Canned goods

[“Well-stocked preserve closet has many jellies — apple currant, grape, mint: many vegetables — carrots, asparagus, cauliflower, beets, fruit & vegetable juices.” Life, November 24, 1941. Click for a larger view.]

Austerlitz on time

A clock has always struck me as something ridiculous, a thoroughly mendacious object, perhaps because I have always resisted the power of time out of some internal compulsion which I myself have never understood, keeping myself apart from so-called current events in the hope, as I now think, said Austerlitz, that time will not pass away, has not passed away, that I can turn back and go behind it, and there I shall find everything as it once was, or more precisely I shall find that all moments of time have co-existed simultaneously, in which case none of what history tells us would be true, past events have not yet occurred but are waiting to do so at the moment when we think of them, although that, of course, opens up the bleak prospect of everlasting misery and never-ending anguish.

W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz. Trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Modern Library, 2001).

I picked up this novel because it is has been described as Proustian — and it is, though a scene in which a walk on uneven pavement brings back the past is, really, too overt an homage. (The precedent for that walk may be found in the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, Time Regained.) The sentence I’ve typed here is deeply Proustian, not only in its preoccupation with time and memory but also in the grim twist at its end. “If all time is eternally present / All time is unredeemable,” as someone once said.

[It was T.S. Eliot, in “Burnt Norton,” the first of the Four Quartets.]

Recently updated

Heartlessness on parade: Steven J. Baum’s law firm is shutting down. (Thanks, Gunther.)

Woody Allen’s staplers

[Woody Allen’s writing table.]

The New Yorker has the brief clip from PBS’s Woody Allen: A Documentary in which Allen talks about his typewriter (an Olympia portable) and his cut-and-paste method: “I have my scissors here, and I have a lot of these things, these little stapling machines.” That red Swingline Tot 50 is old: the Tot hasn’t looked like that for years. (Trust me: I have an old one on my desk.)

Part Two airs tonight.

“Still in the familiar yellow!”

[Life, August 31, 1959. Click for a larger view.]

These good-looking people are very happy about their pencils.

Gunther at Lexikaliker has a recent post with a close look at a 1953 Pedigree ad.

A related post
Pedigree pencil

Pedigree pencil

Old?

I don’t think so. Not really. It might be from the 1970s or 1980s.

Well, that’s at least twenty-two years ago.

I guess you’re right.

[Silent contemplation of time’s passing.]

So what do you know about this pencil?

Not much. I know that Empire used to be a big name in pencils, and that the company was based in Shelbyville, Tennessee. I remember that there used to be all sorts of stationery supplies bearing the Pedigree name.

I remember that too. This 1972 ad shows a bunch of them.

I haven’t seen that stuff in years.

[Silent contemplation of time’s passing.]

So you must have a bunch of these pencils?

I must have had a bunch of them. But this one is the only one I’ve got — just mixed in with some other loose pencils in a drawer. I was never a big fan of the Pedigree.

How come?

I remember the Pedigree as particularly unpleasant to write with — unyielding, really. The pencil made the writer’s bump on my middle finger mighty sore. And the erasers seemed to dry out quickly. Besides, I just never liked the design. The eraser’s sickly green, the ferrule’s dull brown band — those colors don’t even go together. And the overly busy text running down the body — it looks like a poor man’s Mongol. I especially don’t like the registered trademark symbol and the ugly Empire mark. And “Anchord Lead?” Did they have to misspell it?

[Silence.]

Look — you asked, okay?

I guess you’re right.

Whatever you say.

[This post is the twelfth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27
Eagle Turquoise display case
Eagle Verithin display case
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Moore Metalhed Tacks
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads
Stanley carpenter’s rule

Best rake ever?

The Ames True Temper rake might be the best rake ever. It’s certainly the best rake I’ve used. It pulls easily and makes a wide swath. Best of all, the tines do not get cluttered with leaves.

The True Temper rake is made in the U.S. I paid $13.49 for mine. Leaves not included.

Dennis Stock, camera

[“Photographer Dennis Stock holding camera to his face so that the lens looks like his right eye & viewfinder his left eye.” Photograph by Andreas Feininger. June 1951. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Wikipedia articles
Andreas Feininger
Dennis Stock

Salinger, illustrated

David Richardson, who’s made beautiful portraits of characters in Marcel Proust’s fiction, is illustrating Michael Norris’s four-part commentary on J.D. Salinger’s Glass family fiction. Here are parts one and two: Franny and Zooey and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” I think DR’s Seymour Glass is perfect.

Update, December 13: There are two more installments: Seymour Glass and The Glass Family Portrait Album.

A related post
Resemblance: The Portraits

Recently updated

Jacques Barzun, teacher: Now with a link to information about a new biography.