Topical Guide 149
Mark Dorset
Vanity, Self-Image, Self-Confidence
While my mother and I were doing the dishes, I said, as casually as I could manage, “Do you think I should wear a suit?”
My mother stopped working at once. “Of course!” she said. “Of course you should wear a suit! Oh, how cute you’ll look!” …
The next evening, there was lots of excitement over polishing my shoes, putting on my new corduroys and shirt and sweater, and tying my tie. …
Riding in the car, going off to dinner at a girl’s house, I felt for a short time like a young sophisticate.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
Embarrassment; Feelings of Inadequacy
The feeling began to fade when my father said, as I got out of the car, “Now, be polite, Peter,” and it vanished completely as soon as Mr. Bud opened the door.
“Well!” he said. “You must be Peter!”
“Yes,” I said. We shook hands. I hoped that he didn’t notice that my hand was trembling.
“You look as if you’re ready for Christmas!” he said. Then he added “Ho-ho-ho!”
There was a mirror in their hall. As Mr. Bud and I walked past it, I took a look at myself. For the first time, I realized that except for my white shirt and brown shoes I was dressed entirely in red and green. …
All of this—Mr. Bud’s manner, his position at Bivalve By-products, the house, the decorating scheme, the matching dresses—made me feel completely out of my league.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
Scandal; Corporate Malfeasance; Plagiarism
Clarissa’s father was a genius of sorts, a restless genius whose innovative ideas for making useful and profitable products from garbage had landed him a spot at Bivalve By-products. It was he who suggested the “Clampact” that was to become so popular: a pair of empty clamshells, gilded, rejoined by a metal hinge, a mirror glued inside one valve, the other filled with face powder.Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff”
Mr. Bud may have been “a genius of sorts,” but he may also have been a plagiarist. As “a genius of sorts,” he was the designer of the Happy Santa Clam Christmas Tree Ornament, apparently an original idea of his own. However, as a plagiarist he may have been behind the advertisement for the Happy Santa Clam Christmas Tree Ornament, which brought a sharp rebuke, a cease-and-desist order, and a lawsuit from the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company. Here is the advertisement for the Happy Santa Clam Christmas Tree Ornament:
And here is the Liggett & Myers advertisement for Chesterfield cigarettes:
You be the judge. It looks like an open-and-shut case to me.
Here’s an interesting footnote to the case, though.
In his public statement about the affair, Mr. Bud admitted only that “mistakes were made,” and this cowardly form of non-apology, which became the de rigueur form of corporate and governmental non-apology for decades thereafter, may have been original with him.
[more to come on Friday, December 10, 2021]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” and “The Fox and the Clam,” the first five novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.