by Don Marquis
the surface of the lives
of insignificant people
the reason the movies are doing business
and the theater is not
is not altogether one of price
or the financial condition of the country
the movies are young and crude
and are not afraid of gusto and the heroic
whether they sentimentalize
some lousy gunman and his doings
or put across an incredible western
or splurge with hokum melodrama
or embark on an adventure
of pure phantasy like wait disneys stuff
they are instinctively trying
to hand the public some kind of stuff
that wins the audience away from
the sordid surface of existence
they may do it badly
they may do it obviously
they may do it crudely
but they do have the hunch
that what the millions want is to be shown
that there is something possible
to the human race
besides the dull repetition
of the triviality which is the routine
of common existence
“You can certainly use some highbrow expressions, when you set yourself to it, Archy,” I said to the incredible cockroach. But the conceited insect kept right on butting his opinions out on the keyboard.
the legitimate stage
is afraid of ranting
the legitimate stage is afraid
of any breadth of gesture
the legitimate stage is afraid
of being kidded if it puts across
a genuine fervor of emotion
it is all tightened up and narrowed down
by its various fears
but the movies from the start
have had to please the millions
in order to exist in a business way
and they have had to keep in touch
with the mind of the mob
and the mob always wants a hero in a story
with whom it can identify itself
in some attempt to break through
into a better condition of existence
the great fault of the movies
has also been their great virtue
that is their necessity to cater to millions
it has compelled them to keep in touch
with the modern equivalent of folk lore
every now and then they have blundered
into doing something with a touch
of the universal in it just
because they follow ignorantly
this instinctive hunch of theirs
Archy ceased to write, and held his head with four of his feet. I thought he was grieving for the condition of the theater, and asked him if this was the case.
no he said
the theater has deserted me
and i am willing to let it go
it saddens me a little to think
that thousands of generations of us
devoted cockroaches are left in the lurch
but the fact is that the legit stage
is no longer the theater in a big way
the moving picture is the theater now
the living and real theater
archy flies
well boss i have had
some experiences you know that
fellow with the teeth that glitter
and the eyes that glitter who
comes in to see you and
who has been talking about his aeroplane
for six months you thought he
was always a liar and
so did i he is the kind of a liar who
looks so much like a liar no one
believes him when he tells the
truth i thought i would call
his bluff so i crawled into
his outside breast pocket the other day
and went out to a place near mineola
with him he really has an aeroplane he
went up in it the next morning and
i went along boss i must have
picked out the wrong position i sat
on top of one of the planes thinking i would see
more of the country boss
dont ask me for any sensations the
only thing i felt was wind i felt
like a sigh in a cyclone i had
about as much control of myself as a
bullet that is going through the
barrel of an airgun i dont want
to rub anything in boss but it
was as hard to hang onto as the water
wagon which is a simile
you may be able to appreciate i
i must have picked out the wrong position
dug all my feet and claws
and teeth in but the wind rushed by
me like a church scandal going
through a little village i would have
felt nausea if
my stomach hadnt been scared to death
it was only a question of time before i
would let loose thank heaven i thought i am
not an elephant i didnt
want to die again so soon just because
i can come to life again is
no reason for overworking a good thing too
many deaths and transmigrations look
vulgar and ostentatious
and when i did let go i must have
been two miles high around and
around i spun whirling like a flake of
soot that has been flipped
off of a devils wing between the
worlds and is spinning back home to
hell and beneath me it looked
like hell there was a vast expanse of water
with the sun making it
seem like melted metal i suppose i said
i will get all my feet wet now and
take my death of cold if a fish
dont eat me and just then i saw
beneath me a great fish grinning as if
he had heard a joke on the
bottom of the sea and come up to
laugh at the cosmos get that
cosmic stuff boss it goes great in some
circles i lit on one of his great white teeth
and waited for the gulp that should land
me in his interior department oh
lord i said if i ever see dry land i
will never mock at that jonah story
again i dont want to die in
midocean and be reincarnated as a
sardine or as an oyster
a cockroach isnt much but
he has a look in in society where
an oyster is never mentioned except as an
article of food but if it
must be it must be kismet and karma and
that bunch of bullies vote us the way they
please we are only instructed delegates
in the universal convention every
time i die it makes me more of a fatalist and
i waited for him to gulp but
he didnt gulp i hopped over to
the next tooth to the right as you go in
and investigated and finally climbed
out where his upper lip would have been if he had
had one and worked up to his eye it was
glassy in death i was floating on a dead shark
and it was all the more unpleasant
because he had not had any dental work done for a
long time or else he had adenoids or maybe
he had died of ptomaine poisoning boss what i am
delicately trying to convey is
that he had been dead so long he had a right to
be ashamed of it just then i
heard human voices and looking around i saw
two young men in bathing suits and<
br />
a motor boat a shark a shark cried one
of them put her about the motor is still
busted said the other row row for your
life but wait said the first one this
shark seems deceased bill lets haul him to land
and say we slew him right o torn says
bill it will make a hit with all the girls he
attacked us says torn and i jumped into the water and
cut his throat with my jackknife you
did eh says bill what was i doing then put two
slashes into him which they did one for each and
fastened him to the stern of their boat with a
line and as they towed him to the beach with
me sitting listening they fixed
up an awful lie talk about ovations boss when they
came to the beach they got one the
more i see of human nature the less i know
whether to despise it for being so easily
gulled or for being so ready to
gull by the time they had told
that story eight times each believed that
he was telling the truth although he
still thought maybe the other one was lying well
i left those two heroes
surrounded six deep by girls and came to
town in a little bunch of dress goods samples a
commuters wife has been trying to make
him remember to match my
sympathies being with the shark poor feeble old
thing he had likely perished of old age
to be killed a second time is hard luck but
this is the truth of a story that you
may read another version of in
the news columns
archy
archy and the suicide
well boss i have just
been assisting at a suicide i think the
gentleman who killed himself was
quite right in doing so too
i went into the kitchen of an
up town hotel the other
evening for a bite to eat and after
i had dined i thought
i would look the place over and if
i found a room that appealed to me i
would spend the night there
the room i got into was already
infested by a little old bald headed fellow
with scared eyes and a face like
a petrified turnip who was
hunched up under a reading lamp
reading a
bible all of a sudden he gave a
jump and said gawd gawd there it
is again and i saw a puff of
smoke floating across the
table in front of him it seemed to come
from nowhere in particular smoke
smoke cried the old man i am
haunted by smoke and as
he spoke another puff of smoke
suddenly appeared from nowhere on
the table in front of him
gawd gawd he cried spare me spare
me do not persecute me this way
and i will give all the money to charity
i will give it to the red
cross or any church you
may designate i know
i did wrong to burn down that
building for the
insurance money but how was i
to know there was any one in it i
did not plan a murder a third
puff of smoke seemed to start out of
his own shoulder and floated in
front of his eyes and a fourth
puff hit him on his bald head and made
a little veil in front of his face
gawd gawd he cried and threw
himself on the rug and began to
pray with his face hidden i
thought to myself those
puffs of smoke are peculiar there
isnt anything on fire in
here and then i got a whiff of it
and it smelled like tobacco smoke
then i saw something that looked
like a gray globe floating from the
direction of the bathroom door it
drifted across the room and hit
the reading lamp and vanished with a
puff of smoke i looked at the
bathroom door and i thought i
heard some one chuckle over there and
then i saw another gray globe of smoke forming
at the keyhole it slowly grew and grew till it
was as big as a baseball and then it
detached itself from the door and
floated across the room
i crawled noiselessly under the bath
room door it was one of those bath
rooms midway between two sleeping
rooms and there were a couple of
chuckle headed young fellows sitting
on the floor laughing to
themselves both were about half
soused and they were having a good
time one of them had a slender hollow
brass curtain rod and he was soaping
the end of it and
sticking it into the keyhole then he
would fill his mouth with cigarette
smoke and blow a soap bubble which
drifted into the old mans room what
is he doing now said one of them he
is on the floor praying said the
other taking the rod out of the
keyhole and looking through let me
blow a couple said the first young
man you are too soused said the
second one dont be selfish said the
first one gawd gawd said the voice
from the room i had just left i am
haunted by ghostly smoke i will live
right all the rest of my life if you
only let me off this time
give him another bubble said the
first young man he has got it
coming to him evidently so
they gave him half a dozen more
bubbles the noise
in the haunted mans room ceased for
some minutes what is he doing now
said the first young man i cant see
him said the second one just then
there came a kicking kind of a noise
on the wall i went into the
haunted mans room and found his
closet door was open i went in and he
was just dying he had hanged himself
to a hook on the wall with a trunk
cord those two young fellows had
just the wrong man for their little
practical joke or
just the right man if you want to
look at it that way i
went away from there at once not
wishing to be on hand if there
was any investigation yours
for conscience and coincidence
and may they never meet
archy
and found out too late
comforting thoughts
a fish who had
swallowed an angle worm
found all too late
that a hook was nesting
in its midst ah me
said the poor fish
i am the most luckless
creature in the world
had you not pointed
that out said the worm
j might have supposed
myself a trifle
unfortunate
cheer up you two said
the fisherman jovially
the first two minutes
of that hook are always
the worst you must
cultivate a philosophic
state of mind
boss there is always
a comforting thought
/>
in time of trouble when
it is not our trouble
archy
inspiration
excuse me if my
writing is out of alignment i
fell into a bowl of
egg nog the other
day at the restaurant down
the street which the doctor
says he is glad to
hear you are keeping away
from and when i
emerged i was full of happy
inspirations alas they
vanished ere the break of
day i am sure they
were the most brilliant and
witty things that ever
emanated from the mind of
man or cockroach or poet i
sat inside a mince pie
and laughed and laughed at
them myself the world seemed all
one golden glory boss
i came up the
street to get all this
wonderful stuff onto paper for
you but when i tried to
operate the typewriter
my foot would slip and
by the time i had control
of the machine again
the thoughts had gone
forever it is the
tragedy of the artist
archy
gossip
well boss it is
surprising how many
gossips there are left in
this world and how
easy it is to ruin a
person s reputation
a few days ago an
alleged friend of yours
remarked to another
alleged friend i saw
archy on a bun in
a cafe down town the other
day and the second alleged
friend told another person
that archy had been seen
publicly intoxicated and
the other person went
around saying poor
archy he drinks like a
water bug until my
reputation is ruined you
would think i was
the habitual companion of
the well known dipsas snake
and the truth of
the whole thing is very
simple your alleged friend did
see me on a bun
in a cafe it was a
common ordinary bun such as
you spread butter on
and eat and i
was eating at it
just as i would sit on any other
piece of bread and eat but
now all my friends are
saying to me
did i see you on a
bun or did i not
answer yes or no and if i
answer no they say
prevaricator i saw you on a
bun and if i answer yes they
say i thought so and
will not let me explain and
if i do not answer
