The first time I encountered the Bricklayer’s Lament was in the 400 Bar in Minneapolis. Todd Menton had just played a set with a backing band consisting of a digeridoo and two tubas
At some point after the set–possibly as part of the encore, although the years and the Guinness that night have conspired to make it hazy–Todd performed a dramatic reading of the text, working from a printed copy. Todd’s done a lot of broad standup, so it was a great performance.
I didn’t give much thought to the source of the piece then, and when I’ve seen the text in various places in the intervening decade I haven’t given it much thought either. I just mentally mapped it onto all of those humorous texts that just seem to circulate.
Then, just recently, I saw Ellen Kushner posting about the piece. Her post clued me in to the author Gerard Hoffnung, and even had a link to another post with a digital copy of the Hoffnung performing it. That copy was in Quicktime format, and didn’t have the best audio quality. Hoffnung’s pauses are perfectly timed, but my memory of Todd’s performance is that it was even funnier.
I’ve cleaned it up as much as I can with my dilettante’s knowledge of audio editing tools, and reencoded it as an MP3. Here it is.
You can find out more about Hoffnung at the Official Hoffnung site. You can even order a CD with this, and the rest of his Oxford Union speech on it.
