Cafeteria Food
The whole concept of the cafeteria system is geared toward speed. From the menu choices to the manner in which one gets and pays for their food, homogenization of the structural framework is the key to success. Sometimes it takes an ironic epiphany to fully realized the offset here: “The variety of sandwiches that could be made to order like lightning was staggering…lox and cream cheese on a bun, corned beef and pickle relish on rye, pastrami and mustard on something-or-other…It didn’t matter much, I found, after a few days of trying to state my three terms loudly and clearly; the sandwiches all tasted alike.”
“The Diary of Helena Morley”
When Bishop arrives in Brazil in 1952 she immediately begins devouring books about Brazil and a title keep popping up from nearly everyone with a recommendation, Minha Vida de Menina. Bishop is so captivated by what is really an actual diary kept by a young Brazilian girl over the course of three years that she herself spends amount that much time translating. Although admitting that the more she read the book, the more “Brazilian” it became, she also confesses the inherent irony lying within the entire episode:
“…much of it could have happened in any small provincial own or village, and at almost any period of history—at least before the arrival of the automobile and the moving-picture theater.”
Those Crazy Bordens!
Bishop—no slouch herself when working in verse—met bona fide legendary American poet Marianne Moore in 1934 in an irony-laced manner. The introduction comes courtesy of Vassar College librarian Fanny Borden—niece of the infamous Lizzie Borden—when Bishop asks why there is no copy of Moore’s collection of poetry, Observations. Borden proceeds to tell Bishop that she is a family friend of Moore and asks if she would like to meet the poet. Borden then proceeds to let Bishop borrow her own personal copy of Observations only to discover that despite being close friends, Borden has such an intense distaste for the poems in that collection that she has refused to allow the library to keep an official copy for borrowing.
“In Prison”
The short story “In Prison” features a Kafkaesque narrator telling a Kafkaesque story that begins with a Kafkaesque bit of irony. Everything is backward in the story, thematically speaking. Imprisonment becomes analogous to freedom right from those opening lines:
“I can scarcely wait for the day of my imprisonment. It is then that my life, my real life, will begin.”
“Memories of Uncle Neddy”
The Uncle Neddy of this story is a barely fictionalized version of the author’s actual Uncle Arthur and one can only hope that one episode is more fiction than fact. The episode is described outright as a nightmare and is painted with vivid imagery strong suggestive of a horrifying dream. The ironic part is that this blackest memory in the story takes place on Christmas:
“And then Santa Claus came in, an ordinary brown potato sack over his shoulder, with the other presents sagging in it. He was terrifying. He couldn’t have been dressed in black, but that was my impression, and I did start to cry…Then this Santa from the depths of a coal mine put down his sack that could have been filled with coal, and hugged and kissed me. Through my sobs, I recognized, by touch and smell and his suddenly everyday voice, that it was only Uncle Neddy.”
