Penguin Great Ideas, fifth series

An advance look at the covers for the twenty volumes in the final installment of Penguin’s Great ideas series. I especially like the Winston Churchill, George Eliot, and Epictetus covers.

Frank Kermode (1919–2010)

The literary critic Frank Kermode has died.

Men, like poets, rush “into the middest,” in medias res, where they are born; they also die in mediis rebus, and to make sense of their span they need fictive concords with origins and ends, such as give meaning to lives and to poems. The End they imagine will reflect their irreducibly intermediary preoccupations.

Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (1967).

[“Into the middest”: From Edmund Spenser’s 1589 letter to Sir Walter Ralegh regarding The Faerie Queene:

For an historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the things forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all.

In medias res: into the midst of things. In mediis rebus: in the midst of things.]

Consider Frank Ryan

I’m out of step: unlike many people commenting on this story, I see nothing funny in it. It’s only grotesquely sad. Note to self and others: the next time you’re tempted to do anything on a phone while driving, consider Frank Ryan.

[Image from drfrankryan (Twitter).]

Domestic comedy

“He reminds me of Floyd.”

“Floyd?”

“The barber.”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts
Floyd Lawson (Wikipedia)

J.D. Salinger’s toilet at eBay

Holy crap. J.D. Salinger’s “PERSONALLY OWNED & USED Toilet Commode” is at eBay. Asking price: a million dollars. This article explains.

The inkless pen

From Vat19 comes the anti-self of Sharpie’s Liquid Pencil, the Inkless Metal Pen:

The Inkless Metal Pen features a special metal alloy tip. As you write, tiny amounts of this metal are deposited onto the page. The silvery markings may resemble pencil, but they are permanent and completely smudge-proof.

Because it doesn’t require sharpening or refills, the Inkless Metal Pen is an amazing gift for artists or doodlers. Its “ink” is solid, so it will never leak, and it can be used upside down or under extreme conditions.

Amazing indeed. But for me it’s difficult to imagine a plain metal cylinder as a writing (or drawing) instrument of choice. I like ink, lead, “supplies.”

Michael P. Smith, photographer

New Orleans culture and music in black-and-white photographs:

In the Spirit: The Photography of Michael P. Smith

(Thanks, Linda!)

The Savory Collection

Lost and found: audio engineer and jazz fan William Savory’s recordings of late-1930s radio broadcasts have a new home at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. The New York Times has a story, a video feature, and seven audio samples. The highlight among them: Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Fats Waller putting together a blues. Says the announcer, “This oughta be good.” It’s great.

Of time and The Honeymooners

I looked up at the clock the other night and heard the voice of Alice Kramden in my head: “Ralph, it’s a quarter to eight. You’re gonna be late for bowling.” (Thank you, involuntary memory.) As you may already have suspected, the big hand was (roughly) on the 9. Had I been looking at a digital clock, I would not have heard Alice’s voice. For the time would have been 7:45, or :44 or :46.

In the early 1980s I heard Susan Sontag give a talk that touched briefly on analog and digital timekeeping. The difference between them, Sontag said, was the difference between cyclical and linear conceptions of time. I was quite excited, as I had already come to the same conclusion in my grad-student head. Nowadays, I don’t find the cyclical/linear fascinating or even persuasive: a digital flip-board moves through time on wheels, and even an LCD or LED display cycles through a routine. The real differences between analog and digital timekeeping lie elsewhere. An analog clock admits of interpretation: it lets us look at time from different directions. If you’re waiting for someone who was due to arrive at 7:00 and is now forty-five minutes late, it’s 7:45. They’re forty-five minutes late. But if that someone is supposed to arrive at 8:00, it’s a quarter to. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes! Analog also encourages genial imprecision: a few minutes after eight, almost nine. Who’s counting? I like too the quaint grade-school-like fractions of analog time — halves and quarters. And metaphorical faces and hands add a human element unmatched by a digital “display.”

I have never owned a digital watch, and the clocks in our house are old-school. But I do prefer using a digital alarm clock. I like to wake up exactly, so as not to be late for bowling.

[Alice warns Ralph about the time in the “Pardon My Glove” episode of The Honeymooners, March 17, 1956. About that flip-board: in the 1980s, flip-board clocks were mechanical, with placards moving on wheels. Now flip-board clocks are virtual, showing up in screensavers and phone apps.]

Herman Leonard (1923–2010)

Herman Leonard, one of the great photographers of jazz, has died. From a recent exhibition: twenty-five photographs.