LEND ME YOUR EAR: SELF-PLAGIARISM IS THE WORST KIND? GUILTY!

For most writers, writing is an incurable disease. Old writers never die they just scribble away. I made this up years ago, but how do I know it's original with me? Keep reading!

When Peg Bracken remarried two years ago, she told me over the phone that she had had her say and would never, ever, take up the pen as a professional writer again. I replied that repetition is an excellent tool for teaching, and I hope to continue as long as the Good Lord and Gary Rust remain willing.

In early March 1993, Peg, now living in Portland, Ore., where the nation's icy winter hit hardest, wrote that she was thinking of writing a movie called "A Shiver Runs Through It," then asked if I thought it would fly. I replied it might fly if I could play the character It. A shiver ran through all Cape Girardeau County through February 1993.

I hardly need point out that Peg's title is a paraphrase of "A River Runs Through It." But what strikes me as sad today is that so many expressions we learned in our growing-up years to say nothing of paraphrases of well-known quotations from the Bible and other world classics elude the young and untutored because they have never been exposed to the originals.

However, Shakespeare's "To be, or not to be" has taken such a beating out of the mouths of the untaught that we of the old school often regret ever having memorized Hamlet's deathless soliloquy. "To un, or not to un," a mock-up ill-contrived by a Coca Cola writer to describe the removal of caffeine and sugar from the product, has survived to sicken even those who don't know the origin.

How many readers or TV addicts are familiar with "the green-eyed monster jealousy"? This oft-quoted nugget came to me by way of a course in Shakespeare, and derives from "Othello." The royal hero-victim, Othello, was warned by his faithless servant Iago to "beware the green-eyed monster jealousy" while deflecting his own monstrous plans for killing his lord-and-master's wife, Desdemona. For further explication, read "Othello" and weep.

Our unceasing chagrin over the lack of acquaintance with our literary heritage is not limited to world-renowned classics. We also regret the widespread lack of background concerning lesser figures of more recent vintage. On Mother's Day this year, a former Clayton high student of mine, Lura Cordes of Oak Forest, Calif., called me partly to ask why I hadn't included W.C. Fields in sophomore English along with Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash. Because the great comedian was not included in sophomore textbooks and I had no idea his gift of play would endure.

By coincidence, the quotation I revealed to lovely Lura "Any man who hates children and dogs can't be all bad" was listed in "Did They Really Say It?" in May 16 PARADE. The quotation attributed to Fields was used by Leo Rosten at a banquet honoring his fellow-comedian in 1939. I now have some explaining to do to other friends who had never heard of W.C. Fields or the quotation!

To be fair, I've never heard of most of our country music writers or singers, not to mention hard-rock and heavy metal stars now making millions flaunting obscenities and gaining world-wide recognition as purveyors of American culture.

Mercifully, the attention given to clean fun helps compensate for what many of us feel should be relegated to the sewer. Recently, a man high in U.S. government said of another that he was "all mouth and a yard wide." Viewers of my generation and later were probably as amused as I because they recognized the paraphrase of "All wool and a yard wide," meaning genuine, of high quality, no sham or substitute not at all what the tongue-in-cheek message replied.

In the April issue of Time, a new version of the play "Three Men on a Horse," reviewed by William A. Henry III, was re-titled "Three Men in a Hearse" the prestigious reviewer's way of saying "Dead on arrival." In the same issue, "Two Mikes Don't Make a Wright" referred to a trio of short, ill-begotten movies re-made for TV by Michael Moore. Mike Leigh and Steven Wright play the characters. Any readers out there who didn't grow up on "Two wrongs don't make a right"?

As most aging literates may know, "Old writers never die they just scribble away" is a paraphrase of "Old soldiers never die they just fade away." This has also been said of aging actors and heaven only knows how many other retired actors and dying ideas.

"Old writers never die they just scribble away" seems a natural for writers, and I have no way of knowing how many others may think they have coined it. But assuming it is original with me, and noting that I've used it in speech and writing more times than anyone would care to count, I confess to a habit of stealing my own words if only to try to get a rule of grammar or construction across in these columns.

I've forgotten who once wrote that self-plagiarism is the worst kind. Just write me off as pleading guilty!