3052. The famous creative artist © Bruce Goodman 25 September 2024

It was an extraordinary event in the history of Western Civilization, when an enthusiastic beginner librarian, eager for shelf space for the highly popular Chick Lit, threw all of Herman Stodgebank’s manuscripts into the fire. Of course the term “Chick Lit” is no longer fashionable having been rejected for its inherent sexism. However, call it what you will, the library needed the shelf space and Herman Stodgebank’s remarkable body of work became the victim. Herman had been a creative artist in the late 1900s. He was renowned for his poetry and plays, his stories and novels. That is why his permanent fame was set when a copy of his body of work was stored in the National Archives. All of this was over three hundred years ago. Not a shred of his works seem to have survived. It was a great shock to the nation when it was discovered that the woke twenty-first century librarian had tossed his works in the fire to make shelf space for the highly popular Chick Lit of the day. The euphoria throughout the nation was therefore understandable when a torn off fragment of a Stodgebank work was discovered being used as a book mark in a romance novel. As far as anyone knew it was the only Stodgebank in existence. Only his fame had lingered. Now they had proof of his greatness, although some claimed that the handwriting may have been his wife’s. The piece of torn paper read: Honey, can you get some tea-bags on the way home from work. Despite a missing question mark at the end of the phrase, the fragment highlighted what literary scholars had been telling their students for several centuries: Here was an author with his feet on the ground yet steeped in style. May his fame, if not his works, live forever. Contact Author Back to Index Next Story Previous Story