Clouzot, Le Corbeau

Elaine and I are on a spree, watching films by Henri-Georges Clouzot, a director neither of us knew of a week or so ago. The 1943 film Le Courbeau is the story of a little French town whose residents begin receiving anonymous accusatory letters signed by The Raven. Who can trust whom: that is the question. Above, three residents, Denise Saillens (Ginette Leclerc), Rémy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), and Laura Vorzet (Micheline Francey), eye a fourth with suspicion.

Made during the occupation, for the German-controlled Continental-Films, Le Corbeau was criticized by the Vichy regime, the Resistance, and the Roman Catholic Church. After liberation, the film was banned in France, and Clouzot was banned from the French film industry. Both bans were lifted in 1947.

Le Courbeau is out of print at the Criterion Collection.

Bob Slate, Stationer

I just learned that Bob Slate, Stationer, a Cambridge, Massachusetts institution, closed this spring, after seventy-eight years in business. In 1984, when Elaine and I decided to marry, Bob Slate was the obvious choice for our wedding invitations. On recent summer visits to Cambridge, my family would indulge me while I went slightly bonkers buying stuff at Bob Slate. Elaine would go slightly bonkers buying stuff too. Bob Slate’s three stores were a stationery dream: notebooks, paper, pens, pencils, and supplies galore.¹

The reasons for the stores’ demise are the obvious ones: aging owners (sons Justin and Mallory Slate), declining sales, and no buyer in sight. Mallory Slate’s observation is telling: “People spend an hour looking at every fountain pen we have, then they go home and buy it on the Internet.” The moral of the story: paying more at a local store is often in the customer’s long-term interest. If you want, say, a bookstore to browse in, buy your books from that store. That might not be enough to keep the store going, but at least you won’t be helping to bring about its demise.

¹ Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items.

Happy Father’s Day

[Photograph by Louise Leddy, November 28, 1957.]

That’s my dad, James Leddy, and me, in Union City, New Jersey, in front of my grandparents’ apartment building (i.e., the building where my grandparents rented an apartment and where my dad grew up). The tree is now gone, but Google Maps shows the little brick walls still guarding the steps to the entrance, same as they ever were.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. And Happy Father’s Day to all.

“ProcrastiNation”

From January 2011, a good episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge: “ProcrastiNation.”

A related post
Advice for procrastinators

Chris Matthews explains it all for you

During an MSNBC Hardball discussion of the Anthony Weiner scandal:

“Sex is generally between two people in private, you know, in some room somewhere.”

No Sleep

Adam Mansbach’s Go the Fuck to Sleep (pictures by Ricardo Cortés) is a joke in the form of a book, a dull and repetitive and vulgar joke, and a dull and repetitive and vulgar book, one that commodifies snark and makes a pretense of transgression. Note the coy cover, dodging the forbidden word, the better to display the book in stores. How edgy.

As a parent who was sometimes up at all hours, and who read and made up many stories to induce sleep (sometimes conking out while so doing), I never felt the impulse to say or think anything even close to what this book’s title says. (Honest.) My interest, 2:00 p.m. or 2:00 a.m., was in caring for someone who needed all the care I could offer. That’s what being a parent often calls for: selflessness. It comes with the territory.

The title Go the Fuck to Sleep might prompt the perennial child-question: “Why?” We never hear a child ask that question in the book, but the answer is clear: because mommy and daddy want to do what they want to do (“We’re finally watching our movie”). To which one might say, in the spirit of the book: please grow the fuck up.

“[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