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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 1

Disquieting American [1]

Disquieting American [1]

Sir: I find Doug Laurenson’s diatribe against the songs of Tom Lehrer ‘disquieting’ and even a trifle absurd. He seems to make the error, fatally common in a Puritan culture, of confusing virtue with inhibition. Tom Lehrer has guyed successfully, to the delight of many, the sugary lyrics which emerge from the jam-factories of America. It is difficult to see where Mr Laurenson finds ground for his charges of neo-Satanism, perversity, decadence and criminality. Does he seriously think that Tom Lehrer, by writing ‘The Old Dope Peddler’, is attempting to promote the sale of marihuana to teenagers? Or does he think at all? He quotes two inflated lines of Rupert Brooke’s in support of cantankerous moralism. Probably Rupert Brooke’s best poem is the one that savagely and humorously describes the poet vomiting over the rail on a Channel crossing, and thinking meanwhile of his beloved – a poem many degrees removed from sentimental nationalism and not too far from Tom Lehrer. I do not share Mr Laurenson’s desire to keep the party clean. Every party needs an uninhibited, satirical entertainer. Tom Lehrer provides bile pills to swallow after the sweet fudge of the Reader’s Digest. If Mr Laurenson repents within a fortnight, I will send him a Tom Lehrer disc;page 420 if he does not, I will challenge him to a duel of limericks at dawn, outside the nearest Crusader bookroom, in honour of Dr Graham.

1960 (217)