Words of the day: pith, gist

I started wondering about the word pith yesterday, which I associate with essences and concision. I’m suprised to discover that the word comes to us from plant life:

I think I should have known that. I think I should have also known that a pith helmet is made of the stuff.

Pith made me wonder about gist: does it too have a literal referent in nature? Maybe in geology? Nope:

I remember hearing the word gist often in kidhood. “I’ll give you the gist of it,” my dad would say. (He still does.) Gist and pith go together in my mind because of a sentence in Ezra Pound’s ABC of Reading (1934):

A Japanese student in America, on being asked the difference between prose and poetry, said: Poetry consists of gists and piths.

This post too.

[Definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary.]

Elayne Clift on academic entitlement

Adjunct faculty member Elayne Clift ponders academic entitlement after a semester of “appallingly poor papers and presentations”:

As the semester continued, I slipped further into despair. . . . [W]hy couldn't they write in sentences? Why were they devoid of originality, analytical ability, intellectual curiosity? Why were they accosting me with hostile e-mails when I pointed out unsubstantiated generalizations, hyperbolic assumptions, ungrounded polemics, sourcing omissions, and possible plagiarism?

From Students, a Misplaced Sense of Entitlement (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Here’s the kicker: she was teaching a graduate class.

A related post
AE (academic entitlement)

“Probability” (xkcd)

Today’s xkcd: “Probability.”

Snooki at Rutgers

Rutgers University has paid $32,000 for Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi to speak on campus. Her advice to students: “Study hard, but party harder.”

From the university’s website:

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a leading national public research university and the state’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. Rutgers is dedicated to teaching that meets the highest standards of excellence; to conducting research that breaks new ground; and to turning knowledge into solutions for local, national, and global communities.

As it was at our founding in 1766, the heart of our mission is preparing students to become productive members of society and good citizens of the world.

Talk that talk, Rutgers.

Jersey Shore reality TV star lands $32,000 fee to speak at Rutgers (NewJerseyNewsRoom)

[$32,000: more than most new college grads will earn this year.]

The Pale King and commerce

A “retired indie bookseller” buys David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King from Amazon:

I read the New York Times article this morning about bookseller fury at Amazon being given the book before brick-and-mortar retailers, and I felt the characteristic frustration any retired indie bookseller would feel. Then mere hours later I surrendered to temptation and bought the book online.

He concludes, “as a reader and a consumer I couldn’t help myself.” I think he needs to reread Infinite Jest.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco an independent bookstore waits to sell the book:

So when word began spreading Wednesday morning that the novel was available on Amazon and the Barnes & Noble website two weeks before its “official” publication date, independent booksellers — yours truly among them — were left to wonder why the book was not yet on our shelves. (As if Amazon, with its predatory pricing scheme, needs the boost it surely got by having an in-demand book available before most retailers.)

So much for fair competition.

I’m waiting on a review copy. But I tried to buy a copy of The Pale King at a Barnes & Noble yesterday: the book wasn’t even there. The same B & N couldn’t sell me a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura just one day before the official date of publication.

The publication date for The Pale King — whatever that now means — is April 15.

Digital natives and typewriters

The New York Times reports on a “growing trend” among digital natives:

They’re fetishizing old Underwoods, Smith Coronas and Remingtons, recognizing them as well designed, functional and beautiful machines, swapping them and showing them off to friends. At a series of events called “type-ins,” they’ve been gathering in bars and bookstores to flaunt a sort of post-digital style and gravitas, tapping out letters to send via snail mail and competing to see who can bang away the fastest.

Gravitas? Whatever. I think it’s terrific that digital natives are recognizing the beauty of manual-typewriter design. But as someone who remembers Eaton’s Corrasable Bond, the tedium of centering titles, the far greater tedium of retyping whole pages after dropping a line in transcription, and the sheer racket, I feel no nostalgia for the typewriter as an object of use.

Related viewing
In Praise of the Typewriter (Life, via Boing Boing)

[No, you can’t have my Olympia.]

The earliest writing in Europe

“Archaeologists have found a clay tablet bearing the earliest known writing in Europe, a 3,350-year-old specimen, which makes it at least 150 years older than other known tablets from the region”: Ancient tablet bears writing, to scientists’ surprise (Los Angeles Times).

Rollins, Salinger, Taylor

Sonny Rollins, a reluctant on-camera interviewee: “I don’t want to do any more interviews. I want to be the J.D. Salinger of jazz.” And: “What am I, Robert Taylor?”

[Photograph of Robert Taylor by Rex Hardy Jr., 1936. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Related viewing
Jazz Video Guy speaks with Sonny Rollins (JazzTimes)

Headlines quiz

Can you tell which ones are real news?

“International Mystery Man Arrested, Has Past Revealed”

“Meat Industry Introduces New Easy-Tear Perforated Beef”

“New Facebook Feature Forces Users To Be Like Everyone Else”

“Octomom Unites With PETA For Spay-Neuter Campaign”

“Pizza Delivery Guy Fights Gun-Wielding Thugs, Still Makes Delivery”

Answers in the comments.

Van Dyke Parks meets Lillian Gish

Van Dyke Parks was a child actor. Here, from an interview, is a story about those days:

One time, I was in a show with Teresa Wright, I forget the name of the show, but I do remember that there was a bit actress, a small role — and my mother cautioned me (my mother went into New York with me — my parents were reluctant to see me in this business, but it helped me pay my tuition at the Boychoir school) — there was one actress and her name was Lillian Gish. And my mother said, she cautioned me, “Van Dyke, that woman over there was once *the* biggest star in the world. She was D.W. Griffith’s Sweetheart Actress. She’s been to the top, so you treat her with great respect.”

So, I’m sitting there, and neither Lillian Gish nor I were the center of attention — we were just sitting there waiting for the important people to do what they did. So I turned to her and said, “Miss Gish?” and she said, “Yes?” And I said, “My mother said you were a great actress in the silents.” And she said, “Oh, that’s true. Yes, indeed it was true.” So I asked, “Weren’t you scared when you heard that the talkies were coming?“ And Lillian Gish, without missing a beat, said, “No, in fact — we didn't call them ‘the talkies’ when we heard that film was going to have sound. We just knew it would have sound, and we all somehow imagined that the sound would be entirely music.”

Now, that’s a phenomenon — how people would imagine that sound would come to film.

I thought of this story after watching The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955). The film is available, beautifully restored and with many extras, from the Criterion Collection.

[Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper, protector of children, in The Night of the Hunter.]

A related post
Van Dyke Parks in The Honeymooners