From Wittgenstein’s Mistress

From David Markson’s novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988). Kate (can she really be called a narrator?) types:

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover, when I did all of that looking, or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

Wandering through this endless nothingness. Once in a while, when I was not mad, I would turn poetic instead. I honestly did let myself think about things in such ways.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. For instance I thought about them like that, also.

In a manner of speaking, I thought about them like that.

Actually I underlined that sentence in the book, named the Pensées, when I was in college.

Doubtless I underlined the sentence about wandering through an endless nothingness in somebody else’s book, as well.

And a few pages later:

In spite of frequently underlining sentences in books that had not been assigned, I did well in college, actually.

And later still:

Actually, I did well in college, in spite of frequently underlining sentences in books that had not been assigned.

One is now forced to wonder if underlining sentences in Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger might have shown more foresight, however.

And why does Kate handle these names as she does?

Incidentally, there is an explanation for my generally speaking of Kierkegaard as Kierkegaard, but of Martin Heidegger as Martin Heidegger.

The explanation being that Kierkegaard’s first name was Søren and in typing that I would repeatedly have to go back to put in the stroke.

I am very keen on Wittgenstein’s Mistress, having made it through 153 of its 240 pages in a day. The novel makes me think of Samuel Beckett’s play Happy Days (which I hadn’t thought of in years): Kate, like Winnie, is a voice filling a void. And I think of the organization of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and of a Wittgenstein aphorism: “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Kate is putting the world together, sentence by sentence by sentence. Trying out and correcting or qualifying or abandoning ideas, she resists solipsism even as she’s stuck in it.

The sources of Kate’s underlined sentences: Blaise Pascal (1623–1662): “Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie.” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): “Irren wir nicht wie durch ein unendliches Nichts” [Do we not now wander through an endless Nothingness?], from Die fröhliche Wissenschaft [The joyful wisdom]. Tyler Malone traces both sentences to Markson’s copy of William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy.

I once joked that for many years everyone who went to college owned a copy of Barrett’s book. I did, and still do.

I mean, of course, that I still own a copy of the book, not that I am still going to college.

Markson’s books went to the Strand Book Store after his death in 2010.

By which I mean the books that Markson owned, not the books he wrote, although they or some of them could very well have been among the books that he owned.

A copy of Wittgenstein’s Mistress could very well have been among them.

ZIP Code promotional film

“A ZIP Code morning, noon, and night, and everything will be all right.” From the Smithsonian National Postal Museum: ZIP Code, with the Swingin’ Six.

[Given the subject, shouldn't it have been the Swingin’ Five?]

New York 19

Postal zone numbers for large American cities were first used in 1943. ZIP Codes were first used in July 1963. This broken label is affixed to a mail chute in the stairwell of 724 Fifth Avenue, New York 19, N.Y., the home of the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

Other postal posts
Letter box and lock
A mail box in Naked City
A mail chute In Molly Dodd’s building
Mail chutes and phone booths
Snail Mail


[Life, November 9, 1959.]

Route 66 status check

Tod: “How’s my status now?”

Buz: “Quo, man, quo.”

From the Route 66 episode “Fly Away Home: Part Two,” February 17, 1961.

Things I learned on my summer vacation (2013)

People in cars with suspension problems look like bobbleheads. Really.

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If you are faced with an endless tie-up on I-70 in Ohio, exit the highway and find U.S. 40, the old National Road, which runs parallel to 70. Works in Indiana too.

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If, once on U.S. 40, you stop for gas at the BP station in Springfield, Ohio, and you need to use the facilities, just walk over to the Fazoli’s next door. They send people over there all the time.

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Desktop Diaries is a wonderful part of the radio show Science Friday, heard on many NPR stations. (But not on mine.)

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The work of cracking Linear B involved cigarette cartons, library slips, and stray bits of paper.

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Snobs are always in some way clueless, and their snobbery blinds them to their cluelessness: “I, clueless?”

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“CUOMO BEATS WEINER . . . and then goes limp”: a headline from the New York Post.

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New Zealand prohibits certain names for newborns. Among them: Lucifer, Mafia No Fear, and Messiah, each of which has been proposed by at least one proud New Zealand parent in the past.

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“I thought you meant breakfast bar.”

“No, I meant breakfast bar.”

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Nora Guthrie’s 1967 recording “Home Before Dark” is a strange and beautiful piece of pop music. Yes, Woody and Marjorie’s daughter.

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In the towns outside Boston, where streets and highways were never meant to accommodate the number of vehicles they now carry, traffic is worse than ever. It is dispiriting to see so many people driving into Boston on a workday morning. I imagine the earth, in protest, holding all these vehicles’ wheels, as in the Mahabharata.

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The Glass Flowers Gallery in the Harvard Museum of Natural History is a wonder to behold.

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A father to a child in the HMNH: “You don’t need anything. You have a houseful of stuff.”

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In the Glass Flowers Gallery, a boy on a school trip: “Look at this! Look at this! Look at this! Look at this! It’s beautiful!”

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Anyone puzzled by the Museum of Jurassic Technology could do worse than spend an hour or two in the HMNH. The information cards, some quite old, offer excellent examples of Proto-Museumese, the MJT’s native language.


[“Cultivated at the Botanic Garden of Glasgow, from seeds obtained by Mr. Tweedie in Tacuman, about 1830.”]

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Cardullo’s still stands in Harvard Square, and the tea is still where it was thirty or so years ago.

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Follow the Honey must be the best-smelling store in Cambridge. Friendly too, with unusual choices in music: Tommy James and the Shondells, Leadbelly. Honey seems as various as coffee, tea, or wine.

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That the site of the Boston Marathon bombing shows no trace of destruction does nothing to belie what happened.

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A mother duck and her young can manage to cross the Massachusetts Turnpike unharmed. Traffic was light, and drivers were attentive. Make way for ducklings!

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In Chelsea Market, the Manhattan Fruit Exchange has a fine salad bar. Cheapest meal we had.

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In Fort Lee, New Jersey, Bibby’s Mediterranean Café serves excellent food. I think of this restaurant as the North Jersey equivalent of Pittsburgh’s Leena’s Food — inexpensive, tiny, unpretentious, and great. A falafel throwdown seems in order.

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Things I never imagined seeing: Federico García Lorca’s guitar, in the New York Public Library. Frank O’Hara letters and manucripts, in Tibor de Nagy’s exhibition Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets.

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Lorca, in a letter: “New York me parece horrible pero por eso mismo me voy allí.” My translation: “New York seems horrible but that’s why I’m going.”

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Step into a gallery, a museum, a store, and “the city” (that is, New York) seems to disappear. You have stepped away from the city.

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Stand under a store awning, out of the rain, chat with others similarly stuck, and you become part of the city’s day.

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Seymour Barab’s No Laughing Matter is a one-act opera for children to perform. A synopsis, from the composer’s website: “A king takes a young bride whose natural ebullience is suppressed by the dour Council of Ministers in the name of preserving dignity in the kingdom. When the tables are turned, rejoicing prevails.” We saw a lovely performance by fourth- and fifth-graders of the Philosophy Day School. Great kids. I’m sorry that their school — which seems by any standard extraordinary — is closing.

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Margie King Barab can sing in Hungarian, beautifully. Something magical happens when, in the course of everyday life, a real singer begins to sing.

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The Forbes Galleries (62 Fifth Avenue at Twelfth Street) are worth stopping for. Through August 3, the galleries are devoted to the work of artist and cartoonist Ronald Searle.

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It is possible to live in the television series Naked City, sort of. I was amazed to learn that Jack Lee, the musical contractor for the series, played piano for the first performance of Seymour’s opera Little Red Riding Hood. In the West Village, Elaine and I went to West Fourth Street and visited the Music Inn, which turns up in one of our favorite Naked City episodes. I showed the owner his store’s television appearance. Later Elaine and I sat down in the Coffee Foundry at 186 West Fourth, the address that housed Bianchi & Margherita, another Naked City bit player. Biggest delight: 3 Sheridan Square, where Nancy Malone’s character Libby Kingston lives, is right off West Fourth Street. Who knew? Not us.

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The NJ Transit worker I met years ago at Gate 212 in the Port Authority is still on the job, and he still — it’s obvious — loves his work. He keeps everyone posted on which bus is going where, and he can spot and help an out-of-towner (like me) at a glance. I hope he had a good Memorial Day weekend.

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It feels so good to sit down on a bus after walking back to the Port Authority. (But I knew that already.)

Elaine has two three posts about our adventures: Lorca’s Guitar, No Laughing Matter, “No one looks at a flower, really. One hasn’t time.”

More things I learned on my summer vacation
2012 : 2011 : 2010 : 2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006

[Summer: the time between the spring and fall semesters, regardless of season.]

Memorial Day, 1913

[“Police Head Dies in Newark Parade: Chief Corbitt Collapses in His Saddle as Procession Is About to Start. Gave Up Auto for a Horse. ‘It May Be My Last Memorial Day Parade,’ Civil War Veteran Told His Associates.” New York Times, May 31, 1913.]

Such short distances: Michael Corbitt’s great-grandchildren — or even grandchildren — could be reading this post. My grandparents could have watched this parade.

Detropia on PBS

Tomorrow night on PBS’s Independent Lens, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's 2012 documentary Detropia. Check, as they say, your local listings.

I saw Detropia earlier this year and wrote about it in this post.

Commencement addresses

Re: the previous post: if you graduated from college and showed up for commencement, do you remember anything the commencement speaker said?

Alan Alda spoke at my commencement (Fordham College ’78). I remember one thing from his speech: he asked those graduating to ask themselves, every so often, this question: “What are my values?” Sounds trite, I know, but it works, or at least it’s worked for me.

If you remember something, anything, of what you heard at your commencement, fire away in the comments, please. Let the wisdom, or whatever, accumulate.

[Commencement : what a weird word. Alda is Fordham College ’56.]

“An eccentric, if not a subversive”

A wise observation from Bill Watterson, from a 1990 commencement address:

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive.

[Found via Armand Frasco’s notebookism.]

Michiko Kakutani, messy watch

New York Times book-reviewer Michiko Kakutani is known for her frequent (some might say too frequent) use of the verb limn. Far more frequent is her use of the adjective messy. In February 2011 I wrote a post that tracked Kakutani’s use of messy from 1979 to 2010, from drizzle to steady rain to downpour and back to drizzle. The word appeared just once in 2011 and once more in 2012. The year 2012 also brought a conspicuously inappropriate use of the verb mess up. And now messy is back. From a review of NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel We Need New Names:

Once she is a teenager, she quickly adopts the habits of friends from school, even if she doesn’t exactly care for them — listening to Rihanna, trying on armfuls of clothing at the mall (and leaving them in huge messy piles in the dressing room) and watching pornography online.

Here messy seems to function like a tic: given the context, is there really a difference between piles of clothes and messy piles of clothes? If one leave clothes in huge piles, is neatness ever involved?

[Since 2011 and 2012 brought one messy each, it’s reasonable to speculate that this review might offer the only 2013 sighting.]