Do you dork out about history? For instance, did you have ever a crush on an historical figure? I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here before, but what first attracted me to A was the fact that he uncannily resembled the sultry portrait of Christopher Marlowe I took a fancy to in my high-school English textbook (A is not that sultry, but I still see the likeness in the eyes and hair). I’ve also frequently been heard to state that Alexander Hamilton is smokin’ hot on the $10 bill. Or have you ever found a long-dead personality so inexplicably hilarious or endearing that you been unable to resist sharing choice anecdotes about him or her with everyone you meet, or constructing elaborate jokes about him/her with your friends? In college, K and I would gossip about the Elizabethans as though they were characters on our favorite soap (I was a particular fan of Sir Phillip Sidney and—for comedic value—Sir Walter Raleigh), and later our fandom shifted to the Founding Fathers. My previous job, in which I edited collective biographies of all sorts of historical figures, was just one such obsession after another. Over long months of fact-checking, photo research, writing and rewriting, layout, and proofreading, I became personally fond of a whole series of greats, including strangely cuddly John Maynard Keynes, crazy fake-nosed Tycho Brahe, doomed hottie Robert F. Kennedy, good old chick magnet/awe-inspiring genius Ben Franklin, and sweet, tragic Alan Turing.
If you’re at all like me, it will behoove you to read the cute and clever comics of Kate Beaton immediately. Beaton’s takes on historical figures are a perfect mix of the silly and the intellectual. It takes a smart and talented person to create whimsical historical fantasies that still ring true—maybe not strictly factually, but emotionally true. I’ve edited a book about the history of computers, so I can vouch that Charles Babbage really did have a bizarre hatred of street musicians; Beaton takes this odd fact to his logical conclusion by having his wife Georgina wonder, “Does he have to make a big spectacle about it every time we go out?” Similarly, Nikola Tesla really was celibate, and although there’s no evidence suggesting that frenzied screaming ladies were throwing their bloomers up on stage when he demonstrated electricity, wouldn’t it be awesome if they had?
What unfailingly cracks me up about history is that it’s just so big and crazy and yet so ordinary and human, and I feel that (like Sarah Vowell in Assassination Vacation) Beaton gets that too. Washington decides to “Cross the shit over the Delaware.” Maud Gonne complains to Yeats, “It’s just another faggy poem.” Orwell says of Animal Farm, “Seriously that book is going to rule so hard.” Charles of Austria woos Queen Elizabeth I with a song that goes, “Your hairrr is like a giant muffin.” James Cook fatally taunts the Hawaiians, “You can’t kill me! I’m too busy banging your chicks.” Admiral Nelson goes on a date: “I’d smile at you more but I have no teeth. There’s that ‘shot in the face’ thing again.” Jane Austen copes with her fans (“This novel is a social commentary.” “Is it a social commentary about hunky dreamboats?”). Teddy Roosevelt wins the Nobel Peace Prize (“Russia, Japan, must you kill each other so? We can negotiate! Or, if you want to, we can safari.” “Fuck it let’s do both!”). Fat King George IV fears “a sexy revolution” and envisions James Monroe showing off his hot ass (“Goodness I have dropped the Constitution…let me get that”). But lest I give away all the punchlines, let me just say that my all-time favorite is the Mary Shelley one and the runner-up is the one about St. Francis. Happy reading!
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