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Whoso would be a G-Man must be a pencil user, as Emerson might have put it.¹ The pencil is the FBI's writing instrument of choice in The House on 92nd Street (1945, directed by Henry Hathaway), a movie whose interiors seem to have been furnished by a pencil fanatic. Pencils are the tools of counter-espionage in this movie: we see glassfuls in various work areas, and again and again we see the Dixon Ticonderoga, always the Dixon Ticonderoga, in government hands. (The ferrule, with its three dark bands, is the giveaway.)
I have no idea whether The House on 92nd Street is accurate in its depiction of pencil-wielding FBI agents. But the depiction is plausible. Unlike a fountain pen, a pencil is ready to write without priming. It has no cap to unscrew and keep track of. It cannot skip or clog or leak. It remains available for sporadic notetaking without drying out. Its lifespan is always visible: one will never be surprised by unexpectedly running out of ink (or, as with a mechanical pencil, out of lead). If a point breaks, it can be resharpened, or another pencil can substitute. The plainness of the wooden pencil — just doing my unglamorous job, ma'am — seems to fit the G-Man ethos.²
"Well, I guess that's all": a G-Man posing as a Civil Defense worker pockets his Ticonderoga.
Distinguished physicist Dr. Arthur C. Appleton (John McKee) uses a Dixon Ticonderoga to do some calculations concerning Process 97.
Inspector George A. Briggs (Lloyd Nolan) is Inspector Dixon Ticonderoga himself. He never uses his desk sets (yes, he has more than one, as we'll see), just pencils. Note the ferrule of the pencil in his hand.
Dixon Ticonderoga noir! Five more pencils wait on the notepad. Great phone and film projector too.
Two desk sets, two rocking blotters (!), and two pencils, one Dixon Ticonderoga and one anonymous. Inspector Briggs holds a page with some of the details of Process 97, which seems to be the secret process for making a snowman.
¹ From "Self-Reliance": "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."
² The ballpoint pen wasn't for sale in the United States until October 1945, after the movie's release.
Related posts
The dowdy world on film
Film noir pencils
Musical-comedy pencils
Pocket notebook sighting: The House on 92nd Street
Q and A
The real Mr. T (A Dixon Ticonderoga spokespencil)
Young woman with a pencil
And at Pencil Revolution, a photo-essay on some old Castell 9000s: Serious pencils indeed.
[Photographs by Elaine Fine.]
Last night I was fortunate to hear an extraordinary musical performance by Kahil El'Zabar's Ritual Trio with Hamiet Bluiett. If these names aren't familiar, there's a reason why: they belong to musicians associated with Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and St. Louis' Black Artists' Group, musicians dedicated to exploring new directions in music. At a time when what passes for contemporary jazz has grown ever more bland and feeble, a performance such as last night's is one to cherish.
El'Zabar is a percussionist, but "percussionist" doesn't begin to account for the range of sounds he brings to the bandstand. When he wasn't at his drum kit, he played an African drum, a wooden flute, or a mbira, stomping time with bells and shells strapped to one leg. He sang and preached a bit too, and provided wordless vocal accompaniment to the other musicians.
The other musicians: Ari Brown's piano recalled McCoy Tyner at times, and his tenor saxophone sound was rich and handsome, putting me in mind of Clifford Jordan. Hamiet Bluiett's sound on baritone saxophone is a wonder, the only baritone sound to rival that of Harry Carney of the Duke Ellington orchestra. Bluiett is fleet and full at the depths of his instrument's range, and he reaches into a piercing high register that Adolphe Sax could never have imagined on the baritone. Brown and Bluiett play both "outside" (atonally) and "inside" (tonally), moving with ease from one kind of playing to the other. And the bassist — I now regret not taking notes last night, as I cannot remember the name of the young bassist with the group. What I best remember of his playing though is the way he locked into deep grooves with El'Zabar, who stood just inches away playing mbira and bells. [February 2017: I now know the bassist's name: Sharay Reed.]
The tunes: "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," played freely and with a walking bass line. "Oof," "Big M," and "Malachi," three tributes to the late Malachi Favors, bassist for the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Ritual Trio, and El'Zabar's teacher. Ari Brown's "Where Do You Want to Go?," a particularly strong tenor solo. And for an encore, Miles Davis' "All Blues," with horns, bass, mbira, and bells.
The interplay among these musicians was profound — constant eye contact, constant encouragement, even an occasional request for help. Brown, laughing, to Bluiett: "Help me out," and the two horns began a dialogue. These four men formed a musical community, one that grew to include their listeners. I don't think I've ever seen as many members of an audience standing and waiting to thank musicians as I did last night.
The remarkable thing: this performance was free, offered in the lobby of the University of Illinois' Krannert Center.
[Note to Elaine: I'm so glad you enjoyed this concert.]
Kahil El'Zabar (Official website)
Related posts
Some have gone and some remain
World Saxophone Quartet on YouTube
All Orange Crate Art jazz posts (via Pinboard)
"I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of Proust by Samuel Beckett. If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one's education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn't imagine it."Augusten Burroughs, quoted in a New York Times article on reading habits and dating.
I received a mass-mailing yesterday asking me to write a check to support the "'Arts.'"
Do people who really care about music, painting, poetry, theater refer to the "'Arts'"?
(Why single and double quotation marks in these sentences? To make clear that quotation marks surround Arts in the original.)
Related reading
The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks
From The Daily Princetonian:
Robert Fagles, the Arthur Marks '19 professor of comparative literature emeritus best known for his translations of Greek epic poems and other widely read classic texts, died in Princeton on Wednesday, March 26, after battling prostate cancer. He was 74.Robert Fagles, Translator of the Classics, Dies at 74 (New York Times)
Fagles' translations of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey were both popularly and critically acclaimed. In 1991, the Academy of American Poets awarded him the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for his translation of The Iliad, and his work on The Odyssey won him an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. . . .
"No translator of major writers in the Western literary tradition has ever met with the kind of success that Robert Fagles has enjoyed," Robert Hollander '55, professor of European literature and French and Italian emeritus, said in a statement issued by the University. "His 'trilogy,' both epics of Homer and that of Virgil, has brought these texts to life for over a million readers."
New York social worker Julio Diaz turned a mugging into an opportunity for what the ancient Greeks called ξενία (xenía), hospitality:
As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm."Read the rest: A Victim Treats His Mugger Right (NPR, via Boing Boing)
The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'"
Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me . . . hey, you're more than welcome."
In yesterday's mail:
I even have a Latin seal (not readable in this scan):
INTELLECTUS SCIENTIA SAPIENTIA[Intellectus: understanding; scientia: knowledge; sapientia: wisdom.]
From the New York Times:
A headline on Saturday with an article about the increasing number of women who serve as chief investment officers for university endowments and foundations used a "glass ceiling" metaphor in a way that conveyed the opposite point made by the article. The headline should have said something to the effect that "The Glass Ceiling Is Lifting," not "The Glass Ceiling Is Edging Lower."There'd still be a problem though: if the ceiling is lifting, breaking through it becomes even more difficult. The only way to remove the glass ceiling is with a metaphorical glass cutter or hammer.
