A Nabokov pencil sharpener

How do you know that your father is about to have yet another committee meeting?


Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966).

That “tawny-brown shag”: I think back to roll-my-own days, and yes, shag is just right.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)
Pnin’s pencil sharpener (“ticonderoga-ticonderoga”)

Sherry Turkle on our phones and our selves

Sherry Turkle, writing in The New York Times about technology, solitude, and conversation:

In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is easier to do without your phone in hand.

A related post
Sherry Turkle on the flight from conversation

Calling Henry

[Henry, September 27, 2015.]

In the Henry-world, all telephones are landlines. Henrietta must be calling on a conveniently located pay phone. You can’t see it from this panel, but rain is threatening. So hurry up, kids, and get off the line before it storms.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

[Blue? À la the (non-existent) red telephone? A private line on which Henrietta can reach Henry? But in the Henry-world, telephones should be black.]

Domestic comedy

“He’s the real thing — a total phony.”

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All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Literature and choreography

From The Allusionist episode Architecting about Dance: the choreographer and movement director Steven Hoggett is talking with Helen Zaltzman about what studying literature has meant to his work.

Hoggett: It’s absolutely the bedrock for my choreographic career. I thank my lucky stars I spent many years poring over books rather than being in a studio, because I would have been a terrible pure dancer.

Zaltzamn: That’s really extraordinary. How do you think the poring over books created the modern you?

Hoggett: Because your imagination — I was encouraged to use my imagination way into my twenties, when I was still studying. Somebody was saying, “Don’t just read the book, think about it.” That’s what’s also helped me in every instance of being able to try to communicate and use language and words and reinvent my kind of language every time you do a new piece, because that company is different, that task is different, the show is different. And it does require a choreographer to be responsive to a room, and to find expressions and terms and words, literal phrases, that make sense for each project.

A New York Times article says of Hoggett in his twenties: “[he] studied literature at Swansea University in Wales and had little training in theater or dance.”

I’ve been following The Allusionist since June and recommend it with enthusiasm.

[I’ve made several corrections in this excerpt from the show’s transcript.]

Nancy: “BLOG”

[Nancy, October 19, 1950. From Nancy Loves Sluggo: Complete Dailies 1949–1951 (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2014).]

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

None is , none are

Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day today is about none. Singular, or plural? Garner offers the clearest explanation I know of how to decide:

None = (1) not one; or (2) not any. Hence it may correctly take either a singular or a plural verb. To decide which to use, substitute the phrases to see which fits the meaning of the sentence: “not one is” or “not any are.”

A further comment:

Generally speaking, “none is” is the more emphatic way of expressing an idea. But it’s also the less common way, particularly in educated speech, and it therefore sounds somewhat stilted. The problem is exacerbated by the unfortunate fact that some stylists and publications insist that “none” is always singular, even in the most awkward constructions.

Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) recognized that none can be singular or plural: “It is a mistake to suppose that the pronoun is sing. only & must at all costs be followed by sing verbs, &c.” Garner’s comment is likely a tactful criticism of The Elements of Style. The 1959 edition says that none “takes the singular verb,” period. The 1972 edition acknowledges that none can be singular or plural. E. B. White added and then amended the note on usage for none. William Strunk Jr.’s 1918 Elements says nothing about the word.

You can subscribe to the Usage Tip of the Day at Oxford University Press.

Faill

[Peanuts, September 27, 1968.]

If only. Instead we have days that begin in a fall-like manner, with temperatures going into the middle eighties by early afternoon. Faill is the new fall.

[Could Charles Schulz have been thinking of “September in the Rain”?]

Recently updated

Lands’ End: The White Album The company is apparently angling for (so-called) millennials.

On not owning an Apple Watch

Khoi Vinh, on why he doesn’t own an Apple Watch:

Part of the reason why is because I never fell out of the habit of wearing a traditional watch on a daily basis. I own a simple, inexpensive, military-style analog watch with a canvas strap that almost wholly satisfies my expectations for a device worn on the wrist. It tells the time and date and needs almost no maintenance.

But he offers another, more surprising reason: Why I Don’t Own an Apple Watch (Subtraction).

I, too, don’t own an Apple Watch. I have no interest in being tethered to another device (which itself would be tethered to a device). And if I ever even for a moment think about owning an Apple Watch, all I will need to do is look at this image.


[Charlie Rose. Negative reinforcement. I saved it for just this purpose.]