“Oh dear, if I never see another shard in my life it won’t be too soon,” I sighed to Erich as we stumbled about yet another storage area. He muttered something in German that sounded like “shard.” What was that? I asked. “It’s a German word, ‘Schadenfreude,’ ” he said. “Roughly translated, it means ‘malicious joy in the misfortune of others.’ ” Which seemed to sum up the whole Egyptomaniacal experience.
The ending of this piece gave me trouble. Ambivalent as I was (and am) about the Egypt freaks, my original final paragraph ran as follows: “Listening to them tell of these developments, my unfortunate inborn propensity for skepticism and scoffing dissolves, and I feel most privileged to have met this attractive and dedicated group of people, to have had the rare opportunity of being in on the ground floor of some of their achievements.”
This ending was greeted with shrieks of derision by those to whom I sent a draft copy of the manuscript. My daughter: “That’s really phony, doesn’t sound like you at all.” Robert Gottlieb at Knopf: “What’s the matter? You’ve gone all soft and sugary.” Marge Frantz, valued helper and adviser: “Sounds like a cop-out, after all you told me about it.” Pulling myself together, I rewrote the ending as in the version given here.
However, as the reader may have divined, the final-final ending was not too satisfactory to me either, for it contains no hint of my real dilemma. Going to Egypt in search of a restful vacation from my métier, I found muck up to the armpits. Had my rake been out and at the ready, I could have piled the stuff up—but where? There was nowhere to unload it. Restraint may not be in my nature but in this case, being for hire to Geo, I reluctantly hung up the rake—and although the aroma of such alluring potential muck heaps as the Coca-Cola Connection set my nostrils aquiver, I resolutely turned my back and made not the slightest inquiry as to why Coca-Cola was suddenly courting an Egyptian goddess of many millennia ago. Could it have something to do with the Arab blacklist to which the purveyors of this revolting beverage had been consigned as traders with Israel? I shall never know. “Get thee behind me, Coca-Cola” was my slogan as I staggered around the Mut excavation site. So I include “Egyptomania” here with apologies, merely as an example of one that got away.
THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK
PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
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Copyright © 1957, 1958, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1979 by Jessica Mitford
Introduction copyright © 2010 by Jane Smiley
All rights reserved.
Grateful acknowledgment made to Chappell Music Co. for permission to reprint lines from “Sixteen Tons” by Merle Travis. Copyright © 1947 by American Music, Inc. Copyright renewed, all rights controlled by Unichappell Music, Inc. (Rightsong Music, publisher). International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Cover image: Manuscript page of the introduction to Poison Penmanship; the Jessica Mitford Collection of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library of the Ohio State University Libraries
Cover design: Katy Homans
The Library of Congress has cataloged the earlier printing as follows:
Mitford, Jessica, 1917–1996.
Poison penmanship : the gentle art of muckraking / by Jessica Mitford;
preface by Jane Smiley.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59017-355-8 (alk. paper)
1. Journalism. I. Title.
PN4726.M55 2010
070.92—dc22
2009050089
eISBN 978-1-59017-529-3
v1.0
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Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking Page 29
