Charlotte russe

[Nancy, May 22, 1944.]

Aunt Fritzi just announced some surprise visitors: Nancy’s friends Charlotte and Ruth. Nancy’s disappointment is understandable.

Charlotte russe is a delightful food of the dowdy world, or at least the New York City version of the dowdy world. I consumed charlotte russes in my Brooklyn childhood, buying them through the window of a candy store at the northeast corner of 44th Street and 13th Avenue. The charlotte russe was a simple and satisfying food: yellow cake, whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry, held in a white cardboard cylinder. Pushing the cylinder’s cardboard bottom upward allowed easier access to the cake as the cream disappeared. I cannot recall whether a utensil came into play.

Dictionaries seem largely in the dark about the New York charlotte russe:

The American Heritage Dictionary: “a cold dessert of Bavarian cream set in a mold lined with ladyfingers.”

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: “a charlotte made with sponge cake or ladyfingers and a whipped-cream or custard-gelatin filling.”

The New Oxford American Dictionary: “a dessert consisting of custard enclosed in sponge cake or a casing of ladyfingers.”

The Oxford English Dictionary: “a dish composed of custard enclosed in a kind of sponge-cake.”

Er, no. But the Random House Dictionary has charlotte russes both fancy and plain: “a dessert made by lining a mold with sponge cake or ladyfingers and filling it with Bavarian cream” and “a simpler version of this, consisting of a small piece of sponge cake topped with whipped cream and a candied cherry.” I remember cake-cake, not spongecake. I’ve never been a big fan of spongecake.

The charlotte russe makes an appearance in at least two great stories of life in New York. From Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943):

There was a bakery store to one side of it [a pawnshop] which sold beautiful charlotte russes with with red candied cherries on their whipped cream tops for those who were rich enough to buy.

And from J. D. Salinger’s Seymour: An Introduction (1959), narrator Buddy Glass writing about his sister Boo Boo:

Boo Boo went through a stage — admirably short, in her case, I must say — when she “died” at least twice daily over the gaffes, the faux pas, of adults in general. At the height of this period, a favorite history teacher who came into class after lunch with a dot of charlotte russe on her cheek was quite sufficient cause for Boo Boo to wither and die at her desk.

For more on the past and present of New York’s charlotte russe, I recommend Lost Foods of New York City: Charlotte Russe Link’s gone. Try New York Charlotte Russe (Atlas Obscura). AO reports that Holtermann’s Bakery, on Staten Island, still makes charlotte russe.

[The Nancy panel appears in Nancy Is Happy: Complete Dailies 1943–1945 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2012). Do you remember when candystores and newsstands did streetside business through a window?]

The grizzly, friend to man

[Mark Trail, June 23, 2012.]

There’s probably a Mitt Romney joke in here somewhere — Sarah Palin, “mama grizzly,” all that — but I’ve chosen to post this panel for the sheer lunacy of outdoorsman Mark Trail’s thought process. Kids, don’t try this at home, or in someone else’s home.

Fred Astaire

[“Dancer Fred Astaire clad in top hat, tails & spats vaulting off his cane as he does a climatic jump in ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’ number for the movie Blue Skies.” Photograph by Bob Landry. November 29, 1945. From the Life Photo Archive. Click for a larger view.]

Fred might have wished for a private image different from his public one but he couldn’t quite pull it off. The adjectives applied to him were true. He was a good fellow — never a guy. F. A. bowed out at the right time. But I shall miss him terribly. Me and the world.

Richard McKenzie, son-in-law to Astaire, quoted in Kathleen Riley, The Astaires: Fred & Adele (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Fred Astaire died on June 22, 1987, twenty-five years ago today.

Related posts
Fred Astaire on What’s My Line?
John Ashbery and Fred Astaire on The Mike Douglas Show

Geoffrey Pullum on nouns

Linguist Geoffrey Pullum on the inadequacy of traditional definitions of a noun:

It is useless to look for a common ontological nature in airspeeds, apples, and absences, or organizations, orchids, and orgasms. To give a definition that permits decisions as to whether a given English word is a noun or not, you have to consider morphological and syntactic facts.

I have on several occasions taken issue with what I see as Pullum’s distortions and exaggerations regarding The Elements of Style. Here though I think that Pullum is right. He and I agree about something after all.

[This post is for my son Ben, who has grammar and its problems on his mind.]

French bookstores

The New York Times reports that bookstores in France are flourishing. Or at least French-language bookstores in France: the largest English-language bookstore in Paris is folding.

[Can you imagine the United States government subsidizing bookstores? Me neither.]

One more Automat

[“Horn & Harda[r]t’s Automat sign blacked out re New York City’s ‘browned out’ or dimmed lights, a wartime defensive measure against enemy attack.” Photograph by Andreas Feininger. New York, New York, 1943. From the Life Photo Archive.]

Other Automat posts
Automat beverage section
“Lunch Hour NYC”
New York, 1964: Automat

Automat beverage section

[“1725 Broadway — New beverage section open to public. Sept. 19, 1949.” From the New York Public Library Digital Gallery. Click for a larger view.]

“For two nickels, a cup of coffee comes spurting from the mouth of an engaging beast, the likes of which Linnaeus never saw”: Harold H. Hart’s Hart’s Guide to New York City (New York: Hart Publishing, 1964). I’m guessing that nothing had changed between 1949 and 1964. A 1914 Automat advertisement (also from the NYPL) shows the same kind of beast at work.

Related posts
“Lunch Hour NYC”
New York, 1964: Automat

[I remember eating at the Automat in childhood. But what? All I can remember is using coins.]

New York, 1964: Automat

From Harold H. Hart’s Hart’s Guide to New York City (New York: Hart Publishing, 1964). I’m following a train of thought.

Hart’s Guide is probably my favorite library-book-sale find of all time.

Also from Hart’s Guide
Chock full o’Nuts
Greenwich Village and coffee house
King Karol Records and The Record Hunter
Mayflower Coffee Shop(pe)
Minetta Tavern and Monkey Bar
Schrafft’s

“Lunch Hour NYC”

“Drawing on materials from throughout the Library, the exhibition explores the ways in which New York City — work-obsessed, time-obsessed, and in love with ingenious new ways to make money — reinvented lunch in its own image.” At the New York Public Library, opening tomorrow, “Lunch Hour NYC.” The exhibit includes a bank of Automat windows. I wish I were on vacation again.

There’s more on this exhibit at the New York Times: Revisiting the Era of Automatic Dining.

Related posts
Chock full o’Nuts
Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour
New York, 1964: Chock full o’Nuts

On Mitt Trail’s trail

[Mark Trail, June 20, 2012.]

Mitt Trail flees reporters asking about immigration reform, tax deductions and exemptions, and things of that nature. You know, issues. Context here.

Mitt Romney and D-list comic-strip hero Mark Trail are, it seems to me, the same (two-dimensional) person. Four previous posts offer more evidence: 1, 2, 3, 4.