“‘Gadding about’?”
“Yes,‘gadding about.’”
Related reading
All domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Domestic comedy
Kubrick remake
[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]
From 2013: A Space Odyssey.
A related post
Officemates
Monday, September 23, 2013
Duke Ellington in Afghanistan
From the BBC: When Duke Ellington played Kabul, with a brief clip from a 1973 interview. The Ellington band visited Afghanistan in 1963 while on tour for the United States State Department. Impressions from the tour prompted the Ellington-Billy Strayhorn collaboration The Far East Suite (1967).
Related reading
All Duke Ellington posts (Pinboard)
The worst sentence in Salinger so far
I’m up to page 137 in David Shields and Shane Salerno’s Salinger, “the interminable official book of the acclaimed documentary film.” The following sentence, from Shields, appears on page 133. It is the worst sentence I have read so far:
This is the moment at which — amid war, champagne, and male bonding — Salinger revealed his anatomical deformity to Hemingway, according to Kleeman.The “deformity,” as explained elsewhere, was an undescended testicle. Yes, a great secret of the book is that Salinger had an undescended testicle. Which supposedly explains his (Salinger’s, not the testicle’s) choice to avoid “the media glare.”
Revealed is an awkward word here. I hope that Salinger told Hemingway about it and didn’t — what with all the bonding — drop trou. And that closing “according to Kleeman”: not the way to end a sentence.
That a writer should shun publication and daunt biographers for years on end, only to fall into these hands: karma must indeed be a bitch. I remain on the lookout for a sentence still worse: I’m trying to get my money’s worth from this book.
Related reading
All J. D. Salinger posts (Pinboard)
[“Acclaimed documentary film”? The film was just recut after unfavorable reviews.]
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Lands’ End misspelling
As seen on this page. Sheesh.
*
September 26: It’s been fixed.
Related reading
All misspelling posts (Pinboard)
[Yes, the company name has a misplaced apostrophe.]
Friday, September 20, 2013
PBS misspelling
IDEALOGICAL VOTE IN HOUSE: That was the caption on PBS’s Washington Week a few minutes ago. Sigh.
*
9:36 p.m.: And now it’s online, at the 9:52 mark.
Related reading
All misspelling posts (Pinboard)
[I know: it’s a variant. But on a nationally televised show, it’s a misspelling.]
Don’t open the yellow door
You don’t want to know what’s behind that door. You really don’t want to know what’s behind that door. You Really Don’t Want To Know What’s Behind That Door. YOU REALLY — was I shouting? Oh, sorry. But you really don’t want to know what’s behind that door.
I spotted this door “somewhere in east-central Illinois.” This post is for my friends Sara and Stefan and all readers of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.
Related reading
All David Foster Wallace posts (Pinboard)
[You do not want to know what is behind that door.]
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Death of an adjunct
The real face of higher education: Death of an adjunct (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
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