Goat-Feathers

In this delightfully self-aware essay, Ellis Parker Butler confesses his inability to tell the whole truth about himself even as he attempts to do exactly that. The 'goat-feathers' of his title are the trivial pursuits, committee assignments, and social obligations that constantly derail him from his real work as a writer. With a charmingly mendacious narrator who admits upfront that he'll likely be 'cracking myself up something awful' by the end, Butler recounts his tragicomic surrender to every civic duty and side project that crosses his path. The result is both a laugh-out-loud portrait of an over-committed man and a surprisingly sharp meditation on why we sabotage our own ambitions with noble-seeming distractions. Butler's 1920s prose brims with the kind of self-deprecating wit that makes procrastination feel almost virtuous. A century later, anyone who has ever chosen a 'quick chore' over their actual work will recognize themselves in these pages.