looks likely to lack long-term luck…  Better seek Salvation through Salivation."  The book's last piece is a visual delight through growing and then diminishing typeface.  One watches an idea germinate and then be harder and harder to express.  Good fun!

This third volume of presently six begins again with "A Helpful Guide for Reviewers" that concludes with "Please buy this book!  Someone has to pay the therapist's bills!"  Ironically, this is the one copy of Rothschild's "Foibles" that I did not have to buy, and the reason was that it was not for sale like the other five.  I asked, and he graciously sent it as a gift.  The introduction then makes a helpful comment on the method or moment of composition "in which language is compressed against its will into new shapes to perform tasks it was never designed to do. . . .  The idea has to be grasped and made concrete before it disappears again, floats away, dissolves, is overlaid by others…." (4).  What some would call "pun" becomes a major way of discovering and probing strange truths for Rothschild, whose name is happily misrendered as "Rothschlid" on the cover.  Stories here are numbered 201 to 300.  The first is a succession of puns between raisin and grape.  The former says "You can spend the time as I do, raisin your consciousness.  Don't gripe, Grape!" (9).  "The Ox and the Ass," Number 242, has fun with a scene of a couple having a child in a stable, with emphasis on the scatological, bloody, and olfactory aspects of the incident, which includes three strangers walking in (88-89).  "Prostrate before the Prostate" (135) will have special meaning and all sorts of recognition for senior males.  I begin to notice at #275 that the titles in the beginning T of C are not identical with those accompanying the texts themselves.  #275 is on defecation and #277 on premature ejaculation.  214 pages.

This fourth volume of presently six begins "Despite many requests, the flow of Foibles has continued to gush unabated (if that is the word) out of the creative organs (some would say the bowels) of their creator."  Rothschild's ability to laugh with himself is a chief quality of these works.  It strikes me as fitting irony that this page, verso of the title-page and facing page 3 has the page number "30."  That introduction, repeating the introduction to Volume 3, has this collection right: "There is something here for everyone to find something they do NOT like but hopefully in between there might be pieces which stimulate curiosity or permit one to look at simple everyday matters in a new light."  For this volume, I preselected five stories based on their titles in the opening T of C.  "A Frogment of History" (#309) is a happy conglomeration of puns around a reversal: every prince that this princess kisses turns into a frog!  Here is one great example: "Her suitors all croaked before they could do anything significant…." (24).  I chose #313 and #314 next because they have similar titles:  "Word tasting" and "Word Tasting."  Unless I am missing something, the T of C has in the former case a simple typo; the story has nothing to do with tasting or the word "tasting."  "Word Tasting" (#314) is just that, a delightful experiment in analyzing what it is like to taste physically some key words, including "word" and "tasting."  "Dissing Abilities" (#352) questions our need to accommodate all disabilities, with sometimes hilarious results.  Moral: "If you've read this far, you probably have no brain.  How does it feel?" (115).  "The Illegible Bachelor" (#397) is fun start to finish; the happy state of the couple does not lead to a happy ending.  The author cannot reveal the couple's names because their entry in the Marriage Register is "Illegible" (219).  230 pages.

The "Foreword" of this fifth volume begins "Good heavens!  More of them!  Yes."  It contains this comment: "They are realistic in that not all of them have Morals -- just like human beings."  These stories are "the things no-one else wants to talk or write about."  My five this time were again a selection made according to the beginning T of C's titles.  "The Lonely Glove" (#414) touches well into what seem to be universal experiences of the lost longing to become found.  The moral?  "Make Glove, Not More."  "The Return Ticket" (#434) is a whimsical piece that reaches deep.  "…actually, the one place we All want to go to, deep down inside ourselves, is Back Here" (181).  I love "Advice to a Trappist Novice" (#456).  A blank page concludes with this moral: "Don't say you were not warned.  In fact, don't say Anything."  And after a printer's design we have, as confirmation: "(Shush!)"  This admonition sounds close enough to advice heard by this Jesuit novice 63 years ago!  Try "A Boring Love Story" (#460).  I suspect that it is boring because it is unlike any real love story I know.  Well done!  The last offering, #500, is "Meretricious Metrication."  After some good play with individual letters and quantities of them, we have this moral: "Be grateful you aren't paying per letter."  I am grateful!  232 pages, but who is counting?!

Here in this sixth volume we start by reading about Aesop "his spirit lingers on like a damp smell in an unopened cellar."  The pre-note finishes "one needs to build up adequate antibodies so as to be able to survive the encounters of the Blind reading the Bland" (3).  Good satiric phrase!  "Customer Service" (#501) rightly parodies what has become customer disservice!  "Eleven Lines You Should Read Before You Die" (#522) starts with the central concerns -- "Be Happy.  You don't know how long you have" -- but soon gets down to life insurance, elections, and bills.  Moral?  "Ok, you've done it.  Now die!" (58-59).  "The Wolf and Peter" (#549) is a good satire on totalitarian governments.  "Clickbait and the Zoom researcher (#577) will resonate with any academic or businessperson who has had to live through Zoom for the past two years.  A researcher, I take it, finds a virus growing right before him and mutating and looking back at him.  Moral?  "Beware of taking a Zoom with a View.  You never know who might be looking back at you!"  A last surprise here has been "All You Need to Know About the Middle East Conflict" (#597)."  This time the reader faces two blank pages and the moral: "That's all really.  You don't need to know Anything, it's not YOUR problem, best to keep your nose totally out of it, OK?"  266 pages.