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A weblog from the editors of Linebreak

The regulars

Ash Bowen's poetry has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Blackbird, and Black Warrior Review, among other publications. He lives and works in Texarkana, AR.

Jennifer Jabaily's poetry has appeared in Mannequin Envy and Fickle Muses. She's a second-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Ashley Anna McHugh is a third-year MFA student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Measure, DIAGRAM and Memorious as well as other publications.

Johnathon Williams's poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2009, the Pebble Lake Review, and Unsplendid. He lives in Fayetteville, AR, with his wife and daughters.

On the Enduring Appeal of Caddyshack: Some Notes

By Daniel Nester on Jun 12, 2009

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Confession: I have watched the broader-than-broad comedy Caddyshack two, three, four times, every year, since its release in 1980.

I have often asked myself: What is it that draws me to watching this movie more than 50 times, far more than any other movie I have seen?

Part of it has to be nostalgia. It’s an amorphous term, nostalgia, and one I don’t feel like dealing with completely. It’s a word one has to deal with when one thinks about a movie released when one is 12 years old. It’s also kind of boring.

But I also have this inchoate idea that the movie lifts me out of early-spring doldrums, which I tend to have. Unlike many who feel ebullient when the weather turns, I feel the need to stay inside, play records, read, sulk. I have never been able to explain this.

Somewhere in the mix lies Caddyshack, directed by Harold Ramis, who would go on to direct Groundhog Day, Analyze This and That, and this summer’s  Year One.

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One of my projects this summer is to write a full-fledged essay about this. Now, other writers have written about Caddyshack. There’s the Book of Caddyshack that is chockful of interesting anecdotes and scene-by-scene analysis. Literary lion George Plimpton penned an occasional piece as well. And I’ve already written a sonnet, “Caddyshackesque,” which appears here on Linebreak. That poem alludes to some of the things I want to write about: how the movie reminds me of Northrop Frye’s idea of the “Green World” of Shakespeare, for example.  I’ve also been researching comedy in general, the poetics of listlessness, and the changing critical perception of the film. The New York Times‘ film critic Vincent Canby, for example, famously dismissed Caddyshack in his piece “The Golden Age of Junk” as “immediately forgettable.”

Me, I can’t forget Caddyshack. So I have this project going for me.  Which is nice.

***
I’d like to thank the kind folks at Linebreak for having me this week as their guest blogger.  It’s one of my favorite literary journals, and I think they do a great job here.  I almost typed the word “knob”; I always do that.

I don’t normally blog so much as shamelessly self-promote over at my own personal website, so it’s been cool to actually blog here. I will be back around October or November to coincide with the release of my next book, How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous noncition, which I urge you all to pre-order, order upon release, then order again.

OK, I’ll stop.

0 comments // Caddyshack, Caddyshackesque, daniel nester, Ginger Lynn

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