Schulz, Stein

[Peanuts, December 5, 1960.]

Today’s Peanuts, a repeat of a 1960 strip, is a variation on Gertrude Stein’s “Pigeons on the Grass,” from Four Saints in Three Acts.

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NYT at Faber-Castell Now with a working link to Contrapuntalism’s Faber-Castell story.

NYT at Faber-Castell

The New York Times visits Count Anton-Wolfgang von Faber-Castell, resulting in an article and a short film. I’m not sure what this kind of attention means. Are pencils the new typewriters?

Earlier this year, Sean at Contrapuntalism chronicled his journey to Faber-Castell headquarters in a great, photograph-filled post, The Stein Way.

[Count Basie had the better band, but Count Anton has the better pencils.]

From El espíritu de la colmena

[An interior, from El espíritu de la colmena. Click for a larger view.]

With Vermeer in the air, in the air, I thought it fitting to post an image that I’ve been saving for close to a year.

El espíritu de la colmena [The spirit of the beehive] (dir. Victor Erice, 1973) is a beautiful film. Like The Night of the Hunter (dir. Charles Laughton, 1955), it dwells on a magical and frightening world of childhood. Laughton’s film looks and feels like a dream. Erice’s looks and feels like paintings. See above.

The film is available from — who else? — The Criterion Collection.

[Thanks to Sean at Contrapuntalism for the first Vermeer link.]

Stoner FTW

This post has been getting visits from the British Isles in a way that made me wonder what’s up. I turned to the Google, and a search of the past twenty-four hours brought the news that John Williams’s novel Stoner has been named Waterstones’s Book of the Year. Stoner was published in 1965 and quickly went out of print. New York Review Books issued a reprint in 2006. Stoner is a great novel. I’m beginning to fear that it will become a movie.

Waterstones is a British bookstore chain that dropped its apostrophe in 2012.

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How to improve writing (no. 47) I had to keep improving.

Boops

[Life, February 12, 1940.]

I think that the fellow in this advertisement must have been a dolt even by 1940 standards. He is making the kind of goofy adolescent utterance that I associate with, say, Leave It to Beaver.

I had hoped that something in this issue of Life would show up the athlete/girl dichotomy as unfounded. No soap. The closest this issue comes to showing a female athlete: a feature about roller-skating socialites, which is not very close.

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How to improve writing (no. 47)

In last night’s 60 Minutes segment on Jeff Bezos and Amazon, Charlie Rose described the way Amazon workers pick and pack items:

Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows exactly how big of a box to use based on the weight and amount of items . . . .

Elaine and I said it simultaneously: number.

The Chicago Manual of Style explains the distinction:

Amount is used with mass nouns [a decrease in the amount of pol­lution], number with count nouns [a growing number of dissidents].

And there’s another problem: “big of a box.” Sheesh. That’s an instance of what Garner’s Modern American Usage calls “intrusive of,” as in “not that big of a deal.” Corrected:

Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows exactly how big a box to use based on the weight and number of items . . . .

But the more I look at this sentence, the more ungainly it becomes. The phrasing — “exactly how big a box to use based on” — is just awkward. And there is a weird asymmetry in what follows, with weight applying to the items collectively; number, individually. And is number the issue anyway? Isn’t the size of an item the crucial element in choosing a box? One more time:

Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows which box suits the size and weight of an order . . . .

That’s better, with size and weight referring perhaps to a single item, perhaps to items in the aggregrate. But simpler still:

Those bins eventually wind up in front of a packer, who knows the right box to use for each order . . . .

Because what basis is there for choosing a box other than the size and weight of the order? The word right takes care of everything.

And before I change the channel: has there ever been an interviewer more worshipful of power and wealth than Charlie Rose? Last night’s interview was an embarrassment, partly for its lack of pointed questions, partly for its uncritical delight in the prospect of drone deliveries (it’ll help to live next to a big empty field), partly for its blatantly commercial timing (on Cyber-Monday Eve). Boo, hiss, CBS.

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[This post is no. 47 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Jim Leddy FTW

I just got the news that my dad is being released from the hospital this afternoon. He’s gettin’ out! See ya later, warden!

Thanks to everyone for their good wishes.

Alex Katz, painter, eater

Alex Katz on food: “American cheese on white is the ultimate. To me as a kid it represented the straight world.”

Here’s a fellow who, as they say, has made it, who could have anything he wants for a meal. And what does he want? Oatmeal for breakfast. Sardines for lunch. Day in, day out. I love it. Read more: Artist’s Cookbook: Alex Katz (Design Observer).