While reading the recent biography of playwright John Osborne by John Heilpern, I ran across a detail that confirms a suspicion that I had about British cultural shorthand for indicating that a house is firmly upper working class or lower middle class. I'm like Goldfinger, who believed in the evidentiary rule of three: First time, happenstance; second time, coincidence; third time, enemy action. That semiotic shorthand is--ducks on the wall. (This might be no big secret for the British, but for an American, it's at the least interesting.)
Evidence:
1) In Epitaph for George Dillon, the play Osborne wrote just before his breakthrough, Look Back in Anger, the stage directions reveal that lower-middle class family's home has "painted china ducks" in flight on the sitting-room wall.
2) The song "Ducks on the Wall" from the Kinks album Soap Opera.
3) In the Who's concert version of Quadrophenia in the late 1990s, the hero, Jimmy, soliloquizes (on projected film) from his home. The only props are the ducks on the wall behind him.
In the 1930s, George Orwell insisted that the badge of English middle-class respectability was the aspidistra in the front window. I wonder if there's a corresponding totem for American middle-class life?
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Rereading "V."--II: Keep Cool, but Care
I have several theories about rereading favorite novels--several because they change every time I try and fit my experiences into my last speculation. My hypothesis this time was that the first time I had read V., I loved it because it was fresh, new, funny, well written, and I was young. The second time I read it was dulled by my having to teach it; I thought I did a bad job of that because an otherwise excellent student hated the book, couldn't finish it.*
But as I reread the book now, and once again enjoyed it this side of idolatry, I realized the my present enjoyment was different than my initial pleasure, and also, that I perhaps had skewed my memories towards the negative about teaching V. I can tell this from my notes. I decoded parts of the book I probably missed the first time, because I had not then read the works alluded to--or undergone the experiences that Pynchon writes about. The problem with teaching a long, complex novel like V. is losing sight of the larger picture, getting bogged down in the minutiae--El Gaucho is like Nostromo, Satin is like Diaghilev, Wittgenstein is parodied in a pop song, and so on, ad nauseam. We had just gone through Nabokov's Pale Fire, which in itself is a novel that cries out for a key (which Brian Boyd has since elegantly provided in Nabokov's "Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery). V. is entirely about a search for meaning: who is V.? What is she? Is she animate? What does it mean to be animate--to have an anima, a soul? Which way does the novel finally lean: can meaning be discovered? The "hero" of the novel professes at the end that he hasn't learned "a goddamned thing," and his scholarly doppelganger refuses to stop searching, because if he did stop, he would learn that what he suspects is true--his life has no meaning outside of his search.
The key to all mythologies is that there is no key. Venus? Victoria? Vhiessu? Spin Fortuna's wheel, and you may be staring at a spider monkey encased in ice at the southern still point of the turning world.
What if you strike through the mask, and there is nothing behind it all? A void? Time rewound and recovered is not paradise regained, but merely a vector in a different direction, like Schoenmaker's elaborate looking-glass clock? The universe plays dice with itself, inimical and implacable.
Fun stuff, huh? But never has such an apprehension of the nullity behind all things, the futility of signification, been presented with such zest, such chortling, particularly in the 1956 chapters. I noticed for the first time the motif of Westerns throughout the novel. In one chapter Benny Profane watches Westerns on TV, beginning with a Randolph Scott Western, then Tom Mix, and ending with The Great Train Robbery, further back than which you cannot go--not only is it the first Western, but the first narrative movie (and I doubt if New York television stations were showing it during the 1950s). Regression? Decadence?
And the "Real McCoy" joke without its punchline! (Pig's "story about the coke sacker, the cork soaker and the sock tucker.")
And these are balanced by the horrors and the nausea in the chapters about the past: Egypt, Florence, Namibia, Paris, Malta. The skull beneath the skin with a vengeance. But even that phrase has its humorous echo in Benny Profane's job (which the Space/Time Employment Agency [!!!!!] has gotten for him), where he talks with a test dummy that includes a real skull beneath artifical skin (SHROUD).
And maybe it is all palatable because the meaning that adheres and inheres in the narrative is given to it by the artist. Evan Godolphin, the wounded flyer whose gruesome treatment inspires Schoenmaker to become a plastic surgeon, is also Veronica Manganese's servant on Malta, etc. In a Victorian novel, this would be derided as coincidence; in a postmodern novel, it is a pattern. Nabokov's triumphant identification of the man in the mackintosh in Ulysses in his Cornell class would have led Pynchon to this point--although I don't think Pynchon is anymore likely to appear in his own fiction than he is to do a Charlie Rose interview.
When reading becomes too much like work, the decoding too arduous, too removed, the game (and the best literature is ludic) is not worth the candle. But the glorious times when it does seem worth it. I live for the days when I look up at my class and say, "I can't believe I get paid to do this!" Almost makes up for grading first-year essays.
Almost.
*On further thought, I think this student, an ardent Catholic, was put off by Father Fairing, the sewer-dwelling, rat-converting priest, and was probably better off not finishing it.
But as I reread the book now, and once again enjoyed it this side of idolatry, I realized the my present enjoyment was different than my initial pleasure, and also, that I perhaps had skewed my memories towards the negative about teaching V. I can tell this from my notes. I decoded parts of the book I probably missed the first time, because I had not then read the works alluded to--or undergone the experiences that Pynchon writes about. The problem with teaching a long, complex novel like V. is losing sight of the larger picture, getting bogged down in the minutiae--El Gaucho is like Nostromo, Satin is like Diaghilev, Wittgenstein is parodied in a pop song, and so on, ad nauseam. We had just gone through Nabokov's Pale Fire, which in itself is a novel that cries out for a key (which Brian Boyd has since elegantly provided in Nabokov's "Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery). V. is entirely about a search for meaning: who is V.? What is she? Is she animate? What does it mean to be animate--to have an anima, a soul? Which way does the novel finally lean: can meaning be discovered? The "hero" of the novel professes at the end that he hasn't learned "a goddamned thing," and his scholarly doppelganger refuses to stop searching, because if he did stop, he would learn that what he suspects is true--his life has no meaning outside of his search.
The key to all mythologies is that there is no key. Venus? Victoria? Vhiessu? Spin Fortuna's wheel, and you may be staring at a spider monkey encased in ice at the southern still point of the turning world.
What if you strike through the mask, and there is nothing behind it all? A void? Time rewound and recovered is not paradise regained, but merely a vector in a different direction, like Schoenmaker's elaborate looking-glass clock? The universe plays dice with itself, inimical and implacable.
Fun stuff, huh? But never has such an apprehension of the nullity behind all things, the futility of signification, been presented with such zest, such chortling, particularly in the 1956 chapters. I noticed for the first time the motif of Westerns throughout the novel. In one chapter Benny Profane watches Westerns on TV, beginning with a Randolph Scott Western, then Tom Mix, and ending with The Great Train Robbery, further back than which you cannot go--not only is it the first Western, but the first narrative movie (and I doubt if New York television stations were showing it during the 1950s). Regression? Decadence?
And the "Real McCoy" joke without its punchline! (Pig's "story about the coke sacker, the cork soaker and the sock tucker.")
And these are balanced by the horrors and the nausea in the chapters about the past: Egypt, Florence, Namibia, Paris, Malta. The skull beneath the skin with a vengeance. But even that phrase has its humorous echo in Benny Profane's job (which the Space/Time Employment Agency [!!!!!] has gotten for him), where he talks with a test dummy that includes a real skull beneath artifical skin (SHROUD).
And maybe it is all palatable because the meaning that adheres and inheres in the narrative is given to it by the artist. Evan Godolphin, the wounded flyer whose gruesome treatment inspires Schoenmaker to become a plastic surgeon, is also Veronica Manganese's servant on Malta, etc. In a Victorian novel, this would be derided as coincidence; in a postmodern novel, it is a pattern. Nabokov's triumphant identification of the man in the mackintosh in Ulysses in his Cornell class would have led Pynchon to this point--although I don't think Pynchon is anymore likely to appear in his own fiction than he is to do a Charlie Rose interview.
When reading becomes too much like work, the decoding too arduous, too removed, the game (and the best literature is ludic) is not worth the candle. But the glorious times when it does seem worth it. I live for the days when I look up at my class and say, "I can't believe I get paid to do this!" Almost makes up for grading first-year essays.
Almost.
*On further thought, I think this student, an ardent Catholic, was put off by Father Fairing, the sewer-dwelling, rat-converting priest, and was probably better off not finishing it.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
"Can't pretend that growing older never hurts"
YouTube strikes again--two live versions of one of my favorite Pete Townshend songs, "Slit Skirts," neither of which I was aware existed before tonight. Townshend started releasing solo albums while he was still with the Who, and other band members began to feel that he was "saving" his best material for his own records. (One song, "Pure and Easy," was released on a solo album and recorded by the Who, but the Who's version was only released decades later.)
I think the charge was accurate from Empty Glass on. Soon, Townshend's solo efforts became transformed from song collections into concept albums, which is what the Who's "rock operas" really were. White City was an overlooked gem about growing up in a tough part of London: I still have the laserdisc of its visual version. Psychoderelict was an amalgam of a Townshend-like rock musician's failed career with the original ideas behind Townshend's "lost" epic musical experiment, Lifehouse. The songs that originally formed the basis for that experiment, plus new music, were released as a six-CD set, The Lifehouse Chronicles, available from the Who's website. He did a musical based on Ted Hughes's Ironman. He also presented Quadrophenia as a much more unified multimedia experience during a tour of the U.S. in the late 1990s.
This first version of "Slit Skirts" (1986) comes from the period when Townshend was playing with a large band called "Deep End," many of whom would continue to tour with Townshend and the Who in years to come. The lead guitar player, though, was a sporadic member, as he had a gig with another group.
The second version is from a couple of years earlier, as can be seen by the hair growth on the top of Townshend's head, as well as his jacket, which appears to be the same one he's wearing on the cover of the album, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes,* that contains the song. He flubs up the vocals here too, but his excuse was that he can't sing and play piano well at the same time; indeed, it's the only time I've seen Townshend play piano during a live performance. And I never thought I'd say this--but Phil Collins does an excellent job on drums.
*And they do: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Roy Rogers. Maybe that's why I never trusted Gene Autry or Yul Brynner as cowboys.
I think the charge was accurate from Empty Glass on. Soon, Townshend's solo efforts became transformed from song collections into concept albums, which is what the Who's "rock operas" really were. White City was an overlooked gem about growing up in a tough part of London: I still have the laserdisc of its visual version. Psychoderelict was an amalgam of a Townshend-like rock musician's failed career with the original ideas behind Townshend's "lost" epic musical experiment, Lifehouse. The songs that originally formed the basis for that experiment, plus new music, were released as a six-CD set, The Lifehouse Chronicles, available from the Who's website. He did a musical based on Ted Hughes's Ironman. He also presented Quadrophenia as a much more unified multimedia experience during a tour of the U.S. in the late 1990s.
This first version of "Slit Skirts" (1986) comes from the period when Townshend was playing with a large band called "Deep End," many of whom would continue to tour with Townshend and the Who in years to come. The lead guitar player, though, was a sporadic member, as he had a gig with another group.
The second version is from a couple of years earlier, as can be seen by the hair growth on the top of Townshend's head, as well as his jacket, which appears to be the same one he's wearing on the cover of the album, All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes,* that contains the song. He flubs up the vocals here too, but his excuse was that he can't sing and play piano well at the same time; indeed, it's the only time I've seen Townshend play piano during a live performance. And I never thought I'd say this--but Phil Collins does an excellent job on drums.
*And they do: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Roy Rogers. Maybe that's why I never trusted Gene Autry or Yul Brynner as cowboys.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
"Lectures on Literature"
I've been meaning to come up with semi-expansive entry on Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, a work edited from his notes on the novels he taught at Cornell University in his course Masterspieces of European Fiction (which Thomas Pynchon took). It's a valuable book for those who are interested in Nabokov as a novelist, and also for those interested in the novels he discusses.
I've been thinking about it recently because of some discussions about whether Ulysses is worth slogging through. While thinking about Nabokov's book, I remembered that a short adaptation of Nabokov's lecture on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" was filmed, with Christopher Plummer as Nabokov. Even with the makeup he doesn't physically resemble VN that much, but his imitation of Nabokov's voice is spot on, from what I remember of the recordings of Nabokov reading from Lolita. I checked on YouTube, and lo and behold ( ;) ), someone had uploaded it!
The second part is here. A cursory check shows that the introductory remarks in the lecture are cobbled from comments in several lectures. Also, a remark elsewhere by Nabokov about teaching in general shows that he wasn't quite the yuckster he's made out to be here, and as someone who does try to be a yuckster in the classroom every once in a while, it is a role undertaken at one's own risk. (Students laughing at "Gogolian"? C'mon!)
Another YouTube clip, in Spanish, has VN being interviewed in French about Lolita, as well as a short scene of him walking and capturing butterflies, but it's mostly excerpts from Kubrick's film of Lolita dubbed in Spanish. There is, however, a BBC documentary about VN dating from the 1960s, which I would love to see again, and I hope some kind soul will upoad it one day.
I've been thinking about it recently because of some discussions about whether Ulysses is worth slogging through. While thinking about Nabokov's book, I remembered that a short adaptation of Nabokov's lecture on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" was filmed, with Christopher Plummer as Nabokov. Even with the makeup he doesn't physically resemble VN that much, but his imitation of Nabokov's voice is spot on, from what I remember of the recordings of Nabokov reading from Lolita. I checked on YouTube, and lo and behold ( ;) ), someone had uploaded it!
The second part is here. A cursory check shows that the introductory remarks in the lecture are cobbled from comments in several lectures. Also, a remark elsewhere by Nabokov about teaching in general shows that he wasn't quite the yuckster he's made out to be here, and as someone who does try to be a yuckster in the classroom every once in a while, it is a role undertaken at one's own risk. (Students laughing at "Gogolian"? C'mon!)
Another YouTube clip, in Spanish, has VN being interviewed in French about Lolita, as well as a short scene of him walking and capturing butterflies, but it's mostly excerpts from Kubrick's film of Lolita dubbed in Spanish. There is, however, a BBC documentary about VN dating from the 1960s, which I would love to see again, and I hope some kind soul will upoad it one day.
Thank you for the Days, Mr. Davies
YouTube reminds me of a toy chest: the deeper you go, the further back you go, you initially wonder, "What was so charming about this?" But then you remember.
I've talked a little about the Kinks before. Like most British groups of the Sixties, they matured and evolved rapidly. The songwriting abilities of Ray Davies, and later his brother Dave, were remarkable, considering they started out as a three-chord rock group--probably the best three-chord rockers in history. Here's a clip of them doing "All the Day and All of the Night" live on Shindig, ABC's weekly rock show. (You know it's live because Dave flubs a bar chord just before the guitar solo, then grins ruefully.)
One of the canards at the time was that on the recording of this song, Jimmy Page did the guitar solo in the studio. This pretty much proves it was Dave.
Then Ray's songwriting abilities blossomed. Perhaps no British rock songwriter of the Sixties was so influenced by the British music hall tradition. Albums like The Kinks Kontroversy, Face to Face, and especially Something Else were far ahead of the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who in seeking out song material in the everyday lives of ordinary people. "Situation Vacant," about a young married guy looking for a new job; "David Watts," about class envy; and the sublime "Waterloo Sunset," about watching the Thames from the title bridge. And then came the two albums that the Kinks never surpassed: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.
The latter was the soundtrack for a British TV drama that was never made, but its songs encapsulated British history during the 20th century until that point. The first song, "Victoria," was a rocker with typically witty and arch lyrics:
Long ago, life was clean,
Sex was bad, called obscene,
And the rich were so mean,
Stately homes for the lords,
Croquet lawns, village greens,
Victoria was my queen.
The songs follow the title character through the First ("Yes Sir No Sir") and Second World Wars ("Mr. Churchill Says") to emigration ("Australia"). The previous album, Village Green, was less of a concept album, but on its way to being one, charged with an ironic nostalgia, like so much of Sixties British rock. The title song has some of the most clever lyrics in all of rock--or at least rhymes that lock the lines and make listeners wryly shake their heads. Here's a performance from 1973, much more of which used to be available on YouTube, and its removal is a shame, because it's one of the best live Kinks performances I've seen.
We are the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium
God save the George Cross and all those who were awarded 'em.
We are the Sherlock Holmes English-Speaking Vernacular
God save Fu Manchu, Moriarty, and Dracula.
The Kinks later got bogged down in a series of self-conscious concept albums that contained few good songs, if any: the two Preservation albums, Schoolboys in Disgrace, Soap Opera. But those two earlier albums live on.
Thank you for the days,
Those endless days,
Those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days
I won't forget a single day believe me.
I've talked a little about the Kinks before. Like most British groups of the Sixties, they matured and evolved rapidly. The songwriting abilities of Ray Davies, and later his brother Dave, were remarkable, considering they started out as a three-chord rock group--probably the best three-chord rockers in history. Here's a clip of them doing "All the Day and All of the Night" live on Shindig, ABC's weekly rock show. (You know it's live because Dave flubs a bar chord just before the guitar solo, then grins ruefully.)
One of the canards at the time was that on the recording of this song, Jimmy Page did the guitar solo in the studio. This pretty much proves it was Dave.
Then Ray's songwriting abilities blossomed. Perhaps no British rock songwriter of the Sixties was so influenced by the British music hall tradition. Albums like The Kinks Kontroversy, Face to Face, and especially Something Else were far ahead of the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who in seeking out song material in the everyday lives of ordinary people. "Situation Vacant," about a young married guy looking for a new job; "David Watts," about class envy; and the sublime "Waterloo Sunset," about watching the Thames from the title bridge. And then came the two albums that the Kinks never surpassed: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.
The latter was the soundtrack for a British TV drama that was never made, but its songs encapsulated British history during the 20th century until that point. The first song, "Victoria," was a rocker with typically witty and arch lyrics:
Long ago, life was clean,
Sex was bad, called obscene,
And the rich were so mean,
Stately homes for the lords,
Croquet lawns, village greens,
Victoria was my queen.
The songs follow the title character through the First ("Yes Sir No Sir") and Second World Wars ("Mr. Churchill Says") to emigration ("Australia"). The previous album, Village Green, was less of a concept album, but on its way to being one, charged with an ironic nostalgia, like so much of Sixties British rock. The title song has some of the most clever lyrics in all of rock--or at least rhymes that lock the lines and make listeners wryly shake their heads. Here's a performance from 1973, much more of which used to be available on YouTube, and its removal is a shame, because it's one of the best live Kinks performances I've seen.
We are the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium
God save the George Cross and all those who were awarded 'em.
We are the Sherlock Holmes English-Speaking Vernacular
God save Fu Manchu, Moriarty, and Dracula.
The Kinks later got bogged down in a series of self-conscious concept albums that contained few good songs, if any: the two Preservation albums, Schoolboys in Disgrace, Soap Opera. But those two earlier albums live on.
Thank you for the days,
Those endless days,
Those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days
I won't forget a single day believe me.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
"I am not a number--I am a FREE MAN"
Saturday evenings in the summer of 1968 The Jackie Gleason Show on CBS was replaced in its early Saturday evening slot by a weird British TV series. It starred Patrick McGoohan, who was familiar to audiences as spy John Drake in Secret Agent, the American title for British TV series Danger Man. McGoohan, it later turned out, had supposedly twice turned down the role of James Bond, because of that character's immorality. (Drake never even so much as kissed a girl during the entire run of the TV series.)
The new show, The Prisoner, had one of the most striking openings ever seen, before or since, for a TV series: its arresting music, the cool Lotus Seven (KAR120C), the deft editing. The first part, which never varied, told what happened to McGoohan's character after he resigned from what we presume is MI6. The second part, after McGoohan wakes up, only varied from week to week in the title information and the voice and image of the actor playing Number 2. Here's the opening of the second episode, with the sorely missed Leo McKern as Number 2:
Number 6 awakens from his drugged sleep to find himself in The Village, an isolated place only accessible by helicopter and water, the latter barred as an escape route by the balloon-like watchdogs, aptly called "Rovers." Each week a new Number 2 tries to find out from Number 6 why he resigned. We don't know who runs The Village--East, Far East, or West--or maybe all three at once. Number 6 struggles to keep his intellectual freedom, while always attempting to escape. The 17-episode series (only 16 of which were aired here initially) did conclude before the end of the summer.
I'd claim it was the greatest television show I've ever seen, but will settle for saying it's my favorite.
Its strengths were, first, its writing. The show began in the quotidian and swiftly moved into the symbolic. Is this saga just the struggle of a spy to preserve his identity? Perhaps. Although it is never said that Number 6 is John Drake, one of the themes of the earlier series was Drake's integrity and his reluctance to perform morally questionable assignments. Move out one circle. Is The Village a trope for modern society, or at least a kind of society that many see as utopian? The second strength was the locale, the Welsh seaside resort of Portmeirion, the arabesque dream of an architect who tried to recreate a Mediterranean town on the west coast of England. Its out-of-kilter solidity unsettled as it delighted. The third was the casting, with a wide variety of English character and TV actors, such as McKern, in roles large and small (for instance, Finlay Currie, the large, craggy Magwitch of David Lean's Great Expectations, or Patrick Cargill, the urbane police detective from Help!).
The series was not without its weaknesses. Not all the scripts are strong, and the ending episodes fall considerably short of their symbolic reach. A love for The Prisoner used to mean you were condemned to be part of a coterie, but the show's fame has grown gradually, until it is alluded to on Michael Penn's album Resigned and even on The Simpsons (although that show has been on so long, it has become a kind of Encyclopedia Popculturis in its references.)
However, any increase in "popularity" means rumors and stories about a Prisoner movie or new TV show. Ugh. If that happens, gas my room and ship me out.
Be seeing you.
(Note: Herman Melville fans might be interested in this role early in McGoohan's career. Unfortunately, Simon Callow's multi-volume biography of Welles has not reached this point in his career yet, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the linked article. But what a cast!)
The new show, The Prisoner, had one of the most striking openings ever seen, before or since, for a TV series: its arresting music, the cool Lotus Seven (KAR120C), the deft editing. The first part, which never varied, told what happened to McGoohan's character after he resigned from what we presume is MI6. The second part, after McGoohan wakes up, only varied from week to week in the title information and the voice and image of the actor playing Number 2. Here's the opening of the second episode, with the sorely missed Leo McKern as Number 2:
Number 6 awakens from his drugged sleep to find himself in The Village, an isolated place only accessible by helicopter and water, the latter barred as an escape route by the balloon-like watchdogs, aptly called "Rovers." Each week a new Number 2 tries to find out from Number 6 why he resigned. We don't know who runs The Village--East, Far East, or West--or maybe all three at once. Number 6 struggles to keep his intellectual freedom, while always attempting to escape. The 17-episode series (only 16 of which were aired here initially) did conclude before the end of the summer.
I'd claim it was the greatest television show I've ever seen, but will settle for saying it's my favorite.
Its strengths were, first, its writing. The show began in the quotidian and swiftly moved into the symbolic. Is this saga just the struggle of a spy to preserve his identity? Perhaps. Although it is never said that Number 6 is John Drake, one of the themes of the earlier series was Drake's integrity and his reluctance to perform morally questionable assignments. Move out one circle. Is The Village a trope for modern society, or at least a kind of society that many see as utopian? The second strength was the locale, the Welsh seaside resort of Portmeirion, the arabesque dream of an architect who tried to recreate a Mediterranean town on the west coast of England. Its out-of-kilter solidity unsettled as it delighted. The third was the casting, with a wide variety of English character and TV actors, such as McKern, in roles large and small (for instance, Finlay Currie, the large, craggy Magwitch of David Lean's Great Expectations, or Patrick Cargill, the urbane police detective from Help!).
The series was not without its weaknesses. Not all the scripts are strong, and the ending episodes fall considerably short of their symbolic reach. A love for The Prisoner used to mean you were condemned to be part of a coterie, but the show's fame has grown gradually, until it is alluded to on Michael Penn's album Resigned and even on The Simpsons (although that show has been on so long, it has become a kind of Encyclopedia Popculturis in its references.)
However, any increase in "popularity" means rumors and stories about a Prisoner movie or new TV show. Ugh. If that happens, gas my room and ship me out.
Be seeing you.
(Note: Herman Melville fans might be interested in this role early in McGoohan's career. Unfortunately, Simon Callow's multi-volume biography of Welles has not reached this point in his career yet, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the linked article. But what a cast!)
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