[Ads-l] unimportant McGuffin notes

[Stephen Goranson]

Some of the 1883ff newspaper stories about a mongoose (or mongaroo) in, or not in, a box refer to "New York Chaff." As far as I know (I may be mistaken) Chaff is not an abbreviation for a newspaper name, but nonsense, chaff.....guff.  NY chaff is attested elsewhere; the putative setting "Cass avenue" (after Lewis Cass?) may not exist in NYC, but may have in Buffalo--maybe just pretend.


A 1980 newspaper claims that Hitch's MacGuffin "entered his vocabulary" with "The 39 Steps." 1935. Maybe, maybe not. Here's what screenwriter Charles Bennett is quoted (in 2014) as saying: "This disastrous happening is the MacGuffin--a plot device that motivates the characters but becomes less important...In The 39 Steps the MacGuffin was the smuggling of a secret out of England....Hitch used to say that the MacGuffin doesn't matter. It's just...."


Hubbard's claim that (the prolific) Theodore Parker told such a story in Boston Music Hall on (Thursday) June 19, 1856 is curiously specific--even if not necessarily true. Parker did lecture or sermonize there often. I shan't now speculate whether this tale is in his style. At the time Hubbard wrote, the 15-volume centennial edition of Parker's works (without this story, I think, though it may not include everything) was underway. Collections of Parker's manuscripts are (I think) in Boston Public Library and the American Antiquarian Society.


Stephen C. Goranson

http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

...Kibosh


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