“[T]he creature cocoa”

Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and a moment of hospitality:

How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?

He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps’s soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity prescribed.

What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his guest?

Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly), he substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion (Molly).

Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of hospitality?

His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps’s massproduct, the creature cocoa.

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

Most of the events of Ulysses take place on June 16, 1904, Bloomsday. The above passage is from the novel’s catechetical “Ithaca” episode, set in the wee small hours of June 17. Massproduct: yes, there’s something sacramental in this scene.

Why “the creature cocoa”? The Oxford English Dictionary explains: “[After 1 Timothy 4:4 (‘every creature of God is good’).] Freq. in good creature. A material comfort; something which promotes well-being, esp. food. Obs.”

[Advertisement from The Popular Science Review (1871).]

Other Bloomsday posts
2007 (The first page)
2008 (“Love’s Old Sweet Song”)
2009 (Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses)
2010 (Leopold Bloom, “water lover”)

Telephone exchange names on screen

[Philip Raven (Alan Ladd), new in town, looks up Willard Gates (Laird Cregar).]

This Gun for Hire (dir. Frank Tuttle, 1942) stars Veronica Lake, Robert Preston, Laird Cregar, and Alan Ladd. Unlike, say, The Big Sleep (dir. Howard Hawks, 1946), this film is governed by centripetal not centrifugal force. Cregar (as a Los Angeles chemicals executive and nightclub owner) and Ladd (as a hitman) are stellar. Lake (as singer-magician Ellen Graham) and Preston (as Detective Michael Crane) seem an unlikely couple. But it’s a movie.

[Gates: “Your act is very charming.” Graham: “Thank you.”]

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 : Murder, My Sweet : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Side Street

The Banned List

From John Rentoul of The Independent, a list of one hundred words and phrases to avoid: The Banned List.

This list should make any writer look at her or his work more critically. I’m guilty of key as an adjective (which I think is fine) and Who knew? (which I’ll acknowledge as tiresome).

Related posts
That said,
Words I can live without

Domestic comedy

While watching the New Deal documentary The River:

“Why is he saying everything twice? Why is he saying everything twice?”

Related reading
All “domestic comedy” posts

Quoted in Fortune

It feels strange to be turning up in the pages (or on a page) of the May 23 issue of Fortune. The quotation is from this post. Thanks to Sean at Blackwing Pages (who’s also quoted) and Stephen at pencil talk for letting me know about the Fortune article.

Related reading
All Blackwing posts

Ethel’s Beauty Salon

Everything about this card (from the ephemera section of a used-book store) is to like: the aromatic exchange name, the vague and sophisticated evenings, the suggestions of art and science (offsetting the dowdy Ethel, at least in my mind), the helpful over, the union print-shop label beneath the calendar. The hairstyle would have been familiar to any early-1940s American: it suggests, no question about it, the actress Veronica Lake, whose celebrated over-the-eye style was even the subject of a Life magazine article (November 24, 1941), “Veronica Lake’s Hair: It Is a Cinematic Property of World Influence”:

Veronica Lake’s hair has been acclaimed by men, copied by girls, cursed by their mothers and viewed with alarm by moralists. It is called the “strip-tease style,” “the sheep-dog style” and the “bad-girl style” (though few except nice girls wear it), but to most moviegoers it is simply “the Veronica Lake style.”

It still is. But the Montrose address today seems to be home to a travel agency, Quizhpi Express.

[A movie recommendation: Veronica Lake shines as The Girl in Sullivan’s Travels (dir. Preston Sturges, 1941).]

In defense of college radio

Vanderbilt University has sold off its radio station, and former DJ Freddie O’Connell objects:

The sale added Vanderbilt to a growing list of colleges and universities, including Rice University in Houston and the University of San Francisco, where college radio licenses are being sold off, backed by the assertion that today’s well-wired students no longer tune in to the medium. But that misses the point: college radio is not only a vital part of the communities it serves, but it is even more essential in the Internet era.

Preserving College Radio (New York Times)

O’Connell’s characterization of WRVU as “one of the only places people could hear traditional bluegrass, world music and electronica, to name just a few genres,” made me remember a once-great radio station of my acquaintance.

Leonard Stern (1922–2011)

From an appropriately clever New York Times obituary:

Leonard B. Stern, an Emmy-winning writer, producer and director for television whose frantic search for an adjective one day led him and a colleague to create Mad Libs, the game that asks players to fill in blanks with designated parts of speech to yield comically ________[adj.] stories, died on Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 88.

Among his other accomplishments, Leonard Stern co-wrote seventeen of the thirty-nine “classic” episodes of The Honeymooners.

On Thursday, Ben had Elaine and me fill in a Mad Lib he had made for his co-workers. He recorded our answers on a napkin during lunch. We didn’t know then that Mr. Stern had died. His Mad Libs lives on.

[“Classic”: the 1955–1956 episodes shown for years on WPIX in New York City.]

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915–2011)

From the New York Times:

Patrick Leigh Fermor, the British writer whose erudite, high-spirited accounts of his adventures in prewar Europe, southern Greece and the Caribbean are widely regarded as classics of travel literature, died on Friday at his home in Worcestershire, England. He was 96.

I read his work for the first time earlier this month.

A related post
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s eye

The Electric Soup Kitchen

[Life, March 11, 1940.]

What, you may ask, is the Heinz Electric Soup Kitchen? It is (or was) a gimmick to sell canned soup. From the text accompanying this little panel:

“Eating out” is like “eating in” when your favorite counter serves your favorite soup — by Heinz! For every bowlful of hale and hearty Heinz Home-style Soup is brimming with irresistible, homemade flavor Heinz chefs capture by careful, small-batch cooking. Soda fountains, luncheonettes and tea rooms from coast to coast are equipped with the Heinz Electric Soup Kitchen that facilitates prompt, speedy service of these delectable dishes. An electric soup cup heats them in two minutes!

The premise of this ad — that “eating out” should taste like “eating in” — bugs me in its appeal to the preference for what’s already familiar. If I were the man in the hat, I’d feel a bit demeaned when a customer ordered Heinz soup and not one of my delicious hamburg or liverwurst sandwiches. Sure, it’s not like I make the meat myself, but it takes a heck of a lot more skill to make a good sandwich plate than to heat up a can o’ soup. But if your idea of “eating out” is the same can you could’ve had at home, I’ll get it for you right now. Heinz soup —it’s grand! Would you like crackers with that?

[The Electric Soup Kitchen would have made a great name for a fleetingly famous rock group. I think of them as having their first (and last) LP, Spoonful (1970), on Buddah or Liberty. Yes, it was spelled Buddah.]