jinx

[Douglas G. Wilson]

 From Gerald Cohen:

>3) Throughout most of the poem, Jinx is knocking at the door of his
>fellow journalist, saying the foreman wants more copy. But there were
>no more stories to be had. The request to produce more copy was not
>only unreasonable but was quickly taking on nightmarish proportions
>for the journalist. When the journalist, worked up to a fever pitch,
>finally does open his door, he hallucinates that Jinx is
>transmogrified into a bona fide devil; i.e., Jinx is no longer merely
>his nebbishy, everyday self but is now an outright,tormenting devil:
>"...we opened wide the door.
>But phancey, now, our pheelinks,
>For it wasn't Jinks, the bore--
>Jinks, nameless evermore.
>
>"But the form that stood before us,
>Caused a trembling to come o'er us,
>And mem'ry quickly bore us
>Back to days of yore,
>Days when 'items' were in plenty,
>And where'er this writer went he
>Picked up interesting items by the score.
>'Twas the form of our "devil,"
>In an attitude uncivil;
>And he thrust his head within the open door,
>With 'The foreman's _out of copy!_ sir--and says he wants some more!'
>Yes, like Alexander, wanted "more!
>...And our devil, never sitting,
>Still is flitting, still is flitting
>Back and forth upon the landing just outside the sanctum door.
>Tears adown his cheeks are streaming--
>Strange light from his eyes is beaming--
>And his voice is heard, still screaming,
>'Sir, the foreman wants some more!"
>And our soul, pierced with the screaming,
>Is awakened from its dreaming.
>..."

Without reproducing the entire poem, here is how I summarize it:

I was sitting in my office.
There was a knock on the door.
I thought: "That must be that boring Jinks."
      [I take Jinks to be the name of an unwelcome acquaintance, not
further specified. --DW]
I thought: "Jinks probably wants to borrow a newspaper."
The knocking continued.
I thought: "Damn that Jinks; I guess I'd better open the door."
I prepared an excuse for not having opened the door immediately.
I opened the door.
      [Here is where the above quotation begins. --DW]
It wasn't Jinks; it was our "devil".
      [I take "devil" to mean printer's devil = errand boy (with or without
double-meaning). --DW]
He demanded (in the name of the foreman) more copy.
      [The name "Jinks" doesn't appear at this point or anywhere later in
the poem. --DW]
I didn't have any more copy, although I had made every effort.
The "devil" keeps demanding more copy.

Now several persons have asserted that Jinks is the name of the "devil" in
this poem. Instead of simply asserting it again, would somebody please show
me where in the poem the equivalence "Jinks" = "devil" is made?

I maintain that "Jinks" here is the name of a character who does not
appear, some nonentity who was thought to be knocking, somebody harmless
(which is why the journalist/narrator opened the door!). Jinks was NEVER
the one knocking at the door; the narrator imagined the knocker to be
Jinks, to make a parallel with Poe's poem "The Raven":

(Poe)

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

(1859 poem)

"Sure, that must be Jinks," we muttered--"Jinks that's knocking at our door;
Jinks, the everlasting bore."

Poe's "some visitor" didn't refer to the raven, and "Jinks" didn't refer to
the "devil".

Note also that the narrator opens the door with an excuse or apology
beginning "Mr. Jinks, your pardon, your forgiveness we implore." Again this
is in imitation of Poe, but the position of printer's devil was a very low
one and I doubt this is the manner in which he would be addressed. Later in
the poem, the "devil" is quoted: "Sir, the foreman wants some more!" ...
are these the words of proud Satan or the words of the printer's errand
boy? Note further that the "devil" has his demand refused bluntly, and that
he is ordered away -- with the explicit threat of a beating -- by the
journalist.

The name of the "devil" is not specified; there is no reason to specify it,
and surely no reason to think it was Jinks. I think this assignment of this
name would only occur if one read the poem with the preconception that
"Jinks" = "devil".

For comparison, here is the opening passage from another work, a horror
story of sorts:

<<It was a dark and stormy night. I heard a knock on my door. "Oh, no!" I
thought. "It must be Jones, wanting to borrow something again. Maybe if I'm
quiet he'll go away." No luck; the knocking got louder. "God damn that
Jones," I thought. "He's such a bore. Well, I might as well bite the
bullet." I opened the door, mumbling some lame excuse. What a shock! It
wasn't boring old Jones at all! At my door stood the terrifying figure of
the local bill-collector! He launched immediately into a series of demands.>>

Now is there anybody here who reads this passage as stating or implying
that the bill-collector is named Jones? Would anybody here claim that this
passage shows Jones mutating into a bill-collector, or that some kind of
hallucination or surrealism is depicted, or that the passage establishes
some relationship or similarity between Jones and the bill-collector? [I
hope not, because this passage I just wrote myself, so I know with
certainty that "Jones" is introduced here only as a wrong guess about who
is at the door.]

>4) I omitted one very important detail in the "Jinx" article
>(actually: working paper), because I simply took it for granted: The
>1910-1911 baseball cartoons portraying a jinx show him in varying
>ugly forms to be a devil. It is this devil who is responsible for the
>bad luck suffered by teams or individual players.
>The devil in the 1859 journalistic poem evidently survived in the
>minds of journalists throughout the century and emerged big time in a
>journalistic context in the writings and drawings of the 1910-1911
>baseball writers/cartoonists.

This cartoon evidence might indeed be important. "Jinx" = "devil" is
different from "jinx" = "curse". Was the jinx in the cartoon a
stereotypical horned/tailed devil, or something else?

Again, the "devil" in the 1859 poem was NOT named Jinks, as I interpret the
poem (as presented in CoE).

Also: a figure of speech being conventionally known among journalists for
about fifty years without appearing in print seems a priori unlikely.

 From Barry Popik:

>>    "Jynx" is not coming back.  It would be a theory, perhaps, if someone
>>presented a single pre-1920 citation with "jynx."  The usage gap is just too
>>large.

I agree that this etymology seems VERY unlikely. However, I suppose that
the modern "jinx"/"jinks" = "curse" was probably originated in print (say
ca. 1905-8) by some one writer, and it's hard to say for sure what
connection the word might have had in his mind (maybe he'd reviewed some of
the weird unfamiliar words to be found in the new dictionary [the OED],
maybe he'd read about ancient magic, maybe his wife had run off with a man
named Jinks, who knows?). The spelling change is of course a problem if
"jinx"/"jinks" is from "jynx": but again, it could be just one man's whim,
and if "jinks" can be casually altered to "jinx" I suppose "jynx" > "jinx"
might occur similarly.

>>... I also found a citation for the
>>fictitious name "Calamity W. Jinx," in the humor magazine PUCK in the 1880s.

In "Life" (vol. 4, pp. 110-111, 1884), I think. Hard to tell what this name
implies if anything. It appears along with several other silly names, as
quoted in CoE.

>>    "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" was a play in the early 1900s.  The
>>song was especially popular with the men who played baseball.  There's no
>>doubt in my mind that "jinx" comes from "jinks" comes from "Captain Jinks,
>>the curse of the army."

Not much argument about "jinks" > "jinx". Very likely indeed.

As for the famous captain, though ... I find this connection more likely
than the origin from the 1859 poem excerpted above. But there is PLENTY of
doubt in MY so-called mind.

Maybe Captain Jinks was the "curse of the army", or maybe not (the song is
ambiguous, I think, but AFAIK it doesn't exactly say that); but I do not
believe the surname Jinks or the song had any general redolence of demonic
or magical influence. The 1902 novel "Captain Jinks, Hero", an
anti-imperialism polemic, features a [different] Captain Jinks as a
military idiot, a jingo[ist] one might say, who is foolish rather than evil
himself but who perpetually accepts and justifies atrocities committed
under "Old Gory" (and other flags) [this was the time of the Philippine War
and the Boxer Rebellion]; no curse/jinx is attached to him except for his
exaggeratedly limited mentality. The 1901 stage play is a light romantic
comedy set in 1872 (I think); Captain Jinks [again a different one] is the
male lead; no curse/jinx is involved; he falls in love; he is honorable; he
gets to marry the female lead (Madame Trentoni, actually Miss Johnson from
Trenton NJ). Several other literary uses of the name "Jinks" from the late
19th century seem likewise innocent.

There is slight inconclusive evidence for "jinks" interpreted as "devil", I
believe, but IMHO the connection (if any) most likely would be to the
asseveration "by jink[s]", and I believe this is unrelated to the surname
Jinks.

-- Doug Wilson