"On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d’œuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold."

That's today's sentence from "The Great Gatsby" (in the practically inexplicable Gatsby project).

I must say this sentence almost makes me angry, and I'm going to calm myself by diagramming it...

hams | crowded

Okay. That's it! That's the action in this sentence. Hams crowded. Got that?

Another calming method I use when ingesting a Gatsby sentence is: Look for the light. Or: Look for the interplay of light and darkness. (I was just explaining that yesterday.)

In today's sentence, we've got "glistening" for the light (located in the hors d’œuvre), and "bewitched to a dark gold" for the darkness. It's interestingly mysterious that the darkness gets to be gold — a metal that normally is seen as glistening, especially when compared to hors d’œuvre, which... WTF?... are they greasy? Is there a spotlight aimed at them? It's also interesting that there's some bewitching going on, but that just seems to be a goofball way of referring to cooking, the cooking of turkeys and pastry pigs. Now, you know, about 9 days ago, I got all bent out of shape over F. Scott calling pork pig. But here it's quite possible that he's not talking about some cut of pork bewitched to a dark gold, but something pastry (with pork) molded into the shape of a pig.



So I'm not going to let that get my...



Are we through yet? Or is something in this insane undertaking requiring me to help you come to terms with the "salads of harlequin designs"? I found some crazy-ass salads Googling "harlequin salad." Like:

1 can of peas
1 can of sliced beets, diced
1/2 cup Miracle Whip
1 chopped onion (optional)

Dice beets and onions and mix all together and refrigerate until cold. I usually quadruple the recipe because it goes fast.

And here's a photograph of something called "Mom Dill's Harlequin Salad":



But we're looking for salads of harlequin designs, and I'm sorry, but there's just no design there. Mom and her ilk are simply using the word "harlequin" to mean multicolored. Harlequin design has got to refer to a much more distinctive diamond shape pattern typical of the Commedia dell'Arte character. Like this:



So I'm picturing some mound of edible material with criss-crossing strips of pimento. Ah! Here: "Fancy Salads of the Big Hotels." That book is from 1921, one year before the events in "The Great Gatsby" are supposed to take place. And here's Robert Salad:

Place two slices of tomato on half a heart of romaine, and on top place two rings of green pepper. Lay a slice of hard boiled eggs in each of the rings and decorate with diamond shaped dice of pimento.

I know. It's really no less disgusting than Mom's concoction. But were we supposed to be licking our chops over this? It's a sentence read in isolation, but I'm guessing we were supposed to think this spread was extravagant and yet... we're happy to stay home with Mom and her ilk after the 4 buckets of Miracle Whip with canned goods have disappeared, down the various household gullets.

Bewitching!

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"Must you always be out in that ghastly clown suit, running around annoying people?"

Says Pretty Alice to the Harlequin in Harlan Ellison's "Repent Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman," which I read on the urging of commenter Icepick because of the way it reflected on the recent news stories about Aaron Swartz, David Gregory, and the Boston ban on drinking games.

I downloaded this Orson Scott Card collection — "Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century" — which included "Repent Harlequin," because I wanted to understand this harlequin/ticktockman distinction, and lo and behold here's the harlequin — actually, what do you expect? he's a harlequin — wearing a clown suit, when just 5 days ago, the bloggism of the day was clown suits. We were pimping clown suits.



It's weird how these themes seem to coagulate on their own.



IN THE COMMENTS: Astro said points out that my Picasso clown isn't a harlequin. I need to be better about specifying the Commedia dell'arte characters. Here's a Picasso harlequin (on the right):

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"I worry that Swartz’s prosecution is a sign that America is gradually losing the sense of humor that has made it the home of the world’s innovators and misfits."

... America is gradually losing....

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"We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen."

Said Icepick in last night's thread about Boston banning drinking games in bars. He began:

I recently read "The Scouring of the Shire" chapter from Return of the King. It was disturbing how much the Shire under (ultimately) Saruman's direction sounded like modern America. The country is being run by over-officious jerks, and the American people are putting up with it. Land of the free no more....

And then:

We need more harlequins, fewer ticktockmen.

A link goes to the Harlan Ellison story "Repent Harlequin!' Said The Ticktockman." 

Icepick advises:

Professor, I believe you need some more tags. One for over-officiousness, and perhaps tags for harlequins (see Swartz, for example) and for ticktockmen (anything with Bloomberg).

Ellison begins his story with a quote from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience":

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

Ellison introduces that quote with: "There are always those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know 'where it's at,' this...."

That story was published in 1965, when the phrase "where it's at" was quite the thing. 

ADDED: I just bought "Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the 20th Century," which contains "Repent Harlequin!"

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