Frances Gossen and Jon Maniscalco
The Last Straw

For your amusement and edification (not to mention horror?), we have decided to share what we consider to be a characteristic example of the sort of cover letter we receive on a regular basis here in the editorial office, clipped or stapled to submissions of diverse quality. Surprisingly, none of these letters are signed “Thingum Bob;” even so, the name in the following letter has been changed to protect the guilty. It is addressed to “Dearest Editors”:

My name is P. Thelonious Highnose IV. I am visionary from the superior landscape of the beautiful Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. My family has been contributing to this lacking nation since even before its birth, and I am proud to inform you that contribution has been poignant. With this submission, I feel {as I regard the smoke curling from the tip of my cigarette holder} I have finally crafted something worthy of such a legacy. Attached are the first three masterful chapters of my manifesto and two poems that encapsulate the experience I underwent sculpting this literature. My manifesto, A VIEW: INTO THE WINDOW OF THE HORRORS THAT ARE EVERYTHING, encapsulates the true meaning of life in America for and from the perspective of the oppressed intellectual. Be it known that I have filed for copyright over this valuable material. Because this is only the first 93 pages, I will elaborate on some of the motifs difficult to grasp. The raccoon who knocks on my trash holder symbolizes the American wilderness and how it will emerge even in the concrete wilderness that traps so many artists yet allows them to create great works even more grandiose than even Fennimore Cooper could ever imagine. Also, a thought that I experience often as I gaze out onto the charade of Central Park’s “forest” along with the daunting and depressing sea of hi-rises: I truly know how a house cat feels ignoring his food bowl, pulled in by the siren song of the birds flying free, un-caged, outside his window. When I go home to the serene world of the Berkshires and I hear the yowls of my neighbors’ feline inmates, they become closer to me than anyone who would be fool enough to not understand the great literature I present to them when they see it. Yours sincerely in shared devotion to the hippocrene Muses, PTHIV.

[Speaking for myself only and not for my co-editor Frances I’d have to commend Mr. Highnose for refraining from adding what we can only imagine to be an extensive list of previous publications. - JM]

[Speaking for myself only it seems that Jonathan Maniscalco doesn’t know how to use commas. - FG]

Humbly submitted,
THE EDITORS

<< Back to Issue 17, 2014