I have watched on TV, and read about, historians trying to piece together many an artist biography by the little bits and pieces of information that they leave behind in their work. Sometimes this has dubious results (Michelangelo was gay, Carroll Lewis was a pedophile, etc.) Luckily nobody suggest that our Perfect Master is anything but, well, perfect.
What do we know about Cecil (or whoever plays him in real life) for certain? What has he revealed to us through his writings?
If you subscribe to the belief that a single individual has produced the column for all its years in print, he’s older than that. It was first published in 1973. Even if he was only 20 at the time, that would make him 51. I take his statement that he “grew up” in the 60’s in the sense that he came of age during that era, not that he was a young child during it.
Ah, yes, it is summer and once again the newly initiated trot out the usual list of the “known properties of Cecil”.
Does anyone have any new information about our great and illustrious leader, or is this just perhaps a gratutious grab at hoping our own Unca will deign to grace us with his presence in these humble fora.
I for one would love to have participated in a thread Cecil popped in on prior to the aforementioned popping in!
I was here two years earlier than you, so I am hardly ‘newly initiated’.
You are mistaken. I don’t care if Cecil is Ed, or an Alien, or a Walmart employee. This is an excersize in ‘profiling’ an author trhough their writing. It’s been done before. He has told us bits and pieces of his life, but since I don’t keep up and don’t remember all his articles maybe somebody has something else to contribute.
I know all too well that the “is Cecil really Ed?” or “is Cecil a registered bran?” has been done ad nauseam, this is not the same, and I searched for it and didn’t get anything.
He is Catholic, or at least was raised as such. He appears to have been rather impecunious during the early days of the column, and was living in rental housing until at least the late 1970’s. He attended college in the East. A security guard once threatened him with a handgun. He belonged to the Cub Scouts as a youth. The column in which he mentions this makes it clear he was in the Scouts before 1955, offering further evidence that he was at least in his late 20’s when the column debuted and is thus pushing 60 today.
All of this comes from a quick, superficial scan of the first Straight Dope book. I’m sure that a rigorous analysis of his work, both online and in print, would yield a lot more. Computerized analysis of his writing style, and a thorough search for any contradictions in these tidbits of personal history, would provide evidence for or against the “One Cecil” theory. (I’m a firm believer in One Cecil, myself.) I think it’s up to you to lead the effort, Mighty_Girl!
