"Moderation Displayed."

I've had a book wedged in a stack of books to "get around to" in my feverish pursuit of cultural advancement –– notes towards my leveling study of antebellum American fiction [facetious expression] –– about Washington Irving, by Edward Wagenknecht, the subtitle of which is "Moderation Displayed."

How, you wonder, could this possibly have anything to do with Dog Chapman?

Well.

Every time I see that book, I instinctively think of Dwayne Chapman's second book, When Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given. Dog likes this title When Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given enough that he sometimes works it into his back-seat pep-talks. Maybe he has remaindered copies he needs to puff some way and this is his best soapbox to pitch it: the back seat.

After all aren't we all selling ourselves in life? On the back seat?

Say the twain one after the other: "Moderation Displayed"; "When Mercy Is Shown..."

The two might have a passing resemblance, but of all the epithets floating freely for our use in this starry sky of a wonderful English language, "moderate" is not one I could ever in good conscience apply to Dog the Bounty Hunter.

Can you imagine him reading that sentence and looking all sad and offended, all droopy and miserable, and turning to Beth and saying, "Not fair! I'm moderate, right Bethy?"
"Darn tootin'! We both are! Fuckin' moderate!"
I mean can you imagine that golden scene that will never ever happen?

"So much for moderation."

Interestingly, in the course of checking the spelling of Edward Wagenknect's surname I happened to see his dates. He lived remarkably from 1900 to 2004! Uncommonly long for any man, let alone a literary man. His lit crit contemporaries were Pattee and Kitteredge, Brooks and Matthieson and Blair and DeVoto. Talk about Rip Van Winkle. A long life well lived.

(Although can a life writing lit crit be called "well lived"?)

Let us say it is so; I can take some solace in that; I still have sixty-four years to get my leveling study of antebellum American fiction [facetious expression] published.