Title:
Myth-Informed
Author:
Paul Dickson and Joseph C. Goulden
Publisher:
Perigee Book, 1993
ISBN:
0-399-51839-8

Paul Dickson and Joseph C. Goulding don't appear in the AFU FAQ,and neither does their book, published by Perigee Book in 1993. It is, according to the foreword and the publisher's credits, a follow-on effort to There Are Alligators in Our Sewers and Other American Credos, by the same authors. It is also self-described as a work to follow in the spirit of H. L. Mencken and G.J. Nathan's American Credo.

Credo has the same root as credulous, and the authors are devoting this book to list everything credulously believed. This being the second book like it, it is never-the-less very exhaustive in the subjects it covers, from animals (that beavers can cause a tree to fall exactly where they want it), to people (that Fidel Castro worked as a Hollywood extra in the 1940s), to the weather (Red sky in the morning, etc.)

Some items are fairly well discussed, for instance, that people can actually hear things with their fillings. The credo that people who hear things through their dental work (assumed to be false) is accompanied with a couple of paragraphs providing names, dates, and details on how it is in fact possible to receive EM signals in such a fashion.

Other items are accompanied with a terse explanation, which doesn't provide all of the story. Humphrey Bogart, as AFUisti know, was not the Gerber baby's model. Myth just points out that Bogey was 29 when the model first appeared. This is really not sufficient cause to disbelieve the credo, and Myth fails to mention a woman who was featured on several talk shows in 1994, who claimed to be the daughter of the Gerber baby's artist, and explained that her mother had used *her* as the model for her work. (As for voracity, this is Jesse Raphael we are talking about!) (Well, Myth couldn't very well mention something that happened a year after it was published, but they might have called the Gerber company for information...)

Sometimes typos creep into the book with curious results. The credo "That medical doctors are taught to write prescriptions in a secret code that only they and the druggist can understand" is followed by an explanatory note that intimates that "They do not use standard abbreviations; but these are hardly secret..." The first part of the note and the second part don't make sense as written, not to me, anyway. I think the note would make more sense if it had read "They do use..."

Some items may in fact be problematic. The Baby Ruth candy bar story is debunked with a reference to "baby" Ruth Cleveland, but by now I have read several reliable sounding items that make me wonder about the voracity of the story. Myth, however, has no reservations.

I did mention that the authors do not receive mention in the AFU FAQ, which I found curious. In their Preface, they discuss changes in credos over time. In reference to Mencken and Nathan's American Credo, they say, "Trolling many of the same waters seven decades later, our hooks snatched up many of the same credos already gutted and cleaned by Mencken and Nathan..." Once I read those words, I felt I was in the company of old friends.

Another section of the book speaks of hoaxes. It starts with the Oregon Miracle Car story (a test of radio advertising), and continues to a letter from someone who boasts of planting as many as a dozen "credos." Two of the items the boaster mentions are amplified by news items which apparently reflect successful catches by this troller. (Hy signs hyrself "Peace," which is too ubiquitous a .sig to allow any conclusions, but it did make me wonder...)

The last section of the book includes the meat of AFU, a collection of Urban Legends. There are 43 legends listed in a sort of a FAQ, provided to spare time and effort on the part of journalists who end up trying to chase them down. Most, if not all of the stories appear in the AFU FAQ. Most are a simple telling of the story. Some include supplemental material, mostly sources of legends as they appear. While Brunvand is mentioned a few times in this section (as well as in other parts of the book), the legends are mostly not a simple rehash of Brunvand's popularizations of the legends.

The book includes a bibliography, but no footnotes. (Where credos are accompanied with notes, sources are given most, but not all of the time.) There is a short index, but it doesn't appear to be exhaustive. (That some people can't wear watches because they make them stop is given as a credo, but "Watches" is not in the index.)

The book is a bit of a browser. It doesn't provide as much in the way of citations as a serious AFUista might desire, and there are certain imperfections, as noted above. But the tone of the book, and the sheer volume of credos presented may well serve to start some people thinking. That would be a Good Thing. In all I found the book to be entertaining in its fashion, as well as informative, and offer it an AFU bookshelf score of seven.