Liveright Bookshop, Hotel Dressler

[The New Yorker, February 21, 1925.]

I found this advertisement while browsing the digital version of the first issue of The New Yorker. I like the ad’s contradictory promises of sanctuary and speed, relaxed browsing and instant gratification. Those promises remind me of the advertising ace Harwinton’s logic in Steven Millhauser’s novel Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (1996). Here is Harwinton on the Hotel Dressler:

The Dressler, he argued, was a rural retreat, a peaceful outpost far from the clamor of downtown Manhattan, but at the same time the Dressler was located in a new and thriving part of the city, only a short distance from a convenient Elevated station, and even closer to the projected subway station on the Boulevard — was located, in short, in the very path of progress. For it was Harwinton’s belief that every city dweller harbored a double desire: the desire to be in the thick of things, and the equal and opposite desire to escape from the horrible thick of things to some peaceful rural place with shady paths, murmuring streams, and the hum of bumblebees over vaguely imagined flowers.

Martin Dressler is a wonderful novel, literally: a nineteenth-century fable about the attractions and limitations of virtual worlds.

The Liveright Bookshop’s address was recently occupied by the restaurant Alfredo’s of Rome, now closed. Alfredo’s online gallery of famous eaters is worth a look. I cannot tell who, if anyone, now occupies 4 West 49th.

Prompting disaster?

On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, a voice reading headlines noted the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The voice said that the spill “prompted an economic and environmental disaster.” Disaster, yes. Prompt? No.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate offers these definitions of prompt: “to move to action,” “incite”; “to assist (one acting or reciting) by suggesting or saying the next words of something forgotten or imperfectly learned,” “cue”; “to serve as the inciting cause of.”

The oil spill didn’t prompt a disaster, no more than a burning cigarette prompts a forest fire. The oil spill was and is a disaster, a disaster still in the making.

[The problem with paying attention to words: you’re always paying attention.]

Common misspellings

Truk, turck : 15 Most Common Misspellings.

Back to the dowdy world

[Zippy, March 22, 2014.]

Today’s Zippy is all about paper and fountain pens. Thus the final panel.

Related reading
All OCA “dowdy world” posts (Pinboard)

[My definition of the dowdy world: “modern American culture as it was before certain forms of technology redefined everyday life.” There are of course many reasons why no one should want to go back to 1953.]

Word of the day: novelty

[Henry, March 13, 2014.]

You don’t see novelty shops so much anymore. When I was a boy, “toys and novelties” were staples of my consumer life, found in what was called a variety store. You don’t see variety stores so much either.

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the word novelty to c. 1384: “Something new, not previously experienced, unusual, or unfamiliar; a novel thing.” The meaning of the word as I knew it (or sort of knew it) dates from 1840: “An often useless or trivial but decorative or amusing object, esp. one relying for its appeal on the newness of its design. Also (in later use): spec. a small inexpensive toy or trinket. Freq. in pl. ”

The novelties that first come to my mind: the sliding box that turned one coin into another, the folding gadget that made a dollar bill disappear, and Wriggley’s Gum. These days, the word novelties often refers to very different merchandise, for grown-ups only.

Here, from 2010, is a photograph of what was said to be New York City’s last novelty shop. Joke items, anyone?

Many Lifetymes

Lifetyme Mixed Grass Seed

[Click for a larger view.]

I know that the first day of spring isn’t necessarily the best day to sow grass seed, but it is a good day to post something about grass seed. I’ve had this empty bag sitting around for months. I like the proliferating fonts, the unnecessary “quotation marks,” and the reassuring words at the bottom. It’s better to live life without crabgrass, isn’t it? Who wants to be crabby? Oh, her.

“Lifeless in appearance,” as the poet says, “sluggish / dazed spring approaches.”

[Lifetyme, or what I shall call The Real Sod-Builder Shady, is a product of Behm & Hagemann, Inc., East Peoria, Illinois. No connection to my friend Stefan.]

Thelonious Monk

Years ago, years and years and years ago, my children would occasionally spend a morning on campus with me on days off from school. On one such occasion, my son Ben labeled a poster of Thelonious Monk in my office. And now I remember having labeled my dad’s LPs with little slips of paper bearing the names of musicians: Miles Davis, Erroll Garner, Stuff Smith.

I especially like the homemade o s on this faded Post-it Note. I would guess that Ben was five or six when he wrote them — and the rest of the letters.

Other Monk posts
T. MONK’S ADVICE (1960) : Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane : Thelonious Monk in Weehawken : Thelonious Monk, off-balance : Thelonious Monk plays Duke Ellington

[How did Ben know the proper spelling? The poster says, in large letters, “Thelonious Monk.”]

Its/it’s Lynne Truss

From a Yorkshire Post article about Lynne Truss, who wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves (2003):

A 244-page tour through the rules of punctuation, there was no diverting illustrations and not even a whiff of celebrity. And yet when it was released in 2003, it became one of that year’s biggest hits with many bookshops unable to feed the demand. For it’s author Lynne Truss, it also meant being dragged kicking and screaming into the limelight.

I thought at first that this article was a spoof, a count-the-errors exercise. But no. How many errors do you see?

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by the way, is a highly unreliable guide to punctuation. From Bryan Garner’s withering review of the book:

Why do the experts uniformly disparage a punctuation book that appeals so much to the popular mind? The thing is that many people think they’re sticklers when they’re not. And Lynne Truss happens to be one of them. She’s taken a leaf from Karl Marx in proclaiming that her rallying cry is “Sticklers of the world, unite!” That’s exactly what they’re doing, but not quite in the way she intended. The true sticklers of the world are uniting against Lynne Truss.

A related post
Garner, Menand, and Truss

In flight from excellence

The word of the day is excellence :

1. the state of being superior and without equal 2. something many people and companies say they expect/offer/won’t accept anything but, that is revealed as being really cheap currency when you live on planet earth and observe the people who actually work at companies — like Brad, who still doesn’t know how to transfer a call even though he’s been an administrative assistant for two years; or Linda, who assaults her coworkers with visible grandma panty lines every day of the week; or Nick, the charming department head who manages up like a champ while things rot from the inside out 3. a laughable hyperbole encouraged by consultants, gurus, and guest speakers 4. in reality, the thing people should stop shooting for, because making things just kind of okay would be really good start. Enough with the excellence and perfection, all right?

These definitions are from Lois Beckwith’s The Dictionary of Corporate Bullshit (New York: Broadway Books, 2006). I’ve omitted the boldface for several cross-referenced terms. I had to look up one: manage up , placing the needs of one’s superior above all else.

It no longer surprises me that the vocabulary sets of academia and corporate life should be so difficult to distinguish.

[Lois Beckwith is a pen name of Mimi O’Connor.]