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With customary cattiness, the media blog Gawker.com has zeroed in on Jill Abramson’s piece about her dog, “Chewing Towards Bethlehem“, in today’s NYT. The article forms part of Abramson’s “Puppy Diaries” column, in which she chronicles “the challenges and satisfactions of raising a puppy”. The title derives, of course, from that of Didion’s famous essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, which, in turn, is borrowed from Yeats’ “The Second Coming.”
Gawker invites the reader to compare and contrast same, to devastating effect:
People were missing. Children were missing. Parents were missing. Those left behind filed desultory missing-persons reports, then moved on themselves.
Vs.
We have a puppy gate that keeps Scout in the rear of our house.
Oh dear.
And yet, as one who writes a lot of tragic Didion-related headlines, I understand Abramson’s predicament. The zeitgeist cannot be held accountable for it’s half-baked lexicon. I have read pieces free of anything but the most tenuous relation to the Didion that draw on “Slouching Towards X”; ” X Towards Bethlehem”; “After X”; “The Year of Magical Xing”. The other day I even came across a gem: “Marathon Absurd.” A piece about a marathon which did not start on time. This, in the eyes of the reporter, made it a fiasco of sufficient outrageousness to deserve, to demand, a snappy literary reference.
A quick glance back through previous News items on this site is an embarrassment of ridiculous riches. A few months ago, we covered a story about a revival of Yeats’ plays with the headline: “No Slouching: A Fresh Look At Yeats As Playwright.” Why? Well, in the picture, Yeats appears to be sitting up poker-straight. Reader, I’m sorry.
Post your favorite Didionesque headline beauties in the comment section below.
