Edward Dahlberg and the Killer Sentence

An old family friend gave me "Because I Was Flesh" - The Autobiography of Edward Dahlberg. After forty-one years on the shelf, I have just about finished reading it. The book is a gem. It is as much a loving portrait of his unfortunate mother, Lizzie, a "lady barber" in Kansas City in the period (1900-1930 approx) as it is Edward's difficult young years.

There is much humour despite the hand-to-mouth lives mother and son endured. This humour is at its sustained best in the penultimate chapter where she entertains the most curmudgeonly of ancient suitors in all of literature.

One killer sentence stands out.

"After all, he had answered her matrimonial advertisement and his second visit, like the first, was already so prolix that again she realized she would be too tired after he left to take an enema."

Beat that.

Touchstones Because I was Flesh by Edward Dahlberg

Well, I had a Hungarian economics professor at the AF Academy in the early 70s - Col Shoderbeck. At the start of every class he would walk to the blackboard and write: A love for economics never dies. Whenever, somebody answered a question correctly in class, he would throw him a Kopek (Hungarian currency at the time) at him, noting its exchange value was zero. On the last day of class he read the student critiques aloud. My favorite was: What this course needs is a ten-year enema.