“Barthes’s Hand”

At the New Yorker: four samples of Roland Barthes’s handwriting. (He was using a fountain pen.)

“[A]s Edwin Denby would / write”

After knowing Frank O’Hara’s poem “A Step Away from Them” for thirty years, I woke up this morning and realized (I think) the point of these lines:

                   Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write

The key word (I think) is write (not say). Edwin Denby (1903–1983) was a celebrated writer on dance and, in a much less public way, a terrific poet. (He was also a friend of FOH’s.) Denby’s poems are usually sonnets, what might be called American vernacular sonnets, made with a deliberate awkwardness in meter. A few opening lines:

I myself like the climate of New York. (“The Climate”)

The subway flatters like the dope habit. (“The Subway”)

The great New York bridges reflect its faces. (“A New York Face”)

In such company, the seven words from O’Hara’s poem sound like a line of Denby’s pentameter:

Neon in daylight is a great pleasure.

I’d scan the line like so: NEon in DAYlight is a GREAT PLEASure. That’s iambic pentameter, with a pyrrhic in the middle and trochees substituting for iambs at the beginning and end:

/ x  |  x /  | x x  |  x /  |  / x

Or, for emphasis: NEon in DAYlight IS a GREAT PLEASure. That’s a more recognizably iambic line:

/ x  |  x /  | x /  |  x /  |  / x

Part of what makes O’Hara’s homage to Denby itself a great pleasure is that these words appear in the guise of O’Hara lines, so (seemingly) casually enjambed: “a / great pleasure.” I’m reminded of how Ted Berrigan relineates William Shakespeare’s pentameter in “A Final Sonnet” and of how Robert Creeley relineates Emily Dickinson stanzas in his poem “Desultory Days.” Creeley relineates William Wordsworth too, somewhere — where?

It is 6:36 in east-central Illinois, a Friday (as Frank O’Hara never wrote). That’s enough.

Related posts
Minetta Tavern (Neon in daylight)
Saratoga Bar and Cafe (Neon in daylight)
September 10, September 11 (Frank O’Hara’s poem)

Minetta Tavern

[Photograph by Elaine Fine.]

                   Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write

Frank O'Hara (1926–1966), “A Step Away from Them”

Here’s a forty-six-year-old description of the Minetta Tavern, from Harold H. Hart’s Hart’s Guide to New York City (1964).

Related posts
Saratoga Bar and Cafe (Neon in daylight)
September 10, September 11 (Frank O’Hara’s poem)

How to improve writing (no. 29)

From a form for setting up automatic payments:

By signing below, you authorize Verizon Wireless to electronically debit your bank account each month for the total balance due on your account. The check you send will be used to setup Automatic Payment. You will be notified each month of the date and amount of the debit 10 days in advance of the payment. I understand and accept these terms. This agreement does not alter the terms of your existing Customer Agreement. I agree that Verizon Wireless is not liable for erroneous bill statements or incorrect debits to my account. To withdraw your authorization you must call Verizon Wireless. Check with your bank for any charges.

This passage is a mess, in ways both small and large.

Small: setup should be two words. And it’s the information on the check that will be used in setting up automatic payments.

Large: the sentences are a jumble, and there’s that bewildering shift from you to I (and to you to I to you again). I want to ask: Who’s responsible for this shift? Whoever wrote these sentences needs to cut this shift out. I’m tired of this shift. I really am.

An improved version:

By signing below, you authorize Verizon Wireless to electronically debit your bank account each month for the total balance due on your Verizon account. The information on your check will be used to set up automatic payments. You will be notified each month of the date and amount of the debit 10 days in advance of the payment. To end automatic payments, you must call Verizon Wireless. Check with your bank for any charges.

Verizon Wireless is not liable for erroneous bill statements or incorrect debits to your account.

Your signature below means that you understand and accept these terms. This agreement does not alter the terms of your existing Customer Agreement.

I’ve corrected the problems with setup and the missing information, added Verizon (to distinguish Verizon account from bank account) and a comma, and changed “withdraw your authorization” to “end automatic payments.” And I’ve dropped the capitals from Automatic Payment. (Note that bank account and payment are already fine without caps.) Customer Agreement probably needs its capitals for legal reasons.

More importantly, I’ve reorganized the jumble of sentences into three paragraphs: an explanation of how automatic payments work; a disclaimer; and “Yes, I get it,” followed by the relevant disclaimer.

What follows the above passage is one more sentence in need of repair: “Sign name in box below, as shown on the bill and date.”

If anyone from Verizon happens to be visiting: this work is licensed under a Creative Commons 3.0 License. No commercial use without my permission.

[This post is no. 29 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (via Pinboard)

Clare and the Reasons and Van Dyke Parks

Clare and the Reasons and Van Dyke Parks will soon begin a U.S. tour. Bob Hart of Frog Stand Records (Clare and the Reasons’ label) sent me this link to share: Van Dyke (piano), Clare, and the Reasons performing Harry Nilsson’s “He Needs Me” in Amsterdam earlier this summer. Enjoy.

Related posts
“[J]ust like a good flu shot” (Van Dyke Parks on touring)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (My review)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (VDP’s card)

Harvey Pekar on WKSU

Who Is Harvey Pekar?: thirty-six Pekar commentaries, from WKSU-FM, Kent, Ohio. A sample:

“Once Good Morning America came to Cleveland, and they invited me to be on their show until they saw my comics. Then they said, ‘These stories are so dark; they’re disturbing.’ What do they want? Hugh Downs?”

Other Harvey Pekar posts
Good advice from Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar (1939–2010)
Joyce Brabner, writing, recognition
Harvey Pekar on life and death
Harvey Pekar’s The Quitter
Review: Leave Me Alone!

Happy birthday, Sonny Rollins

Music clip of the day says “Happy birthday” to Sonny Rollins, who turns eighty today.

Related posts
Sonny Rollins and golf
Sonny Rollins in Illinois
Sonny Rollins is seventy-eight
Sonny Rollins on paying the rent

Telephone exchange names on screen: Side Street

[The Moving Finger looks up an address; and, having looked up an address, moves on.]

I sat down to watch Side Street (dir. Anthony Mann, 1949) expecting a so-so thriller and was surprised to discover a great film. The premise is deeply noir: an everyday Joe (literally: letter-carrier Joe Norson, played by Farley Granger) makes a mistake and finds himself in way over his head. The film has strong overtones of The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin, 1948): aerial views of New York City; a street-level montage of city life; a Tiresias-like narrator meditating on the lives of city dwellers and Joe’s plight; a blackmail racket; brief moments of brutal, intimate violence; a chase through lower Manhattan. There are fine performances by Granger (bruised and sweaty), Harry Bellaver (a cab-driving thug), Whit Bissell (a skinny bank-teller with a fluffy dog), Jean Hagen (an alcoholic nightclub singer), and Paul Kelly (the police-captain narrator, in a performance that is a model of economy and understatement). It was Cathy O’Donnell’s name that made me curious about this film: O’Donnell’s stagey performance as Wilma Cameron (the girl next door) in The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, 1946) has long seemed to me to be the one false note in that film. As Ellen Norson, Joe’s wife, O’Donnell has little to do here, and her New York accent fades in and out. Her finest moment — no spoilers here — comes when she has almost disappeared from the film. It’s entirely unexpected.

The real stars of Side Street are its New York streetscapes and the cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg. Ruttenberg is said to have disliked fellow cinematographer Gregg Toland's deep-focus effect, but many of the shots in Side Street are strongly evocative of Toland’s work in Citizen Kane: unusual angles, oddly-placed objects, strong contrasts of light and dark. This shot of Farley Granger is my favorite:



The film’s final chase is a marvel of camerawork, alternating between aerial views (tiny cars moving through impossibly narrow streets) and the interior of a cab. One moment you’re watching from on high; the next, you too have a gun at the back of your neck. Thank goodness the narrator steps in one last time to tell us what to make of it all.

Side Street is available on DVD with They Live by Night (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1949), also starring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell. (Good, but it’s no Side Street.)

[29 W. Eighth Street, the address of the Village Beauty Salon, is now home to Smoke Express and Cafe Underground. Upstairs is L’impasse, selling what one guide to the area calls “quality slutwear.” It’s a pity that the telephone listings in Side Street have only a “BUtterfield 4”: Joseph Ruttenberg was to work on BUtterfield 8 (dir. Daniel Mann, 1960) a decade later. “The Moving Finger” comes from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, as translated by Edward FitzGerald: “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, / Moves on.”]

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy

A tree (E.B. White’s) grows in Brooklyn

Recent visits from someone at the New York Times to my post on E.B. White’s willow tree have had me wondering about the tree’s fate. Today’s Times has the news: the tree, “thoroughly bald and rotted,” was cut down in 2009. But the arborist who supervised the work took two cuttings, and one is growing, still, in Brooklyn. Read more:

For Willow in E.B. White Book, One Chapter Ends (New York Times)

Labor Day

[“C. & N.W. R.R., Mrs. Dorothy Lucke, employed as a wiper at the roundhouse, Clinton, Iowa.” April 1943. Photograph by Jack Delano (1914–1997).]

C. & N.W. R.R.: Chicago & North Western Railway Company. The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Newsletter (Autumn 2003) tells us something of Dorothy Lucke’s life:

The Chicago & North Western hired Dorothy Lucke (1909–1986) and other women as “engine wipers” in Clinton, Iowa, during World War II. That was her only railroad employment. After her husband, Albert Lucke, died in 1948, she went back to work, first at a toy factory and then for 25 years at the Clinton Garment Company, according to her daughter, Diane Johnson, Clinton. Later, she married Isaac Leslie.

The Library of Congress has made this photograph available via Flickr.