Word of the day: artificer

I woke up this morning from a dream of teaching the first three episodes of James Joyce’s Ulysses to a room of utterly unprepared English majors. Things were pretty bad. At one point I had to run from the room to bring back a student who herself had fled when a peer mocked her poor grammar. Yes, pretty bad: so bad that I never got to mention the name of Stephen Dedalus. But that was okay: I too was unprepared.

I want to say that I wouldn’t dream of attempting to teach three episodes of Ulysses in one class meeting, but of course I just did.

And now the word-of-the-day from Anu Garg’s A.Word.A.Day is artificer. That word means James Joyce. Stephen Dedalus’s friends are calling to him, spinning Greek variations on his name:

— Stephanos Dedalos! Bous Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephaneforos! —

Their banter was not new to him and now it flattered his mild proud sovereignty. Now, as never before, his strange name seemed to him a prophecy. So timeless seemed the grey warm air, so fluid and impersonal his own mood, that all ages were as one to him. A moment before the ghost of the ancient kingdom of the Danes had looked forth through the vesture of the hazewrapped city. Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged form flying above the waves and slowly climbing the air.

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

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Bandbox (More words and works of literature)

Easier living with Mary and Russel Wright

In the New York Times this morning, Alexandra Lange writes about Mary and Russel Wright’s 1950 book Guide to Easier Living. Elaine and I borrowed this book from the library several years ago and in an instant understood that the people who designed our house in the late fifties must have had the Wrights’ ideas in mind. Said the Wrights,

We look forward to the day when living room, dining room, and kitchen will break through the walls that arbitrarily divide them, and become simply friendly areas of one large, gracious, and beautiful room.

Well, that’s our downstairs, gracious as ever.

The twenty-first-century name for this layout appears to be “open concept kitchen/dining/living area.” But our kitchen/dining/living area is an open secret, as our house is built into a hill and looks like a one-story house from the street.

[Note: Comments at the Times seem to be mistaking what the Wrights described for the so-called great room. The great room, with its raised ceiling, is a much later development.]

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Old house, new concept

From a back-pocket beacon to a cog

Bad metaphors of the day, from Michael Robinet, Vice President of IHS Automotive, as quoted in the New York Times:

“This is not some sort of flash-in-the-pan investment strategy. . . . During the bankruptcy process, G.M. China was the beacon in the night that G.M. always had in its back pocket, and China will be a vital cog in G.M.’s machine going forward.”

From a back-pocket beacon (no flash in the pan!) to a cog: here is why metaphor-making should be left to trained professionals.

Thanks to Stefan Hagemann for alerting me to these metaphors.

Related reading
All metaphor posts (Pinboard)

Posting the news

[“Men and a woman reading headlines posted in street-corner window of Brockton Enterprise newspaper office on Christmas Eve, Brockton, Mass.” December 24, 1940. Photograph by Jack Delano (1914–1997).]

A beautiful photograph from the Library of Congress. This window seems to anticipate the layout of Arts & Letters Daily. The Enterprise, founded c. 1881, is still publishing.

Don’t miss the photograph in its original size, with Santa’s schedule and a matter-of-fact announcement of another Brockton earthquake. I like the stenciling on the street lamp and “Society PRINTING” in the upstairs printshop.

Other Jack Delano photographs
Packing oranges
Sylvia Sweets Tea Room (Also in Brockton)

iPan

A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price. Starting at $4.99.

A large, high-resolution display. An incredibly responsive surface. All in a design that’s thin and light enough to take anywhere. iPan isn’t just the best device of its kind. It’s a whole new kind of device.

Tater Tots sold separately.

“California Gurls,” “California Girls”

My daughter Rachel passes on the news that Brian Wilson has commented on Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” (featuring Snoop Dogg):

“I love her vocal,” the Beach Boys’ creative mastermind said Monday through his manager. “She sounds very clear and energetic.”

Wilson also liked the version that includes a guest rap by Snoop Dogg that makes a nod to the original.

“The melody is infectious, and I'm flattered that Snoop Dogg used our lyric on the tag,” Wilson noted. “I wish them well with this cut.”

A generous if slightly odd response. (Your song has sold millions: good luck with it.) Never to be outdone by “cousin Brian,” “California Girls” co-composer Mike Love has also now commented, but you’ll have to read the article (via the link above) for his response.

If you haven’t listened to the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” in a while, listen. Listen. Listen. Here are ten things to listen for:

1. The instrumental intro. (Were Nelson Riddle’s intros for Sinatra songs an influence here?)

2. The skating-rink organ.

3. The cowboy-movie bass line.

4. Mike Love’s “hip” and “dig.” Very hip. Dig?

5. Mike Love’s pointing upward when singing about “the northern girls.” North is up! (Oops: you’ll have to watch for this one.)

6. The chord changes in the chorus: B C#min7 A Bm7 G Am7 B.

7. The vocal harmonies in the chorus.

8. The high background harmonies in the second verse.

9. “I seen all kind of girls.”

10. The instrumental break before the final chorus (mimicking the bass line), and the “oh-bee-doo” as the break ends.

11. The four vocal lines of the outro: surpassed perhaps only by the round that ends “God Only Knows.”

[“Katy Perry’s ‘California Gurls’ (featuring Snoop Dogg)”: names and words I never thought I’d type. “Listen. Listen. Listen”: from “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” (Brian Wilson–Tony Asher).]

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I am a California girl.

(Thanks, Rachel!)

Richard Wollheim on looking at art

Philosopher Richard Wollheim knew — learned — how to pay attention:

I evolved a way of looking at paintings which was massively time-consuming and deeply rewarding. For I came to recognize that it often took the first hour or so in front of a painting for stray associations or motivated misperceptions to settle down, and it was only then, with the same amount of time or more spent looking at it, that the picture could be relied upon to disclose itself as it was.

I noticed that I became an object of suspicion to passers-by, and so did the picture that I was looking at.

From Painting as an Art: The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts (1987), a series talks given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1984.

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Joe Brainard on looking at art

Infinite Jest, sadness

Avril Incandenza, “the Moms,” is explaining to her son Mario that “‘There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps’”:

“I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all. This interpretation is ‘existential,’ Mario, which means vague and slightly flaky. But I think it may hold true in certain cases. My own father told stories of his own father, whose potato farm had been in St. Pamphile and very much larger than my father’s. My grandfather had had a marvelous harvest one season, and he wanted to invest money. This was in the early 1920s, when there was a great deal of money to be made on upstart companies and new American products. He apparently narrowed the field to two choices — Delaware-brand Punch, or an obscure sweet fizzy coffee substitute that sold out of pharmacy soda fountains and was rumored to contain smidgeons of cocaine, which was the subject of much controversy in those days. My father’s father chose Delaware Punch, which apparently tasted like rancid cranberry juice, and the manufacturer of which folded. And then his next two potato harvests were decimated by blight, resulting in the forced sale of his farm. Coca-Cola is now Coca-Cola. My father said his father showed very little emotion or anger or sadness about this, though. That he somehow couldn’t. My father said his father was frozen, and could feel emotion only when he was drunk. He would apparently get drunk four times a year, weep about his life, throw my father through the living room window, and disappear for several days, roaming the countryside of L’Islet Province, drunk and enraged.”

She’s not been looking at Mario this whole time, though Mario’s been looking at her.

She smiled. “My father, of course, could himself tell this story only when he was drunk. He never threw anyone through any windows. He simply sat in his chair, drinking ale and reading the newspaper, for hours, until he fell out of the chair. And then one day he fell out of the chair and didn’t get up again, and that was how your maternal grandfather passed away.”

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996).

Snopes has the scoop on Coke and coke. As for Delaware Punch, it’s a (not the) real thing, now owned by Coca-Cola, and still sold in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Infinite Jest is in truth infinitely sad.

Other Infinite Jest posts
Attention : Description : Loveliness : “Night-noises” : Romance : Telephony : Television

“R. Crumb’s Depression Graph”

Tracking time, place, age, appearance, activites, and mood: “R. Crumb’s Depression Graph.” It reminds me of Charles Joseph Minard’s map of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian campaign.

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R. Crumb’s supplies

Penguin Books postcard

Penguin is celebrating seventy-five years of publishing. My daughter Rachel (whose only relation to Penguin is as a reader) sent us this nifty postcard, one of several marking the occasion. Thanks, Rachel!

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THE MAIN TITLE (Penguin cover-layout by Jan Tschichold)