Proust and the piano

If reading Proust is a habit, I've been clean for a week (while on vacation). But I'm going back on the stuff tomorrow morning. For now, a passage that I stashed away last week:

People, even those that we love the most, may, it is true, become saturated by the sadness or irritation that emanates from us. There is one thing, however, capable of a power of exasperation to which no human being will ever attain: a piano.

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2002), 187

All Proust posts (Pinboard)

The Proust habit

Chris Power on Proust:

Spend any length of time reading about Proust and you'll hear that his writing is addictive. In fact, the ubiquity of this claim was something I found off-putting. Novels aren't heroin or peanut M&Ms, after all. To me it sounded like so much hyperbole, and as a book reviewer I've sprayed around too much of that myself to fall for anyone else's. But after reading The Guermantes Way I'm beginning to see some sense in the claim.

Read the rest:

Getting the Proust habit (Guardian)

All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

(Thanks for the link, TH!)

Tom Waits on parenthood

"I didn't want to be the guy who woke when he was sixty-five, and said 'Gee, I forgot to have kids.' I mean, somebody took the time to have us, right?"

From a 1999 interview, quoted in Jay S. Jacobs' Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits (ECW Press, 2006)

Out of This World

Decluttering my workspace and reading about the Collyer brothers led me to a 1953 book by Helen Worden Erskine, Out of This World (thanks, library). Erskine was a New York reporter who seems to have started working in the mid-1920s. She developed a niche as a chronicler of the lives of urban recluses and in 1938 "discovered" the Collyer brothers. The lives collected in Out of This World are those of men and women whose wealth enabled them to live on their own odd terms, in brownstones, mansions, and hotels; in dust, clutter, and unopened mail. Here's one passage, from the story of Gertrude Tredwell (1840-1933):

Mr. Van Nostrand walked over to a framed floral arrangement. "This is seaweed. Aunt Gertrude used to have it sent in from the Jersey coast, then she arranged it in the form of flowers and pasted it on heavy drawing paper."

"You'll find them all over the house," commented Mrs. Lonnberg.

"Making flowers out of seaweed was Aunt Gertrude's life," said Mr. Van Nostrand.

Related post
Decluttering: a book recommendation

Decluttering: a book recommendation

Reading Merlin Mann's post on clutter last month inspired me to see and clean up my clutter. Something that has helped tremendously: Peter Walsh's It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, a book with significant psychotropic power. The most important point Walsh makes is that "organizing" stuff — by buying more boxes and bookshelves — never solves the problem. The real solution is rethinking one's relationship to stuff, an activity that can feel quite freeing.

My own efforts in this regard are ongoing. But already my workspace, our house, and life in general are a lot more comfortable and inviting.

It's All Too Much (Amazon)
Peter Walsh Design

Related posts, on items rediscovered while decluttering
Covering v. uncovering
Notary Public

"thrifti"

Above, signage of the dowdy world. Note the note above the tam. My eyes too are rolling.

This image reminds me of the cartoonish Scot who graced the signage of a local supermarket food mart that offered "McThrifty" values (before selling out to a chain). The thrifty Scot seems to have been a familiar figure in grocerydom. Has anyone else seen him?

Illustrated Supermaket Signage (from Roadsidepictures, found via Mad Professor)
All "dowdy world" posts (via Pinboard)

Proust: the Duchesse of Guermantes speaks

Proust, like Jane Austen, often lets characters reveal themselves in dialogue, no narratorial comment needed. Here is the Duchesse de Guermantes, explaining why she doesn't want to see Charles Swann, who is now dying:

"I am not myself excessively anxious to see him, because it seems, judging by what I was told a short while ago at Mme de Saint-Euverte's, that he would like, before he dies, for me to make the acquaintance of his wife and daughter. Heavens, it grieves me infinitely that he should be ill, but I hope, first of all, that it's not as serious as all that. And, then, that's not after all a reason, because it would really be too simple. A writer devoid of talent would only have to say, 'Vote for me at the Academy because my wife is about to die and I want to give her this last pleasure.' There wouldn't be salons any more if one was obliged to make the acquaintance of all the dying. My coachman could use it on me: 'My daughter's very ill, get me an invitation to the Princesse de Parme's.' I adore Charles, and it would upset me greatly to refuse him, which is why I prefer to avoid his asking me. I hope with all my heart that he's not dying, as he says he is, but, truly, were that to happen, it would not be the moment for me to make the acquaintance of those two creatures who've deprived me of the most agreeable of my friends these past fifteen years, and whom he would leave on my hands at at time when I wouldn't even be able to take advantage of it to see him, since he'd be dead!"

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2002), 82-83

All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

Ms. Mingus and Ms. Pepper

From Sunday's New York Times:

It's a happy accident that two of the most self-absorbed legends in the history of jazz — the bassist Charles Mingus and the alto saxophonist Art Pepper — married women who wound up equally absorbed in the preservation of their legacies. The men have been dead now for a quarter-century, yet their widows, Sue Graham Mingus and Laurie Pepper, keep unveiling major discoveries.

Re: Cornell 1964, Ms. Mingus reports that the tapes were discovered twenty years ago. “There's more tapes where that came from, and I plan to release them soon too.”

Please, do!

Still Married to the Music (New York Times)

The credits

There are two kinds of moviegoers: those who stay to watch the credits and those who — never mind; they're already gone.

If, reader, you go to The Simpsons Movie, stay to watch the credits, and you'll be rewarded with a few surprises.

The movie proper has many fine touches, including a well-detailed low-budget motel room (in the Red Rash Inn), a Disney spoof, and a swipe at Fox Broadcasting. My favorite touch: the split-second that evokes the famed George Tames photograph of JFK leaning over a desk in the Oval Office.

The Simpsons Movie (Official website)

Weekly World News, farewell

From another fine newspaper comes the sad news:

Blame microscopic alien vampires, or the general shift in media away from papers, but the Weekly World News tabloid will soon only be available online.

I've been an occasional (and at times regular) reader of the Weekly World News since the late 1970s, when my grad-school friends and I discovered it at a newsstand on Fordham Road in the Bronx. One had to dig to get the WWN, which was buried beneath a dozen other tabloids. It was cheaper than the other tabloids too: only 35¢. (Yes, I like seeing the cent sign too.)

In recent years my interest in the WWN has faded (so I suppose I've played my own small role in the paper's failure), but I would always pick up a copy when teaching Ovid. My favorite recent WWN metamorphosis: a childless couple whose poodle turned into a boy.

In Memoriam: Weekly World News Dies At 28 (Washington Post)
Weekly World News (Official site)
Weekly World News (Wikipedia)

(Thanks, Stefan, for reminding me!)