{"id":8241,"date":"2013-01-14T14:10:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-14T19:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=8241"},"modified":"2026-03-26T09:59:53","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T13:59:53","slug":"marcus-blog-uncle-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2013\/marcus-blog-uncle-george\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle George"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Uncle George\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The holidays have just rolled past and for most of us that means the carnival of all our extended family have made the rounds as well. And although I don\u2019t want to get into too much personal detail here, I\u2019m positive that every English major has had a similar conversation (at least once) with a member of his or her kin and clan as the one I\u2019m about to describe, so I feel like this might be pertinent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me it always comes from my Great Uncle George, who operates in a series of superimposed cycles stretching outwards, so that looking at one\u2019s watch at any point in the day, or checking the calendar on any day of the year, you could guess (by time alone) what exactly Georgie might be doing. His endless repetitions are probably the whispers of some incoming senility, but they are also the product of his divorce, at 58, which pretty much sent him reeling, emotionally speaking, into the safe-track trenches of a world without painful reminders. His advice, and he is a big giver of advice is just as repetitious, every time I see him he always hits me with his cautionary tale: \u201cAnd Marky-boy, Malarky-boy, remember this, if nothing else: The only thing stupider than getting married is getting divorced. That\u2019s how they getcha\u2019.\u201d Who and why: forever obscure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncle George has spent his life in one long, sustained verbal performance. And he\u2019s picked up conversational tricks from all sorts: the old Jewish men eternally martyred in his retirement home; the Irish boyos, verbally clubbing one another for sport, with whom he\u2019d worked the mills; and not nearly least of all the Newfies he\u2019d met out on an oil rigger. This synthesis of speech patterns not only gave him interesting mixes, but endowed him with the frame of mind necessary to create whole new expressions, personally trademarked Uncle George\u00ae (my favorites included, when you asked him if he\u2019d mind doing something for you, the response: \u201cI\u2019d rather be rum running across Hell\u2019s own border\u201d, and when you ask him where he\u2019s been, the answer: \u201cOh y\u2019know. North of the sea, south of the sun\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the conversation I\u2019ve hinted at up to now, I figure it might be best to just script out a single instance of the more general trend. And so here it goes:
\nUncle George: \u201cNow tell me this, and tell me straight, can you name me one great writer who died happy? No. They all crumple up in some garret somewhere, syphilitic and strapped with gout, alone and still growling at the universe. Science. Now that\u2019s a profession! There you have your success on a piece of paper. A decoded the human genome, B cured polio \u2013 and on, and on, and if you\u2019re lucky – a Nobel Prize!\u201d Here his eyes got that fresh-minted coin sheen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcus: \u201cThere\u2019s a Nobel Prize for literature too, y\u2019know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBah.\u201d He waved this category away as if it were just an oversight, which had not, but soon would be, correctively deleted. \u201cWhat\u2019s important here is happiness. A scientist works towards a goal, he can measure all his success and failure against that finish line – and so he keeps his head on square. What\u2019s a writer to do? Work to a word count? But we both know it works in no such way. And when you start to write about your friends (which let me tell you: you inevitably will), they leave out of anger. And guess what, you\u2019re glad to see them go, because they never lived up to your wonderful characters anyhow. And there you are: alone and unhappy. Is this what you want?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNikola Tesla was one of the greatest scientific minds, maybe ever, and he died by himself in a hotel room, talking to pigeons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, at least he had friends! What self-respecting pigeon would talk to a dying poet?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWill you leave him alone George, it\u2019s his passion.\u201d Why is it that nothing marginalizes the things you care about quite like hearing your mom defend your right to be interested in them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat? You\u2019d rather I didn\u2019t care at all about his future? You\u2019d rather I send him a birthday card n\u2019 20 dollars every year, like some people [I\u2019m not exactly sure who he meant here. It no doubt involved some well-savored family wound that he\u2019d been picking at for years, maybe decades], and we leave it at that? No such luck. I care! So sue me.\u201d This challenge carried with it the implicit threat that Uncle George would mop the floor with you in any courtroom from here to Alaska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not even sure if I want to be a writer, I could be a teacher \u2013 a professor maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOoo la-la. Professor Marcus. What, you gonna\u2019 need to get yourself a pair of snobby glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUncle George, you wear glasses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAha! And who\u2019s a bigger prick than me?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s usually around this point that he\u2019d laugh himself hoarse at his own joke and send me off with a choice liquor order to drown out the itching in his throat. When I was small he\u2019d always give me the slum dog milliliters at the bottom of his glass (to grow hair on my chest). It\u2019d be easy to assume that Uncle George\u2019s recurring lecture series on the folly of my academic path were some kind of working class response to what he perceived to be stuffy high culture. But despite his best efforts to hide it, Uncle George just overflows with good feeling for other people. And deep down inside I know a storyteller like him can\u2019t help but perceive himself as an unrecognized poet. More likely than not his whole spiel relates back to that little dose of alcohol at the bottom of his glass that he\u2019d force on the boy hanging round him at bended knee. It\u2019s all a series of tests, and Uncle George wants to give the vitriol, wants to set the bar higher than anyone who might not know what he knows: that his great-nephew is just that. And that should I make that final leap, that sends me up and over, as he watches smiling from the sidelines, he can say:
\n\u201cWell I\u2019ll be damned, the sunnabitch did it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The holidays have just rolled past and for most of us that means the carnival of all our extended family have made the rounds as well. And although I don\u2019t want to get into too much personal detail here, I\u2019m positive that every English major has had a similar conversation (at least once) with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[26,24,27,25,849],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-marcus-blog","category-news","category-student-blogs","category-student-voices"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8241"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53702,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8241\/revisions\/53702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}