Batshit crazy

Recent developments in American political life have made me curious about the expression batshit crazy. The words come unbidden to my lips when I hear a certain sweater-vested man pronouncing upon matters of contraception, education, marriage, and everything else.

The Oxford English Dictionary explains it all. Since 1971, batshit has meant “crazy, mad, insane.” The OED notes that batshit may also function “as an intensifier, esp. in batshit crazy.” The OED ’s first citation dates from 1993: “His mug is emblazoned with the words: full-blown bat shit crazy.”

A shout-out to that sweater-vested man: Shine on, you batshit-crazy diamond, all the way to your party’s nomination if possible.

[“Since 1971” is a bit of a joke: that’s the year for the first citation. Why the hyphen in batshit-crazy ? “When a phrase functions as an adjective preceding the noun it modifies — an increasingly frequent phenomenon in 20th- and 21st-century English — the phrase should ordinarily be hyphenated”: Bryan Garner, Garner’s Modern American Usage (2009). Garner does not give batshit-crazy as an example; I am applying his maxim here.]

Read Charles Bukowski 4 what?

Read Charles Bukowski 4 social enlightenment? Well, maybe. Bukowski’s poetry often presents the rest of the world as stuck in hapless darkness: people are stupid, their lives are small and petty, men chained to their wives, and so on. But the poet — he’s the one guy who knows the score. And yes, I find that pose tiresome. Bukowski can though be a useful gateway poet, one whose work can lead a reader to stronger, harder stuff. For me, Bukowski’s work helped point the way to poetry beyond the academic traditions I absorbed as an undergrad.

I snapped this photograph in The Red Herring Restaurant and Coffeehouse in Urbana, Illinois. The words appear on a paper-towel dispenser. I noticed the rejoinder, written in a lighter hand, only after taking the photograph.

On a non-poetic note: The Red Herring’s vegan chili and cornbread are out of sight.

A related post
Homework (on developing a “poetry base”)

[My favorite Bukowski: the 1971 novel Post Office.]

Overheard

“And they’re naked — they’re like not even wearing spacesuits.”

Related reading
All “overheard” posts (via Pinboard)

[Context? Don’t know, and not sure I want to.]

Barney Rosset (1922–2012)

From the New York Times obituary:

Barney Rosset, the flamboyant, provocative publisher who helped change the course of publishing in the United States, bringing masters like Samuel Beckett to Americans’ attention under his Grove Press imprint and winning celebrated First Amendment slugfests against censorship, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 89.

The first Grove Press book I ever read: Waiting for Godot or Eugène Ionesco’s Four Plays, in high-school English, with a very hip teacher, Beverly Jones. I can’t recall which book came first. Many other Grove Press books followed. The one that probably means the most to me: The New American Poetry 1945–1960, edited by Donald Allen. Think scales and eyes.

Related reading
Grove/Atlantic (publisher’s website)
Interview with Barney Rosset (Paris Review)

[Slugfests? In the New York Times?]

“No Ordinary Pencil”

At Blackwing Pages, Sean has written the greatest Blackwing post of all time: No Ordinary Pencil.

How to improve writing (no. 36)

When the context is serious, and a pun would do no more than call attention to its maker’s cleverness, block that pun. From a New York Times article on suspected forgeries of modern American painters:

A few details, however, have dripped out in court documents and through interviews with other players in the case, enough to sketch out what happened.

Notice that the metaphor is mixed: it would be awkward at best to sketch with what’s been dripping. Better:

A few details, however, have come out in court documents and in interviews with other players in the case, enough to suggest what happened.

[This post is no. 36 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)
1 PUN MULTI

Resurrect Dead

The documentary Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (2011, dir. John Foy) tracks three self-made researchers in their effort to unlock the secret of the Toynbee tiles, mysterious messages embedded in city streets in the United States and several South American countries. The tiles offer several variations on the above message:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOViE ‘2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPiTER

Who’s creating these tiles? What do they mean? With determined effort and remarkable luck, Justin Duerr, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik push forward to an answer.

Like the 2010 documentary Catfish (dir. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman), Resurrect Dead is best viewed with little or no foreknowledge. If you plan to see the film, I’d suggest not following the link below.

[Image from the film’s website.]

My name is [your name here].

E.B. White, in a 1969 Paris Review interview:

Television affects the style of children — that I know. I receive letters from children, and many of them begin: “Dear Mr. White, My name is Donna Reynolds.” This is the Walter Cronkite gambit, straight out of TV. When I was a child I never started a letter, “My name is Elwyn White.” I simply signed my name at the end.

This observation reminds me of what I wrote in my post on how to e-mail a professor:

Why sign with your name, class, and meeting time? It’s a courtesy, yes, but it also avoids the awkward “My name is . . . , and I am a student in your such-and-such class,” all of which is taken care of in the signature. It occurs to me that “My name is . . . , and I am a student in . . .” is telling evidence of the unfamiliarity of e-mail as a way for students to communicate with professors.

“My name is” does sound childlike, doesn’t it? Or spammy: “Hello My Dear One, my name is,” &c.

Edward Luttwak on Homer Inc

“The old firm is doing very well in new markets far from America”: Edward Luttwak on the Iliad in Arabic, Chinese, and English: Homer Inc (London Review of Books).

Esther Williams’s Proust questionnaire

Esther Williams responds to Vanity Fair’s Proust questionnaire:

What is your greatest fear?

The pool is unheated.

Related reading
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)