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The Death of Paul Somerville
--recollections by John Shelton Lawrence and Sam Smith, July 22, 2005 (composed for the H-PCAACA listserv)

On the night of July 17, Paul Somerville died in Oklahoma City. Paul was a friend of this list in its early days and was especially prolific in 1994 and 1995 when Peter Rollins, ourselves, and other moderators were trying to get H-PCAACA going as a forum for exchange of ideas and information about conferences and publications.

Rather than being a scholar of popular culture in conventional ways, Paul WAS popular (and unpopular culture). He perfected the short tongue-in-cheek essay and eventually used his submissions to our list as a platform for hilarious standup performances at some of our regional meetings in the Southwest and Midwest. As a deeply skeptical person, he found humor in everything-feminism, masculinity, religious movements, therapeutic self help groups (he was a professional addiction counselor himself), the twisted syntax of Dan Quayle, and many other ephemeral topics. The idea of being in bad taste was not the least bit repugnant, and he relished the idea of being offensive in a way that might produce some insight.

One of Paul's greatest strengths was his sworn antipathy for conventional thinking. Nothing went unquestioned, including Paul Somerville. Nothing and nobody was exempt from his wit, and his willingness to turn the lens and bright lights on his own assumptions lent a powerful credibility to his critiques and satires of others. Despite the often outrageous tone of his writings and the occasionally vitriolic responses they provoked, he nonetheless possessed an unsurpassed civility that allowed him to maintain friendships among people with whom he had profound disagreements of personal and political philosophy-and that often included John and Sam.

Being as prolific as he was, Paul produced too much for some of us. Indeed, some people left the list because they didn't want to be a member of a list where they saw so many of his postings. Some of a different persuasion formed a Paul Somerville Fan Club. So it goes. Paul eventually moved on from the list, yet continued his life of being deeply funny and pranksterish in other venues. We miss him and want to express gratitude once more for the provocative hilarity he brought to H-PCAACA.
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Editor's Introduction: Laugh at Everything

Paul Somerville, aka Brother Paul, aka Frater Paulus, was loved by those who knew him well. He was also loathed by some who knew him very little, and in their reactions one could readily learn more about these people than they sometimes realized about themselves.

A satirist extraordinaire, Paul enjoyed a reputation that, despite the comparatively modest size of his readership - several hundred to a few thousand at any given moment - was nonetheless international in scope, and his wit had a tendency to scrape the hardest on those whose senses of humor were overweighed by their senses of self-righteousness and political correctness.

Therein was the sweetest irony - laying like a snake in the weeds. For Paul Somerville's unbounded glee at poking sharp sticks at sacred cows was like his own flyover country politics - it started at home. Truly, though many an ox was gored by Paul's caustic keyboard, his own ox stood for the worst beatings of all, a fact that went uniformly unnoticed by his detractors. It was as though Paul were teaching by example, and the lesson was simple: lighten up and laugh. At everything.

For some time it was my great privilege to serve as editor of Paul's Samizdat Online News Service©. The missives archived on this site appeared initially on the H-PCAACA listserv, an online forum for members of the Popular Culture and American Culture Associations, from about 1995 to 1998. I was named to the Brother Paul Desk after it became clear, in the eyes of the list's management, that of all the things Paul needed in life (and there were many), editing was the one they could actually provide. It was quickly evident that there was little way out of the trap that had been laid for me by my peers, so I chose to be honored by my election to the position.

Over those three or four years Paul wrote with an enthusiasm that was exceeded only by his appetite for cigarettes and steak dinners, and I believe he took great pride in the fact that his correspondence with the list caused several of its more self-serious types to unsubscribe in protest. Of course, an editor is a filter that collects garbage no matter which way the stream flows, and as such I probably absorbed more of the abuse aimed at Paul than he did. Looking back, I can see no reason why, at this late stage, I shouldn't claim to be proud of the dedication with which I endured my job.

On July 17, 2005, Paul Somerville slipped gently from this world. Along with his dear friend and lifelong mentor, Dr. John Lawrence (aka myths_americana, the esteemed Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Morningside College), I have taken up the task of creating a fitting memorial to the legacy of Brother Paul Somerville, and mining the best of his writings from the e-mail archive at Michigan State's H-Net site for presentation here seems a logical and appropriate first step.

We hope you enjoy Paul's writings, and if Paul were here, he'd hope you were occasionally offended. He'd also hope that you'd get over it and laugh at yourself with as much gusto as he laughed at himself. For, all things Paul Somerville seemed to know - and there were many - this one was the key to the deepest wisdom he had to offer: life is too short to be too serious about it.

Dr. A. Thaddeus "Tad" ver Bose
Associate Professor, Creative Writing
University of North Carolina at Silas Creek

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