Explication du texte

Certain of my readers have at times expressed frustration at the opacity and arcaneness of the blog, which is kind of just par for the course. But certain things can be explained.

The title itself, "Chew Your Grouse", has been touched upon in earlier posts, like the inaugural one.

But the current subtitle is probably a little bit mystifying. Who are these mysterious Kaufmans to whom I liken myself?

• Andy Kaufman -- less of a mystery. Lattke from the 80s sitcom Taxi, he of Mighty Mouse fame from SNL and later career forays into extreme life/art boundary crossing as a professional wrestling provocateur.
• Walter Kaufman -- Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, translator of Nietzsche and others. A horrifically egotistical man, who would pepper his volumes with footnotes to his own books and would place his own introductory essays (for example in a sampler on existentialism) on a par with those whose works he edited (i.e. Kaufman, Kierkegaarde, Sartre, Heidegger). This amused us to no end in college.
• Henry Kaufman -- The original Dr. Doom (an interest rate hawk). A fine old Wall St eminence grise, a sober economist and long-time Managing Director at Salomon Brothers, who very charmingly and affectingly nodded to his wife at the end of the acknowledgements to On Money and Markets: "She has been the center of my world for more than four decades, and has shared all the strains and triumphs of my life and career. How could I ever acknowledge her enough." In other words, a very centered and balanced guy.