In Competition No. 2447 you were invited to supply an imaginary extract from one of three real book titles: The Philosophy of Beards, Five Years of Hell in a Country Parish, Unmentionable Cuisine. The first title, by Thomas S. Gowing, was published in Ipswich by J. Haddock c. 1850; the second, by the Revd Edward Fitzgerald Synnott, published in 1920, describes the torments of a vicar in the parish of Rusper in West Sussex which end in his being acquitted of charges of impropriety; the third, by Calvin W. Schwabe, contains, among others, recipes for silkworm omelette and red ant chutney. The second title failed to elicit much entertainment from you, with the honourable exception of Bill Greenwell, so I have confined the prizewinning entries, printed below, to the two other titles. The winners get £25 each, and the bonus fiver flutters down to Keith Norman.
Imagine, if you will, the photographic depiction of four bearded men. Let us call them A, B, C and D. A discarded his razor in student days and has been hirsute ever since. The others are actors: B has grown his beard for a film role; C is shown as King Lear, the beard being part of his stage make-up; and D has been snapped wearing an exact replica of the beard he has removed for a clean-shaven role. Two beards are self-grown, two applied externally; in each pair, one belongs to the man, one to an imaginary character. Which, if any, can be called ‘real’? Professor Flett’s anecdote (The Semiotics of Facial Hair, p. 913) in which an actor dramatically tears off the beard his character has been using as disguise and reveals his own almost identical beard beneath, though amusing, cannot but further muddy already cloudy waters.
Keith Norman
The mediaeval scholastic debate about beards began as part of a larger discussion of the place of human hair in nature. Bovinnius of Mainz in his On Hirsuteness argued that removal of hair constituted a denial of the will of God. ‘No man should go barefaced in the world.’ Counter-arguments were developed by Gallus Abrensis who declared in his Integumentaria that hair was no more than a form of clothing to be worn or removed, as appropriate, without sin. There followed furious exchanges about whether, or at what point, Adam had a beard. Later, Mercantor of Rheims used his Of the Glabrous to posit that a man’s ability to grow a beard should be seen as a compensation for baldness. It followed that any man growing a beard while he still had a full head of hair was guilty of capillary greed. At this point Occam entered with his razor.
W.J. Webster
This little-studied area bristles with interesting questions. The book has three main sections:
1. Definition. What is a beard? At what stage can stubble — designer or otherwise — be considered a beard? Does a six o’clock shadow count? A single-haired mole? Is a ‘clean shave’ (note the emotive language) included, as a ‘latent’ or ‘incipient’ beard? What is the status of facial hair on women?
2. Ethical considerations. At what stage does ‘latent’ hair become ‘beard’? There are parallels here with foetal development and the formation of a ‘human’. Can a shave be considered to be ethically equivalent to a termination?
3. Follical rights. Who owns a beard? The person upon whom it grows we may consider the ‘substrate’, but there are other stakeholders (wives, children, religious organisations) whose lives and beliefs are affected. What are their rights? And, more profoundly, can the beard itself be said to have rights?
Noel Petty
During the so-called Lenient Period, the losers of the Tiachtli ball game would not be sacrificed, but would instead be forced to eat a ceremonial meal of **** — which could never be mentioned by name. The barracks of the ati-ati warriors would supply the basic ****, which would be thickened with yam, sweet potato and maize flour and flavoured with wild tomato, asafoetida and chilli. The **** would then be heated in the sacred Cauldron of Huitzilopochtli, whose deputy high priest would officiate as the chief ****-stirrer. Finally the losing team would publicly consume the ****, enduring the jeers and ribald laughter of the populace. They would be considered ‘in the ****’ for the next meztli of 20 days. Modern reconstruction of the traditional **** reveals it to have a taste and texture not unlike mulligatawny.
Frank Upton
The thrilling Futurist tang of copper wire in a mercury sauce, the curious juxtaposition of entire basset hounds in filo pastry, the slithering immediacy of freshly harvested human placenta — gourmets prepared to tackle the frontiers of unmentionable cuisine, like Picasso or Stockhausen in their respective spheres, are destined to open new territory for the bourgeois palate. Why confine yourself to lamb and pork while cat and ‘long pig’ go unexplored? The true gourmet never balks at cooking swan, doesn’t flinch at the thought of bonobo crackling and knows the humble slug is the poor man’s wine gum. For this book, I have travelled the world, risking (indeed, enduring) social ostracism to gnaw at pelican legs, hunt and cook pygmies and eat my way out of a whale from the inside in the ultimate quest for fresh fish. This book will change your tastebound life, even at the risk of ending it.
Adrian Fry
It’s a cultural feature unique to the Ranti, the indigenous people of the Pacific’s remote Rantipole Islands, that food is never specified but always referred to as mwa-mwa (lit. mouth-pleasing). Sweet and savoury, fish and fowl, fruit and vegetable — there are no differentiating names in Ranti language. This causes severe problems for the tourist industry: while the concepts of restaurants (mwa-mwa-bata — lit. mouth-pleasing for sale) is grasped by village elders, the notion of menus, with named dishes and ingredients, still proves incomprehensible. Allergy sufferers are at most risk, being unable to ask if plates contain shellfish or nuts, while foodies and restaurant critics are stripped of their favourite topics: tentative identification of such exotic ingredients as armadillo, prickleback radishes and oramango buds is met with blank stares from Ranti mwa-mwa-bairas (waiters). But parents have an unexpected bonus: children’s faddish tastes are not recognised, and mealtimes are no longer a battle ground.
D.A. Prince
No. 2450: Acrostic
You are invited to offer a poem, on any subject, in which the first letters of each line spell out MIDSUMMER NIGHT. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2450’ by 29 June.
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