Tuesday 4 February 2020

An Obscure Connection

OK. Here is a really obscure late-night connection. You are going to love this one.

(i) Ichabod Crane is a traitor to Fabletown in Bill Willingham's Fables: The Mean Seasons.

(ii) Googling Ichabod Crane, we remind ourselves that he is a Washington Irving character.

(iii) We also learn that Will Rogers played Ichabod Crane.

(iv) "[Manse Everard] wasn't a celebrity hound, but after he'd decided that roping was an art that might come in handy, he'd gone to the trouble of making acquaintance with an expert in 1910, who agreed to teach him. His hours with Will Rogers were among the pleasantest of his life."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), 209 B. C., p. 81.

Thus, through several layers of fiction, the Fables Ichabod Crane has the most tenuous possible connection with Poul Anderson's Manson Everard of the Time Patrol. Fortunately, I don't have to invent any of this stuff. I just read it.

6 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It was probably because of this mention of Manse taking lessons in roping from Will Rogers that I looked him up myself. And I can see why Everard enjoyed the time he spent with Rogers.

A very tenuous but still piquant connection with the Time Patrol stories!

Ad astra!

S.M. Stirling said...

Will Rogers came up with one of the most enduring American political jokes: "I am a member of no organized political party. I am a Democrat."

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Another sort of joke, not as good though: the biggest political organization in Britain is the NANAS, the National Association of Non-Aligned Socialists.

BTW, we must avoid putting the words, "National" and "Socialist," together. Thus, years ago, a National Conference of Socialist Women was not a National Socialist Women's Conference.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!

Mr. Stirling: considering the shambolic mess the Democrats made of their presidential caucus in Iowa, Nancy Pelosi's disgraceful tearing up on TV of Pres. Trump's State of the Union Address (in his presence!), and their failed impeachment trial, the Democrats seem more incompetent than the Keystone Cops!

Paul: respectfully, I have to not quite agree. My view is that it is possible for socialists to also be nationalists.

Ad astra! Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Oh, they can, of course. But my point was that it was the name of the "German National Socialist Workers' Party" that was abbreviated to "Nazi."
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I finally caught on to the linguistic nuance you had in mind when I reread your original comment!

Ad astra! Sean