Thursday, November 30, 2017

“More than his usual
state of instability”

From a letter to The New York Times by Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine:

We are currently witnessing more than his usual state of instability — in fact, a pattern of decompensation: increasing loss of touch with reality, marked signs of volatility and unpredictable behavior, and an attraction to violence as a means of coping. These characteristics place our country and the world at extreme risk of danger.

Ordinarily, we carry out a routine process for treating people who are dangerous: containment, removal from access to weapons and an urgent evaluation. We have been unable to do so because of Mr. Trump’s status as president. But the power of the presidency and the type of arsenal he has access to should raise greater alarm, not less.

We urge the public and the lawmakers of this country to push for an urgent evaluation of the president, for which we are in the process of developing a separate but independent expert panel, capable of meeting and carrying out all medical standards of care.
Lee is the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President (2017). She points out in her letter that she and the contributors to that book represent mental health professionals who “now number in the thousands.”

Madness, or method?

In The Washington Post, Ruth Ben-Ghiat responds to yesterday’s Daily News editorial:

Many have sought to diagnose President Trump’s mental health from afar, depicting him as delusional, narcissistic or a madman. Such an approach is understandable, since many of us struggle to make sense of his destructive behavior and attachment to falsehoods that are often of his own making. Yet it’s the history of authoritarianism that provides the best framework for understanding Trump’s words and actions. From Benito Mussolini onward, strongmen have ruled through a combination of seduction and threat, building up protective cults of personality and relentlessly pushing their own versions of reality until they’re in a position to make them state policy.

Far from being lunatics, leaders such as Trump are opportunists and skilled manipulators who may change their ideas on specific policy issues without ever deviating from their main goal: the accumulation and steady expansion of their own power.

Word of the day: sledgehammer

Walking through the hardware store, I wondered: why sledgehammer? Does it have something to do with sledding? A mighty hammer used to free a sled stuck in ice?

The Oxford English Dictionary traces sledge to the Old English slecg, equivalent to the Middle Dutch and Dutch slegge and related to similar words in Old Norse and other languages. The surprise comes at the end of the etymology: “The stem *slagj- is derived from that of slay.” So a sledgehammer is a killing hammer? No, not really: the obsolete slay in question means “to smite, strike, or beat,” and sledgehammer or sledge, as the dictionary points out, refers “especially” to a blacksmith’s hammer.

Sledge, as I vaguely remembered, does also mean “sled” or “sleigh.” But that sledge derives from the Middle Dutch sleedse — no smiting there, just a sled. And sleigh comes from the Dutch slee, a contracted form of slede. No smiting there either.

The word hammer comes from the Old English hamor, hamer, hǫmer, equivalent to similar words in a number of Germanic languages. Says the OED, “The Norse sense ‘crag’, and possible relationship to Slavic kamy, Russian kameni stone, have suggested that the word originally meant ‘stone weapon.’” Primitive, man, primitive.

[Whatever we were looking for in the hardware store, it wasn’t a sledgehammer. I think it was microfiber cloths.]

“Only appearance”

A complete story:


Franz Kafka, “The Trees,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

“Mad”

A Daily News editorial is saying it plainly:

The President of the United States is profoundly unstable. He is mad. He is, by any honest layman’s definition, mentally unwell and viciously lashing out.
[What prompted this editorial: what the paper calls Donald Trump’s “Wednesday Twitter spasm.”]

“Bon Appétit!”

Here’s a third piece of Lassie fan-fiction. The first two: “The ’Clipse” and “The Poet.” You can click on each page for a slightly larger view. Enjoy.














Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

And three other pieces of Lassie fan-fiction
“The ’Clipse” : “The Poet” : “On the Road”

[“You are alone in the kitchen”: inspired by the failed flip of a potato pancake. Julia Child did indeed prefer white pepper to black.]

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Washington Phillips, Grammy nominee

Dust-to-Digital’s Washington Phillips And His Manzarene Dreams has been nominated in two Grammy categories: Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes. I wrote a review of this extraordinary album last year.

The NSA’s Grammar Geek

Now available at governmentattic.org: advice columns on grammar and usage from the National Security Agency’s Grammar Geek(s). “Gabby” took over as the Geek after “Gigi” retired. Both names are pseudonyms.

A choice bit from Gigi:

Oh! If I had a dollar for every time I have heard a news anchor solemnly state that such and such “went down” today, I would have enough money for several new grammar books — all of which I would throw at the TV.
How marvelous that the NSA can spy on millions of Americans and still keep its sense of humor.

How to improve writing (no. 73)

Today we have rearranging of parts. From a New York Times opinion piece, a sentence that needs improvement:

Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, has been reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month, long before Trump announced his candidacy.
I see two problems:

“Last month, long before Trump announced his candidacy” makes for a momentary muddle. Place “long before Trump announced his candidacy” at the beginning of the sentence, and you can see the second problem more clearly:
Long before Trump announced his candidacy, Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, has been reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month.
See the problem? It’s a matter of tense: Long before x did y, Harding has been reporting. I suspect that the original arrangement of the sentence’s parts allowed the writer to miss this now-obvious error. Once more:
Long before Trump announced his candidacy, Harding, the former Moscow bureau chief of The Guardian, was reporting on shady characters like Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was indicted last month.
I’d say bring back the copy desk, but I don’t think copy editors edit opinion pieces. (Anyone know?)

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 73 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose. I’ve added italics to the name of The Guardian in the Times sentence.]

Dog science

The narrator (a dog) has explained that there are two kinds of food: food from the ground and food from above. Science has determined that there are two ways of procuring food: “the scratching and watering of the ground” and “the auxiliary perfecting processes of incantation, dance, and song.” But if the perfecting processes work to give the ground sufficient potency to attract food from the air, why do dogs look upward and not at the ground when they sing, dance, and chant?


Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

[Watering the ground? It seems to mean just what you think it means.]

Chock full o’Coffee

“Most of the people in New York — we’ve been there forever and they get it, but if you’re in Omaha and suddenly we’re on the shelf and you see the brand for the first time, there’s confusion”: The hard work of assuring shoppers that Chock full o’Nuts coffee is just coffee — no nuts.

Chock full o’Nuts is our household’s everyday coffee. Pistachios are our everyday nuts.

Related posts
A 1964 guidebook description : Chock full o’Nuts reverie : Chock fill o’Nuts in a movie : Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour, 1955 : Chock full o’Nuts skyline with the WTC

Monday, November 27, 2017

An interview with Annie Atkins

From the podcast 99% Invisible: “Hero Props: Graphic Design in Film and Television,” an interview with the graphic designer Annie Atkins, maker of graphic props for film. Atkins was the lead graphic designer for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yes, the Mendl’s box.

The Voyager Golden Records

The sounds of the Voyager Golden Records (there were two): coming soon, on LPs and CDs.

Pocket notebook sighting


[20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016). Click either image for a much larger view.]

Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening) wanted to be an Air Force pilot and went to flight school, but the war ended before she was done. It makes sense that her pocket notebook would be one with a military background. It’s this notebook, its pages sewn in signatures, with evergreen covers and the word Memorandum in lime cursive. The notebook opens from the top:



I bought a stash of the side-opening Memorandum some time ago. They’re extremely well-made notebooks.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Enter Sluggo


[Zippy, November 26, 2017.]

First panel: “Zippy read so many ‘Little Max’ comic books by Ham Fisher that he became Little Max!” And went on to live by himself in a little brick house. But then things get all Pandora-like.

All I know about Little Max is what I read in Zippy — and that he was Joe Palooka’s sidekick.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Notice the tiny Sluggo in the first of these panels.]

Yielding in Massachusetts

In The New York Times Magazine, John Hodgman answers a question about driving in Massachusetts: what should a driver do when someone is standing on the sidewalk at a Yield to Pedestrians crosswalk, not yet crossing? Hodgman says the driver should yield: “Don’t be a masshole.”

What Hodgman doesn’t make explicit is that yielding for someone still on the sidewalk isn’t required by Massachusetts law. But says a Cambridge lawyer experienced in crosswalk cases: "If they have the intent of crossing within a reasonable distance of it, then yeah, you gotta stop."

[Drivers in Brookline (the town referenced in Hodgman’s piece) really do stop at Yield to Pedestrian signs, at least the ones in Coolidge Corner, at least most of the time, at least in my experience. I’ve added commas to the lawyer’s sentence.]

Saturday, November 25, 2017

A representative walk

Air, mint, air : air : air : air : air, leaves : leaves, air : air : air : air : air : burning leaves : burning leaves : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air, turkey, air : air : air : air, fireplace, air : air : air : air, leaves, air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air : air, leaves, air : air, leaves, air : air.

[Inspired by something my friend Sara McWhorter wrote and sent. The colons separate the fifty minutes of walking. Mint? Lip balm.]

From the Saturday Stumper

A clever clue from the Newsday Saturday Stumper, 26-Across, four letters: “Hail in Oz.” No spoilers; the answer is in the comments.

Today’s puzzle is by Andrew Bell Lewis. Finishing a Saturday Stumper is always cause for minor self-congratulation.

Rations detail


[Kyle Surges, WWII Rations, detail. Oil on panel. 9" × 18". 2015.]

Kyle Surges’s paintings knock me out. Visit the artist’s website for more.

Friday, November 24, 2017

We three kings

Donald Trump reminds me of three kings, or one king and two tyrants, really: he combines Agamemnon’s contempt for truth (“Fake news!” Trump would have told the seer Calchas), Oedipus’s egomania (“I alone can fix it,” Trump would have said of the Sphinx’s curse), and Creon’s strutting authoritarianism (“I’m president, and you’re not,” Trump would have told Oedipus when ordering him back in the house).

But unlike Oedipus, Trump has no interest in the pursuit of truth: he would have fired Tiresias and ended the investigation of the murder of Laertes. Oedipus chose to pursue that investigation, wherever it might lead. But of course he had no idea where it would lead.

Also unlike Oedipus: Trump would never have solved the Sphinx’s riddle to begin with.

A related post
Word of the day: tyrant

[In Iliad 1, when Calchas tells Agamemnon why the Achaean forces have been hit by a plague and what to do to remove it, Agamemnon complains that Calchas never gives him any good omens. Agamemon’s the king; Oedipus and Creon, tyrants.]

Sardine art


[Maudie (dir. Aisling Walsh, 2016).]

The Canadian artist Maud Lewis used sardine cans to hold her paints. Here, look. Notice the Campbell’s Soup can too, put to un-Warholian use.

Today is National Sardines Day. Let us, each in our own way, honor the small oily fish.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Thursday, November 23, 2017

Thanksgiving 1917


[“Thanksgiving Food Never So Expensive: Turkeys Get Up to 50 Cents a Pound and Cranberries Bring 25 Cents a Quart.” The New York Times, November 29, 1917.]

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Previous Thanksgiving posts
In jail, 1916 : At the Waldorf Astoria, 1915 : In jail, 1914 : In jail, 1913 : Thanksgiving and mortality : In jail, 1912 : Competitive eating, 1911 : A 1917 greeting card : A found letter : Sing Sing, 1908 : Sing Sing, 1907 : I remember Thanksgiving

[Nathan Straus, co-owner of R.H. Macy & Company and Abraham & Straus, had a long history as a philanthropist.]

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Jon Hendricks (1921–2017)

The singer and lyricist Jon Hendricks has died at the age of ninety-six. The New York Times has an obituary. The Lambert, Hendricks & Ross album Sing a Song of Basie (1957) is one of my earliest musical memories. It begins: “Dig Count Basie blow Joe’s blues away.”

Peppermint Hallmark


[Peanuts, November 22, 1970.]

Peppermint Patty (last name Reichardt I once heard) is watching a beauty contest. But I prefer to believe that she’s watching the Hallmark Channel.

Related reading
All OCA Peanuts posts (Pinboard) : I am a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries : Hallmark ex machina : The Bridge, continued : Shine on, Hallmark Channel : Sleigh Bells Ring

[Yesterday’s Peanuts is today’s Peanuts. This strip ran again this past Sunday. Extra credit if you recognize the source for “(last name Reichardt I once heard).”]

“Useful, poetic,” &c.

Rachel Peden writes of losing the battle against weeds but loving her garden “just the same”:

I Iove it on the day when the earth is prepared and I can take off my shoes and walk barefooted on the fresh, moist, sun-warmed soil. I love it when I put my shoes back on and begin to work, marking off rows and putting in seeds, and almost forgetting to stop in time to start supper. I love it when the first bean sprouts appear, the little bowed green heads first, then the two little green hands held up above the face. A garden makes me feel useful, poetic, comforted, overworked, justified for living, luxurious. I always promise to be faithful to this one, but every year the weeds are more faithful than I. After all, they have nothing else to do, of course.

Rachel Peden, The Land, the People (Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books, 2010).
As late as the first days of November, we still had tiny plum tomatoes growing. But the frost ended that. Our raised beds are now covered with cardboard and waiting for the spring. The first time it snows I want to sit with Elaine at the kitchen table and plan out next year’s crops.

Also from Rachel Peden
Against school consolidation : Dry goods, &c. : Inspiration for writing : “For pies and jelly and philosophy” : “On speaking terms with yourself”

The obvious

Amy Davidson Sorkin, writing in The New Yorker about “Liberals and Sexual Harassment”:

When Clinton ran for President in 2016, she may not have gauged how profoundly Bill Clinton’s record with women would hurt her.
Ya think? And:
As hard as it is to hear, particularly given the historic nature of Clinton’s candidacy and her laudable record on everything from climate change to children’s health, her nomination compromised the Democratic Party.
Ya think? And:
There were other choices, early on; perhaps one of the fourteen Democratic women in the Senate in 2015 might have emerged.
“Might have emerged” — if what?

There was another choice later on as well, but in Davidson Sorkin’s telling, there is no Bernie Sanders.

Timmy Martin, writer

A Dixon Ticonderoga works for most purposes. But not all. From the Lassie episode “The Contest” (September 20, 1959), as Timmy Martin prepares to write about What My Pet Means to Me:

“Where’s the pen and ink and good paper?”
Notice: the pen. One, for the house. It’s a dip pen.

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Nanski


[Click for a larger view.]

A Nancy parody, found in a sampler of MAD imitators. The titles on the TV screen: Khrushchev Knows Best, I Love Nikita, and Meet the Pravda.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Khrushchev’s name might be misspelled in the comic. Too small to tell.]

Domestic comedy

“A Thanksgiving movie now? When it’s already almost Christmas?!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

A pocket notebook sighting


[A Stranger in Town (dir. Roy Rowland, 1943).]

John Josephus Grant (Frank Morgan) looks at a blank page as he asks questions: Have you always lived in this state? Are you sure you’ve never lived in another state? Did you file your income tax this year? The man he’s questioning gets more and more worried. And then Grant explains:

“It’s an old trick that Justice Brandeis used to play. I read about it in Collier’s once. You see, it’s an unfortunate fact, Mr. Adams, but every man, even you and I, has done something that he doesn’t want anybody to know about. Now if you can make him think that you’re holding in your hand the skeleton in his closet — you’ve got him. Well, let’s say at least you’ve got him squirming, nervous, worried, as you were. But if that man happens to have a really guilty conscience. . . .”
What Grant doesn’t give away is that he didn’t read about this trick in Collier’s. He himself is a Supreme Court Justice, on vacation and incognito.

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Ball of Fire : Cat People : City Girl : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window

Twelve more movies

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (dir. Noah Baumbach, 2017). A third-tier sculptor, two of his three wives, and his three adult children. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, perhaps, but here it’s a way very much influenced by Anton Chekhov, Woody Allen, and Wes Anderson. My favorite line: “You guys will never know what it’s like to be me in this family.” The all-star cast includes Candice Bergen, Judd Hirsch, Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Emma Thompson. But there’s less here than meets the eye.

*

A Stranger in Town (dir. Roy Rowland, 1943). A Supreme Court justice (Frank Morgan) travels incognito for a brief vacation and, still incognito, sets things right in a small town. The claustrophobia and corruption of small-town life are played for laughs, and justice wins in the end, just as in real life. At the one-stop shop for obscurities, YouTube.

*

Alimony (dir. Alfred Zeisler, 1949). Martha Vickers is the starring attraction in a sketchy lawyer’s scheme: have her marry a rich guy, frame him for infidelity, sue for divorce, and collect, yes, alimony, with the lawyer taking a cut. I especially liked the scenes of boarding house life and Leonid Kinskey’s comic turn as a theatrical producer. The movie moves toward Detour-like sordidness before steering (crazily) to a disappointingly wholesome ending. Another YouTube find.

*

Stranger Things, second season (dir. Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Shawn Levy, Andrew Stanton, Rebecca Thomas, 2017). I described the first season of Stranger Things as Ghostwriter meets E.T. The second season might be described as Ghostwriter meets E.T. meets Theseus-and-the-Minotaur meets The Exorcist. Darker, scarier than the first season, and excellent fun. Caution: contains nougat.

*

My Cousin Vinny (dir. Jonathan Lynn, 1992). Someone recommended this wonderful comedy to Elaine. Somehow we had never seen it. Someday you should see it if you haven’t. A neophyte Brooklyn lawyer, or “lawyer” (Joe Pesci), travels to Alabama to defend his cousin and his cousin’s friend, two college fellows wrongly accused of murder. It’s a good thing that Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) comes along. I’m not surprised to learn that lawyers love this film. But I am surprised to learn that the film is used in teaching law.

*

One of Us (dir. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, 2017). The documentarians of Detropia and Jesus Camp look at the struggles of three ex-Hasidim: Etty, a mother of seven who’s fled an abusive husband; Luzer, a struggling actor; and Ari, a young man who was raped as a child and is now bedeviled by drugs. Each has grown up without skills of work and social life; each now tries to establish an identity apart from an insular culture of surveillance and intimidation that demands absolute conformity to its rules. (Talk about fundamentalism: Etty shows the filmmakers a son’s reading primer in which every girl’s face has been blacked out.) As the film makes clear, the cost of leaving the community can be very high.

*

The Exception (dir. David Leveaux, 2016). Love and espionage in wartime. Christopher Plummer plays Kaiser Wilhelm in exile in the Netherlands. In his grand house, an affair begins between a German officer (Jai Courtney) and a maid (Lily James). The narrative is somewhat predictable, but with moments of genuine suspense. Best scene: dinner with Himmler, as the Kaiser meets the new order.

*

Maudie (dir. Aisling Walsh, 2016). The life of Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins), self-taught Canadian artist. Lewis suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and lived in rural isolation and poverty, married to a man who here seems at times emotionally inert, at other times downright abusive. Is Ethan Hawke’s brutish Everett Lewis a just representation of Maud’s husband? Is Maud’s inarticulateness (which seems to suggest intellectual disability) a just representation of her character? I don’t know. Worth watching, but the film leaves so many matters unaddressed, including the first thirty-odd years of Lewis’s life.

*

20th Century Women (dir. Mike Mills, 2016). It is 1979 in Santa Barbara. Annette Bening plays Dorothea Fields, a divorced mother, a Salem smoker, the first female drafting technician at the Continental Can Company, and the owner of a rambling old house with boarders. To raise her fourteen-year-old son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), Dorothea enlists the help of her boarder Abbie (Greta Gerwig) and the girl next door, Julie (Elle Fanning). Dorothea’s male boarder William (Billy Crudup), all mustache and chambray, is put to other purposes. The film moves from character to character, as if from room to room (with title cards giving each character’s name and year of birth), and is much more about character than “action.” Most of the events in the film, I realize, arrive in the form of conversations. Exceedingly well written and acted.

*

Notorious (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1946). Ingrid Bergman as Alicia Huberman, daughter of a Nazi spy, recruited by American intelligence to infiltrate a group of post-war Nazis in Brazil. Cary Grant is Devlin, the American agent who loves her. Claude Rains is Alex Sebastian, a Nazi in Brazil, also in love with Alicia. (Ick.) The Bergman–Grant scenes make Notorious the most erotic Hitchcock film I’ve seen. But it’s Leopoldine Konstantin, as Alex’s mother, who steals the show.

*

Rear Window (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). I remember the excitement when this film, Vertigo, and three others returned to theaters in the 1980s. Why not watch yet again? Or better — why not watch the people across the courtyard, and watch Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly watch the people across the courtyard? Something I don’t think I’d noticed before: the bamboo shades (think theater curtain) go down during the closing credits. And Thelma Ritter’s lines: “In the old days, they used to put your eyes out with a red-hot poker. Any of those bikini bombshells you’re always watching worth a red-hot poker?” How’d they get that past the censors?

*

The Promise (dir. Terry George, 2016). A love triangle — a journalist, a governess, a medical student — in the time of the Armenian genocide. Early on, the film’s lavish attention to beautiful costumes and sets threatens to displace attention from the characters. Later, events themselves make the characters seem less and less important. Some descriptions of the film speak of a love triangle “set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide.” But what does it mean to think of genocide as a backdrop? To my mind, the most moving scene in the film is the final one, one that has nothing to do with the triangle. As the movies teach us, the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

Monday, November 20, 2017

“The long and short of it”


[Alonzo Mourning and Charlayne Hunter-Gault.]

On the PBS NewsHour tonight, hopeful words from Alonzo Mourning, talking with Charlayne Hunter-Gault: “What sportsmanship can teach us about healing racial divides.” I trust that everyone involved saw the sweet incongruity in these pull-away shots.

[Mourning uses the phrase “the long and short of it” in the course of the conversation.]

Grammar and patriarchy

In The New York Times, Carmel McCoubrey writes about nouns and gender and French: “Toppling the Grammar Patriarchy.” With a sidetrip into singular they.

Orange Julep art


[“Orange Julep, Route 9, Plattsburgh, New York.” Photograph by John Margolies. 1978. From the Library of Congress feature John Margolies: Roadside America. Click for a much larger view.]

A Flickr page for this photograph notes that the Orange Julep was torn down around 1979 and that only a parking lot remains. Here is a photograph of the Orange Julep in nighttime splendor. A larger Orange Julep still stands in Montreal.

Other posts with orange
Crate art, orange : Orange art, no crate : Orange art turtle : Orange batik art : Orange bookmark art : Orange car art : Orange crate art : Orange crate art (Encyclopedia Brown) : Orange dress art : Orange enamel art : Orange flag art : Orange light art : Orange manual art : Orange mug art : Orange newspaper art : Orange notebook art : Orange notecard art : Orange parking art : Orange peel art : Orange pencil art : Orange pump art : Orange soda art : Orange soda-label art : Orange stem art : Orange stereograminator art : Orange telephone art : Orange timer art : Orange toothbrush art : Orange train art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange tree art : Orange Tweed art

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Sleigh Bells Ring

“This has exceeded even my lofty expectations!” So says a character in the Hallmark movie Sleigh Bells Ring, on last night and on again six more times between now and the of the year. “My favorite of the season!!! Definitely a DVR keeper!!!” So says someone on Twitter. So bad it‘s good, says I. So bad and so good that having dropped in about halfway through, Elaine and I had to watch to the end. We had to see what would happen. Because after Alex overstepped by putting up all the Christmas decorations with his old girlfriend Laurel’s daughter Scarlett, how could things ever turn out right for him and Laurel?

Related posts
I am a prisoner of Hallmark Movies and Mysteries : Hallmark ex machina : The Bridge, continued : Shine on, Hallmark Channel

Saturday, November 18, 2017

From the Saturday Stumper

A clever clue from the Newsday Saturday Stumper, 23 Across: “With 29 Down, sight below some Lincoln Memorials.” The answers are three and four letters long. No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Today’s puzzle is by “Anna Stiga,” Stanley Newman, the puzzle’s editor. Anna Stiga, or Stan Again, is the pseudonym Newman uses for easier Saturday Stumpers of his making. Finishing a Saturday Stumper, even if it’s an easier one, is cause for minor self-congratulation.

Otto Baum Handlettering

An Instagram page: Otto Baum Handlettering. I especially like this clip, which shows some tools of the trade.

Thanks, Rachel!

Domestic comedy

“We’ve never been to the new McDonald’s — which is now old McDonald’s.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Friday, November 17, 2017

Things to do in the Valley

The San Fernando Valley, that is. The main thing to do in the Valley was to hang out with Rachel, Seth, and Talia. But I can recommend a few other things to do:

Bargain Books (14426 Friar Street, Van Nuys). A small store (estd. 1958) where the books are reasonably priced and shelved two deep. We found one book by Alexander King, two copies of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and three Robert McCloskey books for you-know-who. And the owner showed us an inscribed Truman Capote title. Capote had excellent handwriting.

Barnes & Noble (12136 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City). On the one hand, it’s a chain store. On the other hand, the location is a renovated movie theater. Location, location, location. There’s a large selection of children’s books.

Beeps Diner (16063 Sherman Way, Van Nuys). The real thing (estd. 1956), with a few tables outside, a few more tables inside, and two windows for ordering. The tuna melt is terrific. Beeps appears in a 2006 Zippy strip. A xeroxed enlargement hangs under a menu signboard.

Big Mama’s and Papa’s Pizza (Nineteen locations). Excellent pizza. That means more to me than it-was-served-at-the-Oscars, which it was, in 2014, when Ellen DeGeneres ordered Big Mama’s for the audience.

Brent’s Deli (19565 Parthenia Street, Northridge). Huge sandwiches, excellent ingredients, beautifully prepared. Pickles included. No disrespect to Canter’s or Nate ’n Al, but I think I prefer Brent’s.

Firehouse Restaurant (18450 Victory Boulevard, Tarzana). Greek food, intensely flavorful. Large portions — just the side order of hummus would probably last through three or four lunches in our house.

Puro Sabor (6366 Van Nuys Boulevard, Van Nuys). Peruvian food. We had yucca with huancaina (a tasty cheese sauce), mixed ceviche (fish and seafood marinated in lemon, with cancha, Peruvian corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes), and steak with tacu tacu (a pounded piece of tender beef atop a hash of rice and beans). A total comfort meal.

These bookstores and restaurants have earned the Orange Crate Art seal of approval.

Synchronicity

We were hanging out with Rachel and Talia, with an Amazon Dot playing Beatles tunes. I was looking through my RSS feeds, and started reading a post from Grammarphobia. A reader had a question:

Can you give me a very simplified way to remember how to use “there,” “their,” and “they’re”? I know “there” is a place or shows ownership, and “their” is more figurative, but I still sometimes get them wrong. HELP!
You can guess what Beatles song started as I read that last word. Swear.

Related reading
All OCA synchronicity posts (Pinboard)

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Mark Trail, recycled

That face . . . those beads of perspiration . . . where have I seen them before?



[Mark Trail, revised, May 10, 2014. Mark Trail, May 14, 2015; April 28, 2016; November 16, 2017.]

Today’s face is a cruder rendering: it appears that Mark’s lower forehead has been wiped clean and the eyebrows redrawn. But the beads of perspiration on the upper left forehead (Mark’s left), the cheekbones, the shadow under the nose: it’s the same face, recycled and repurposed.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

UPC misspelling

I was surprised to find what looks like a misspelled word on the back on a box of UPC. Here, look:


[“Be good to yourself this morning with a satisfing bowl of Simply Nature Organic Oats and Honey Granola.”]

To my eye, the letterforms look too various to have come from a cursive font. I think that this “note” superimposes an image of handwritten text onto an image of an exaggeratedly rustic piece of paper. Which would mean that someone wrote satisfying while leaving out the y. And that no one else noticed.



Related reading
All OCA spelling and misspelling posts (Pinboard)

Mister Memory

[Please imagine Jeff Sessions in the role.]

Q: “What are the 39 Steps? Come on, answer up! What are the 39 Steps?”

A: “I don’t recall.”

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

How to improve writing (no. 72)

Page 49 of the November 20 issue of The New Yorker is a full-page ad for Ameritrade. The most prominent text element on the page is embarrassingly off:



I wondered for a moment if the ad is announcing an investment plan meant to provide for family members after the investor’s death. “The portfolio that works even when you aren’t” — in other words, when you aren’t around? But no, it’s just clumsy writing. The problem is that works and aren’t aren’t parallel elements in this sentence fragment. Parallel elements would look like these: it works even if you don’t work; it works even if you quit; it works even if you shuffle off to Buffalo. It works even if you aren’t? No. Even if you aren’t work? No.

One way to fix the problem: “The portfolio that works even when you don’t.” Or “The portfolio that’s working even when you aren’t.” But these revisions might suggest unemployment or retirement.

Better: “The portfolio that works even when you aren’t paying attention.” Or “The portfolio that works even when you’re not looking.” That sounds a little shady to me. But then again, I’m not a likely prospect for this ad.

The oddness of the banner sentence ought not to take attention away from the dangling participle in the body text: “By monitoring and rebalancing your portfolio automatically, it’s a low-cost solution that takes care of business, so you can take care of life’s essentials.”

Yes, life’s essentials, one of which is (or ought to be) striving to write good sentences.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[Click for a larger view. This post is no. 72 in a series, dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Domestic comedy

[After using the remote control.]

“There, that’s better. Now he’s using his inside voice.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[“Inside voice” comes from American Splendor (dir. Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, 2003): “Remember what I told you about loud talking? Use your inside voice.”]

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Doublet and hose and usage

This passage arrived this morning with Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day:

[I]t does not follow that because a certain form of speech was current in earlier times it is therefore acceptable today — we might as well suggest that, because in Queen Elizabeth’s time our forefathers dressed in doublet and hose, we could wear the same garb without causing excitement and suspicion as to our mental condition.

Henry Alexander, The Story of Our Language (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1940).
See also mededitor’s “Jane Austen” fallacy. And here’s my take on the fallacy.

You can subscribe to Usage Tip of the Day at lawprose.org.

Perfectionism and its discontents

From the podcast Innovation Hub : Eugenia Cheng, mathematician, talks about perfectionism and diminishing returns. With some useful observations about writing.

“On speaking terms with yourself”

Rachel Peden, from The Land, the People (Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books, 2010):

The blackberry patch in the woods was a good place for a farm woman to go if she wanted to talk aloud to herself . . . nobody was likely to embarrass her by overhearing her in that hidden place, though actually why should it be more embarrassing to be caught talking to yourself than singing to yourself, which many women love to do? And certainly, if you’re not on speaking terms with yourself, you need to do something about it.
Yes, you do. I think of an untitled poem from Lorine Niedecker’s Next Year or I Fly My Rounds Tempestuous (1934), a work made of short handwritten poems pasted over the inspirational aphorisms of a two-week-per-page calendar: “Jesus, I’m / going out / and throw / my arms / around.”

Also from Rachel Peden
Against school consolidation : Dry goods, &c. : Inspiration for writing : “For pies and jelly and philosophy”

[Ellipsis in the original.]

Monday, November 13, 2017

iOS text editors

Brett Terpstra’s iOS text-editor roundup is an exhaustive guide to writing apps for the iPhone and iPad.

One iOS writing app that I especially like is Byword. I wrote most of this morning’s post about fluke life in Byword, on my phone, on a plane this past weekend.

A related post
Bear, a writing app

Fluke life

“Of course, you know there are no jobs.”

That was the director of a doctoral program in 1980, talking to me, a prospective student. The odds of securing a tenure-track position in a college or university English department were then about fifty-fifty. The odds of securing a tenure-track position with a degree from a non-powerhouse (but excellent) doctoral program must have been much longer. That hadn’t occurred to me.

“Of course,” I replied. It was all very wink-wink, as if we both understood that it was necessary to say something about the job market, if only in the form of a lighthearted disclaimer. And I remember, even now, that I was thinking to myself, Somehow I’ll get a job.

And five years later, I did. In the fall of 1984 I applied for every suitable position advertised in the Modern Language Asssociation Job Information List and ended up with half a dozen interviews at the MLA’s December convention, the annual hub for hiring in English and foreign languages. Half a dozen interviews was a pretty respectable haul. Just one interview led to a campus visit, at a state school in New England. The young and energetic department chair was really trying hard, but everything felt just sad: buildings in need of repair, ancient and kindly but disengaged faculty, and a mascot-like hanger-on student who seemed soundly stoned. My presentation of my dissertation research — about E.D. Hirsch, Stanley Fish, J.L. Austin, and speech-act theory — elicited only vague politeness: What made you choose this topic?

At home the mail was a steady drip of bad news: We have now completed our on-campus interviews, with me now out of even hypothetical consideration. I remember lying on our bed one afternoon, crying and telling Elaine, “I’ll never get a job.” But something had happened at the MLA convention that was to greatly improve my chances.

Elaine and I had gone to the convention together. (Did she take off from work? I can’t recall.) We were in Washington, D.C., in late December, in spring-like weather on the first night of the convention, hungry and looking for a place to eat. We found a French restaurant, but it didn’t open for another half hour. Then we happened upon a Nepali restaurant and decided to try it. Wow: the dishes were like a cross between Chinese and Indian cuisine.

The restaurant was packed with MLA types, academics everywhere. But the table for two next to ours, literally next to ours, edge to edge, was empty, and a man and woman were seated there as we were finishing our meal. These people looked like the only non-MLA types in the place, and we somehow got to talking with them. I accounted for my presence at the convention: grad student, working on my dissertation, job interviews. And the man asked what it was about. And I said, “Well, the first chapter is about E.D. Hirsch.” And the woman said, “Oh, this is E.D. Hirsch.”

If you know Hirsch’s name, it’s probably from his work on behalf of the idea of cultural literacy. That came later. In 1984 Hirsch was best known in the context of “theory,” having written two books about hermeneutics, Validity in Interpretation and The Aims of Interpretation. In that pre-Internet world, knowing what he or any other academic looked like was not especially likely: no photographs on book covers, no photographs anywhere. It wasn’t until 1986 that The New York Times Magazine printed full-, or nearly full-page photographs of Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller. Miller, I recall, was photographed in a New Haven pizza parlor.

But back to our Nepali restaurant. I couldn’t believe my dumb luck. Or awkward luck, as my chapter on Hirsch was devoted to exploring what I saw as problems with his ideas about meaning and intention. He asked me if I had seen his latest piece in Critical Inquiry. Huh? Back then the way to find out that something had come out was to go to the library and look through the periodical shelves. And here I was in Washington trying to get on-campus interviews, the next step to a job. “Uh, no, not yet,” said I.

We talked for a while, and I told Hirsch that I was looking forward to the panel at which he was reading a paper (along with David Bleich and Stanley Fish). Elaine and I probably started laughing giddily once we were out of the restaurant. Such a crazy turn of events.

But not that crazy: Elaine has a gift for running into people unexpectedly. We were waiting once for the subway in New York, and when the doors opened, the first person out was an old friend of hers. We were walking once on St. Mark’s Place and met an old friend of hers walking in the other direction. So it makes sense that Elaine ran into Hirsch the next day in a record store. She advised him on recordings, and he gave her an MLA name badge so that she could get into his panel (and everything else at the convention). As Elaine and I made our way through hotel corridors and lobbies, we noticed people noticing her badge: E D HIRSCH JR. And on our third and last day at the convention, we ran into the Hirsches at breakfast in a D.C. cafeteria.

When we got back to Boston, I went to the library and found Hirsch’s piece, and then found some things to say about it. I sent what I wrote to Critical Inquiry, where it was accepted for publication as a “critical response,” with another response to Hirsch and Hirsch’s response to both responses.

Now: Critical Inquiry is a journal of considerable renown in academia. I notified schools where I was still in the hypothetical running about the acceptance. And that spring I received calls from two schools with whom I hadn’t interviewed at the MLA, inviting me to on-campus interviews. A message from one school, on our answering machine: “This is a job offer.” (It was, in truth, an interview offer.) I opted for an interview at the other school and spent a long, exhilarating, sinus-ridden day talking with, it seemed, everyone in the department. “I hope you get it,” I remember one prof saying. And shortly thereafter, a letter came, telling me that an offer had gone to someone else. That someone else, I later learned, was an assistant professor with a book to her name, up for tenure elsewhere but sure that she wasn’t going to get it.

But she got tenure and turned down the job offer, which now went to me. I took it and promptly called the New England state school to take myself out of the running. So I owe my thirty years of teaching to much more than my own smarts: to the fortunes, good or bad, of other jobseekers at the MLA and in on-campus interviews, to the faculty and administrators who decided to grant someone tenure, to a theory-minded person who took note of my Critical Inquiry acceptance, to the vagaries of business hours and seating arrangements in D.C. restaurants. And to curiosity about Nepali cuisine.

[When teaching, I sometimes told a brief version of this story to illustrate the idea of contingency. I wrote out much of what’s here in a 2013 letter.]

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Shoulders

I had already gone through the airport metal detector when a TSA agent asked to pat down my shoulders.

Elaine says it was because I have broad shoulders. No brag, just fact.

I don’t what the agent thought he might find. Drugs? I don’t think I look like a mule. But then again, I guess that could make me a better mule.

All the agent found, of course, was shoulders, broad ones. No brag, just fact.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Tea and truth

The words on my Celestial Seasoning tea-bag tag this afternoon are from Elizabeth Cady Stanton: “Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.”

Unlike so many “famous quotes,” this one is genuine, and it seems particularly timely. From The Woman’s Bible (1898):

How can woman’s position be changed from that of a subordinate to an equal, without opposition, without the broadest discussion of all the questions involved in her present degradation? For so far-reaching and momentous a reform as her complete independence, an entire revolution in all existing institutions is inevitable.

Let us remember that all reforms are interdependent, and that whatever is done to establish one principle on a solid basis, strengthens all. Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.
The Woman’s Bible was published as the work of Stanton and a “revising committee” of Stanton and twenty-five other women. The introduction in which this passage appears is credited to Stanton.

On Veterans Day

The Goofein Journal is a faux newspaper, hand-lettered on cardstock, written and illustrated for an audience of one. The newspaper is the work of Marion Reh Gurfein, who sent twenty-one issues to her husband Joseph when he served in the Second World War and the Korean War.

[In 2014 Marion Reh Gurfein, then ninety-three, was interviewed about making art and living with macular degeneration. I hope that she’s still going strong.]

Friday, November 10, 2017

An ex-ape speaks


Franz Kafka, “A Report to an Academy,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Sluggo Lives!


[Zippy, November 9, 2017.]

It’s a good feeling.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

“For pies and jelly and philosophy”

The gifts of woods:

Having known and loved deep woods in my childhood, I soon discovered the joys of the little woods on the hilltop on this farm. It gave us mushrooms — edible morels to eat and beautiful scarlet caps and orange shelf mushrooms and others to look at. It gave us sassafras roots for tea, wild blackberries for pies and jelly and philosophy; papaws for guests who like them, walnuts, glimpses of wildlife and flowers, snail shells; and a small demonstration of the way limestone breaks apart underground, swallows the soil above it and makes a cave. It gave us places for solitude, for thinking, a place where we could go and sort out our values and lick our spiritual wounds clean. It offered a place to walk with congenial companions and gave us, finally, a wide viewpoint. The wooded hilltop is high above and behind the farm buildings, which on a farm are customarily referred to as “the improvements.”

Rachel Peden, The Land, the People (Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books, 2010).
Also from Rachel Peden
Against school consolidation : Dry goods, &c. : Inspiration for writing

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Inspiration for writing

Rachel Peden refers to her father, B.F. Mason, as “the orchardist”:

If we wanted time for playing on workdays, we had to sneak away without attracting the orchardist’s notice. One of his favorite admonitions, learned from his Quaker mother, was “Satan finds work for idle hands to do.” He reminded us that she had often said to him, “Thy time, thy precious time!” He himself believed “There is no excellence without great labor.” Without ever telling us in so many words, he made us realize we were expected to carry in wood and water to the kitchen. When he wanted something done well, he encouraged us by telling us, “You can do it to a queen’s taste.”

Unwittingly, he probably fostered everybody’s writing proclivities by a bit of wry advice he gave us when we complained: “If there’s something that doesn’t suit you, just write it down and burn it up.” There were so many things that didn’t suit us that we had abundant practice in writing.

Rachel Peden, The Land, the People (Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books, 2010).
Also from Rachel Peden
Against school consolidation : Dry goods, &c.

“My Review of Wine”

From The New Yorker: “My Review of Wine,” by Roz Chast.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Dry goods, &c.

A picture of retail past, in Ellettsville, Indiana:

Cort’s store is a leisurely place that sells a great many things, and nobody is urged to buy anything. There was an assortment of men’s and boys’ clothing, dry goods, hardware, kitchen equipment. A stack of milk buckets, tin pans, and small tools were displayed carelessly in the window. There were the red and black plaid caps that are standard equipment for farm men and boys; the soft, warm, brown gloves; the stiff canvas gloves; blue denim overall jackets; assorted boots and overshoes.

Rachel Peden, Rural Free: A Farmwife’s Almanac of Country Living (Bloomington, IN: Quarry Books, 2009).
What are dry goods anyway? The Oxford English Dictionary: “A name (chiefly in N. Amer.) for the class of merchandise comprising textile fabrics and related things; articles of drapery, mercery, and haberdashery (as opposed to groceries).” Merriam-Webster: “textiles, ready-to-wear clothing, and notions as distinguished especially from hardware and groceries.” First use: 1657. An OED citation: “Sellers and buyers of produce, hardware, dry goods and what-not.” I love the what-not, and its cousin, things of that nature.

This passage made me think of a store from my Brooklyn childhood, “the dry goods store,” the only name I have for it, on New Utrecht Avenue, a street in permanent semi-darkness under the elevated train line. I remember merchandise on tables and in boxes: household chemicals, kitchenware, and what I now know were dry goods — underwear and socks, the packages priced with a marker or grease pencil. No farm fashions though. Wrong universe.

Also from Rachel Peden
Against school consolidation

Sardines are in the air

Yes, they are. The Chicago Tribune says so. And The Boston Globe has recipes. (As if sardines need a recipe.) Boston has at least two tinned-fish restaurants, haley.henry and Saltie Girl.

I think that “the small oily fish” qualifies as an elegant or inelegant variation — like “elongated yellow fruit” for “banana.”

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Monday, November 6, 2017

Misspelled words

From Oxford Dictionaries, a handy list of words commonly misspelled. One word that always confounds me, not that I have much reason to use it: pharaoh, because a certain tenor saxophonist, last name Sanders, spells his first name Pharoah.

Related reading
All OCA spelling and misspelling posts (Pinboard)

“Ah, coherent”


Franz Kafka, “The Hunter Gracchus: A Fragment,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer, trans. Tania and James Stern (New York: Schocken, 1971).

Related reading
All OCA Kafka posts (Pinboard)

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Hi and Lois watch


[Hi and Lois, November 5, 2017.]

Today’s Peter Max-like display of color is a marked improvement over October’s brown and green. Dig the blue and lilac tree trunks.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

Saturday, November 4, 2017

People and their pencils

“They keep breaking”: artists, designers, a director and animator, a photographer, a writer, and their pencils, with photographs of the pencils (The Guardian).

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Lassie do-overs

Taking a suggestion from bink, I’ve redone “The ’Clipse” and “The Poet” to make these Lassie fan-fiction posts easier to read on the screen. Does greater readability equal greater hokiness? You decide.

[Thanks, bink.]

DST


[“Functional furniture.” Photograph by Martha Holmes. December 1947. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Daylight-saving time begins tonight, or tomorrow morning. To my mind, it begins when you turn your clock back. Want to go to bed early? Turn your clock back at night. Want an early start in the morning? Turn your clock back after you wake up. So much for standardization. But be sure to turn just once.

Many people profess to hate daylight-saving time. But I’m confused: if you would prefer an extra hour of daylight on winter afternoons, as I would, what you really want is to be on daylight-saving time all year, no?

[Saving, or savings? Garner’s Modern English Usage: “the plural form is now extremely common in AmE,” but “in print sources, the singular form still appears twice as often as the plural.”]

Friday, November 3, 2017

A new Odyssey

In The New York Times Magazine, Wyatt Mason writes about the classicist Emily Wilson, the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English. I am happy to find that this article begins with a discussion of πολύτροπον [polutropon, much-turned, of many turns], the first word that describes the man who is the poem’s subject. I’m less happy about Wilson’s choice of the word complicated to carry πολύτροπον across into English (“Tell me about a complicated man”), though that word does recall James Joyce’s characterization of Odysseus as a “complete all-round character”: son, father, husband, lover, conscientious objector, warrior, inventor, gentleman. I very much like what Wilson does with Homer’s further directive to the muse: “Now goddess, child of Zeus, / tell the old story for our modern times. / Find the beginning.”

Related reading
All OCA Homer posts (Pinboard)

[Annette Meakin translated Odyssey 6 as Nausikaa (1926). Barbara Leonie Picard created “a retelling of the entire story for young people” (1952). The first word that names Odysseus is the poem’s first word, ἄνδρα [andra, man]: Odysseus is a man, god-like at times in his ability to dazzle, but thoroughly fallible and mortal. Joyce’s remarks on Odysseus are found in Frank Budgen’s James Joyce and the Making of “Ulysses” (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960). Wilson’s Odyssey comes out next Tuesday, published by W.W. Norton.]