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Greed

The Natural History of Iceland (1758) is known as an icon of the laconic.

Chapter LXXII Concerning snakes

No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the whole island.

The notoriety of this chapter, like a lot of notoriety, is unjust, since the Danish traveller Niels Horrebow had merely undertaken to rebut an inaccurate history of Iceland, and since in any case this superbly succinct chapter (would that more works of history were this brisk and frank) was a liberty taken by the English translator.¹³³

DYLAN’S VISIONS OF SIN

Chapter XYZ

Concerning greed

No songs of any kind about greed are to be met with throughout the whole Dyland.¹³⁴

A Latin tag, risking self-righteousness, avers that Plato is my friend, and Socrates is my friend, but Truth is my best friend. True, the sins are sometimes my low companions, and my scheme for this book is proving to be my friend (no?), but the truth about – and within – Dylan’s songs is or ought to be my best friend. And the truth about greed as a nub in Dylan’s songs is that where you might have expected conspicuous consumption there is conspicuous absence. Greed simply isn’t (even though the reasons for such things could never be simple) a sin that either sufficiently attracts him (his art) or sufficiently repels. So let me come clean and not fudge. Oh, my divine scheme – the sins, the virtues, and the heavenly graces – may suffer, but just think how my reputation for critical probity, far from suffering, is sure to wax.

That said, the insistence that No songs of any kind about greed etc. might seem rather to misdo things. Are there not, for instance, several songs that flirt or cavort with greed as their need? But they turn out to be about sensual exuberance rather than greed, and insofar as what feels like greed does course through their vinous veins, it is high-spirited appetite as corporeal capering, not any slumped lumpish piggishness in clover.

Have a Million Dollar Bash.

Well that big dumb blonde

With her wheel gorged

And Turtle, that friend of theirs

With his checks all forged

And his cheeks in a chunk

With his cheese in the cash

They’re all gonna be there

At that million dollar bash

Ooh, baby, ooh-ee

Ooh, baby, ooh-ee

It’s that million dollar bash

Printed in Lyrics 1962–1985 “With her wheel in the gorge”, but he sings “With her wheel gorged”. The gorging or engorging, which takes a loud pleasure in all this, has to do with more than one appetite, and with one appetite more than others, the cheese being far from cheddar and the Cheddar Gorge. Churning, yearning. “Come now, sweet cream / Don’t forget to flash”. “I took my potatoes / Down to be mashed”. But to be having in mind a meal would be square, the voracious teenage feelings in the song being what they are, all spilt aggression and argot and gossip and chaos and sexual comings and goings and goings-on. “Ooh, baby, ooh-ee”. Just so. But greed? Not really. Just like Country Pie.

Just like old Saxophone Joe

When he’s got the hogshead up on his toe

Oh me, oh my

Love that country pie

Dylan never confuses one exultant cry with another, so “Oh me, oh my” is a far cry from “Ooh, baby, ooh-ee”. And yet of course they do overlap one another all up.

Listen to the fiddler play

When he’s playin’ ’til the break of day

Oh me, oh my

Love that country pie

Greed? Fiddlesticks. Cornucopious fruits may come tumbling in, and the lines, happy to be mouthed, may be watery and wet:

Raspberry, strawberry, lemon and lime

What do I care?

Blueberry, apple, cherry, pumpkin and plum

Call me for dinner, honey, I’ll be there

“Just you comin’ and spillin’ juice over me” (Odds and Ends). But “What do I care?” means what it sings, and the tastiest word of them all is “honey”. “Saddle me up my big white goose”, don’t carve her up. With both the singer and the goose turned loose in this peasant dance of a song, realism in the Dutch manner calls for some reminder of what can follow these throaty excitements, so the possibility of vomiting does get thrown up at one point:

Give to me my country pie

I won’t throw it up in anybody’s face

This slides “throw up” into “throw it in anybody’s face”, while exploiting a small brassy hinge when the last word of that first line, “pie”, becomes immediately the first word of the next, “I”. Pie-eyed?

Shake me up that old peach tree

Little Jack Horner’s got nothin’ on me

Oh me, oh my

Love that country pie

Little Jack Horner

Sat in the corner,

Eating a Christmas pie;

He put in his thumb,

And pulled out a plum,

And said, What a good boy am I!

Little Jack Horner, eh, putting in his thumb and pulling out blueberry, apple, cherry, pumpkin, and plum. You can’t beat Christmas pie. (Oh yes you can. You’d love that country pie.) There is a sudden flash or streak (“Little Jack Horner’s got nothin’ on”!), but no, ’s got nothin’ on me (you dirty minder). “And said, What a good boy am I!” No, and said “Oh me, oh my”.

As with Million Dollar Bash, there is a bosom companion that you need for this song, The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. But the sexual suggestiveness of the words that are bouncing about in Country Pie is hardly likely to escape any right-minded listener, and would certainly have been altogether clear to the man – step forward, Dr Thomas Bowdler – who gave to the language the verb to “bowdlerize”, to cut out the dirty bits, flashing an edition of Shakespeare (1818) “in which those words and expressions are omitted which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family”. As for that country pie itself: when Hamlet speaks meaningly to Ophelia (’neath her window of opportunity), he offers Dr Bowdler an opportunity to cut to the chaste: “Do you think I meant country matters?”

The Basement is the place for furnishing the right tapes when it comes to these rough-riding energies.¹³⁵ The raucous raunchy world comes alive, all right, and only a prig – such as Dr Bowdler – would fail to feel his spirits rise, even if then a bit shamefaced about it, to the hollering and the squalor.

Well, I’ve already had two beers

I’m ready for the broom

Please, Missus Henry won’t you

Take me to my room?

I’m a good ol’ boy

But I’ve been sniffin’ too many eggs

Talkin’ to too many people

Drinking too many kegs

Please, Missus Henry, Missus Henry, please!

Please, Missus Henry, Missus Henry, please!

I’m down on my knees

An’ I ain’t got a dime

Gross, as the young say with palpable furtive pleasure, but not greedy, neither exploring nor deploring greed. Out of control, and yet struggling to maintain control, the drunken speaker has all these emotions knocking about and lashing out: the obscenely obscure, the aggressive (“Now, don’t crowd me, lady”), the maudlin (“I’m a good ol’ boy”), the concessive (“I’ve been sniffin’ too many eggs”), the seething yet oddly self-knowing (“Pretty soon I’ll be mad” – and is this angry or insane?), and the precariously steady (“I’ve been known to be calm”). There is the open indecorum of “My stool’s gonna squeak” up against the strained propriety of the title “Please, Mrs. Henry”.

It is rightly in the last verse of Please, Mrs. Henry that he issues the pleading admission, “There’s only so much I can do”. Same here. When it comes to greed and Dylan, there’s only so much I can do. He does a great deal with it, in a way, but the way is not direct, is not a matter of having greed ever be the pith or gist or nub of a song. Rather, greed will be found – with grim likelihood – doing its dirty business all over the place, this worldly place.

Well, God is in his heaven

And we all want what’s his

But power and greed and corruptible seed

Seem to be all that there is

Blind Willie McTell on blind greed. Union Sundown on greed as in your line of vision:

Sure was a good idea

’Til greed got in the way