Studies in Poultry and Literature

“Feeling Sequimish”
Mark Couhig
Contact Mark at mcouhig@sequimgazette.com
Mark Couhig has been a writer for more than 50 years.
His first experience with the written word arrived at a very early age when he was required to painstakingly hand-trace dotted lines in a notebook, a process that led first to a mastery of the straight, purely angular letters of the English alphabet. He soon turned his attention to the curved letters, exhibiting a full proficiency in that skill by the end of his seventh year.
Before another year had passed, Couhig had begun to cluster letters into meaningful compositions, an accomplishment for which he was awarded a coveted gold star, the first-ever public acknowledgement of his extraordinary aptitude with words.
In time he would take these words and strategically create further clusters, which he called “sentences.”
Paragraphs soon followed.
In the third grade Couhig learned the skill of cursive writing, allowing him to greatly expand and accelerate his output.
Over the ensuing months and years Couhig’s now-renown facility for dramatic narrative developed. He was able to work the delicate filigree of fiction — dramatic, purposeful action that engages the reader — to a degree that astonished Ms. Sweeney, his teacher and mentor. Of one of Couhig’s early works, “Run, Tom, Run,” she wrote, “I’m so proud of you.”
As his facility with words grew, so too did his worldview, aided in part by his assiduous readings of “The Weekly Reader,” which he continues to regard as a formative influence in his later, more mature works.
In the fifth grade, Couhig’s repertoire and love of the written word translated to a sterling turn on the stage as Shepherd No. 3 in a new and dynamic dramatic reading of the Gospel According to Luke, a popular work of the time.
Approximately 50 years later Couhig moved to Sequim where he writes a blog.

Studies in Poultry and Literature

Published on Tue, Aug 28, 2012
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Some of your favorite works of fiction — and their authors — have great stories behind them, stories you likely haven't heard. For example:

• In his original manuscript for Inferno, Dante Alighieri included a tenth ring of hell. Originally plotted between the first, Limbo, and what is now the second, Lust, "Minor Indiscretions" included those souls thrown into perpetual torment for such actions as nose-picking, laughing at inappropriate times, and extending their fingers and asking someone to "smell this." In Dante's imagination these sinners will spend eternity with a dire case of what today's doctors, working with hints found in the text, say was likely a raging case of tinea curis, which is colloquially known as jock itch. Academics studying the early drafts agree that's likely the case, saying the itching and burning provide Dante with the perfect allegorical adumbration for what was to follow.

• James Joyce, the great 20th Century Irish author, once admitted, "I don't have any idea at all what I was attempting to say with Finnegan's Wake. Frankly, I can't make heads or tails of it, but people seem to like it. So there you go."

Joyce pioneered the stream-of-consciousness method of writing, which he described as "the happy outcome of a hand grenade and a dictionary."

• In the first drafts of Shakespeare's great tragedy, both Gertrude and Hamlet survived. In fact the two wed and lived happily thereafter, the mother-son pairing bringing to fruition, at least in Shakespeare's mind, all of the play's earlier allusions to incest.

Focus groups brought in to view the earliest stagings, which were being prepped out of town in Birmingham, reacted with disgust, forcing the play's producers to invoke contractual provisions that gave them final approval of the play's major themes.

In the end an angry Shakespeare relented, with the proviso that he be allowed to kill off every one of the play's major figures in a sweeping scene of unprecedented gore. The producers agreed.

• Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, spent much of his lifetime in deep debt, leading to several interesting episodes in his writing career.

The working title for Twain's literary masterpiece, for example, was Frankenberry Finn. However, when product placement negotiations broke down with General Mills, Twain, in a huff, changed the names of the book's primary protagonists from Frankenberry Finn and Trix to Huckleberry Finn and Jim, respectively.

• According to baptismal records kept by London's High Church of St. Stanislav, the birth name of the beloved British author of "A Christmas Carol" and other classic Victorian-era novels was Charles Chickens. It isn't known when or if his name was legally changed to Charles Dickens, the name that is now known and revered throughout the world.

• Since 1924 all writers working in the English language have been required to insert the phrase "as they say" following "rest" when declaring, "And the rest is history."

• Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë are world renown for their novels. However, few know the story of the fourth Brontë sister, Evelyn.

Though nothing of her original work remains, it was said that Evelyn also exhibited considerable talent with the written word, and in her early years was considered a prodigy.

Because they regarded her as a threat to their own considerable reputations, the older Brontës eventually lured Evelyn from Haworth Parsonage into a nearby wood where they strangled her slowly by feeding her slightly dampened pages from her own manuscripts.

They then removed her liver, cooked it over a small wood fire and enjoyed the results with a touch of red wine and some fava beans.

Remarkably, the Brontë sisters continue today to serve the literary world, in recent years providing in composite a model for Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter.

• Miguel de Cervantes wrote the greater portion of his celebrated picaresque, Don Quixote Book One, while languishing in prison. Coincidentally, he completed it while languishing intoxicated.

• Recent surveys confirm that Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding Crowd" continues to hold the crown as the classic most often claimed to have been read by those who did no such thing. The survey indicates that 1.1 percent of Americans, and 3 percent of British readers, declare they have read Madding, while just .12 percent and .84 percent, respectively, could describe with any accuracy how the tale unfolds. Most instead simply stated that through a series of events the protagonist, or protagonists, ended the book in a geographical location near Madding that was relatively unpopulated.

For the fourteenth consecutive year, William Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" took second place, with many having read instead the "magazine version."

• Everyone knows that John Bunyan, the great British author of Pilgrim's Progress, was the great-grandfather of American folk hero Paul Bunyan. Few know, however, that Paul's ox Babe was an eight-generation descendant of his great-grandfather's ox, Pilgrim.