Ada : Sunday breakfast

Vladimir Nabokov, Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (1969).

Our narrator, Van, is rather contemptuous of Dan. (First sentence, last word.)

The parenthetical remark at the end of this passage is a characteristic Nabokov touch, a touch of wit in passing.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: hustings

[“In th’ rug & on th’ hustings!” Zippy, October 27, 2015.]

The Oxford English Dictionary first records husting in use around 1030. The now-obsolete meaning: “an assembly for deliberative purposes, esp. one summoned by a king or other leader; a council.” The Dingburg hustings comes much later:

the temporary platform from which, previous to the Ballot Act of 1872, the nomination of candidates for Parliament was made, and on which these stood while addressing the electors. Hence, contextually, the proceedings at a parliamentary election.

The Dictionary’s first citation is from Thomas D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719): “What Tricks on the Hustings Fanaticks would play.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

*

1:05 p.m.: Chris of Dreamers Rise writes in a comment, “You’ve left out the fun part, which is the etymology of “husting” from húsþing — “house thing” — with “thing” meaning assembly, as in the present Icelandic Alþingi.”

Intent on getting the meaning, I never thought to look at the etymology: from the Old Norse hús-þing , “house-assembly, a council held by a king, earl, or other leader, and attended by his immediate followers, retainers, etc., in distinction from the ordinary þing or general assembly of the people” (OED). The þ is the thorn, th. Thus hús-thing.

Had I thought to switch to the OED’s full-entry view, I probably would have noticed the etymology. But I would not have known about the Alþingi.

Thanks, Chris.

[I did my best in this post to avoid any pun about a Battle of Hustings.]

Peter Drucker on integrity in leadership

Peter Drucker:

The proof of the sincerity and seriousness of a management is uncompromising emphasis on integrity of character. This, above all, has to be symbolized in management’s “people” decisions. For it is character through which leadership is exercised; it is character that sets the example and is imitated. Character is not something one can fool people about. The people with whom a person works, and especially subordinates, know in a few weeks whether he or she has integrity or not. They may forgive a person for a great deal: incompetence, ignorance, insecurity, or bad manners. But they will not forgive a lack of integrity in that person. Nor will they forgive higher management for choosing him.

This is particularly true of the people at the head of an enterprise. For the spirit of an organization is created from the top. If an organization is great in spirit, it is because the spirit of its top people is great. If it decays, it does so because the top rots; as the proverb has it, “Trees die from the top.” No one should ever be appointed to a senior position unless top management is willing to have his or her character serve as the model for subordinates.

From The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done (New York: HarperCollins, 2004).

I thought of this passage as my university seeks to fill administrative positions on very short notice: who will lead?

With necessary changes in terminology, one might apply Drucker’s thinking to elections, with integrity of character as a primary consideration for a voter. I for one would find it impossible to vote for a candidate who did not evince some core element of integrity, however consonant with my views that candidate’s views might be.

I don’t make a habit of reading books on management. I caught on to Peter Drucker after noticing the beautifully designed little book Managing Onself (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2008) on the front table in Brookline Booksmith. It’s a wonderful book for younger and older readers. Its core message: we must figure out our strengths and values and ways of working, and be who we are.

Other Drucker-related posts
Drucker and income disparity in higher education
On figuring out where one belongs

[I’ve borrowed my summary of Managing Oneself from another post. And if it doesn’t go without saying: Drucker assumes of course an enlightened managment. The “model for subordinates” would work with integrity rather than, say, blind obedience or sycophancy.]

Art and supplies

Oscar’s Portrait explores the relationship between art and supplies.

Art Brut in New York

“It’s a heady experience to move through this exhibition knowing that many of the works on hand were among the first by these artists that Dubuffet saw or exhibited. Talk about the shock of the new”: from a New York Times review of Art Brut in America: The Incursion of Jean Dubuffet , an exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum.

Proust revisions

Toast. Biscotto. Madeleine.

Related reading
Madeleine
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[Sad that the Slate rehashing of the Guardian story imagines the toast popping out of a toaster. No, not then, not yet.]

A stabbing in Boston

My son heard some teenagers talking, casually, matter of factly, about this stabbing. I’m reminded of lines from W. H. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles” (1952):

    That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
    Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

NPR voice

“If I could attempt to transcribe it, it sounds kind of like, y’know  . . . this ”: “‘NPR Voice’ Has Taken Over the Airwaves” (The New York Times).

[I’ll refrain from addressing the writer’s generalization about the “slacker-intellectual tone” of blogs.]

Libraries and the book

“If we change the role of libraries and librarians without preserving the centrality of the book, we risk losing something irretrievable”: Alberto Manguel, “Reinventing the Library” (The New York Times).

Related reading
All OCA library posts (Pinboard)
Cutting libraries in a recession is like  . . . .
Libraries in hard times

Abbreviated Latin expression of the day: infra dig

I just ran across infra dig in H. L. Mencken’s The American Language. I can never recall the expression’s meaning, and so looked it up again. Perhaps writing this post will help me to remember the meaning in the future, he added hopefully.

The Oxford English Dictionary explains: “Beneath one’s dignity; unbecoming one’s position; not consistent with dignity; undignified.” Infra dig , an adjective, is the “colloquial abbreviation of Latin infrā dignitātem beneath (one’s) dignity.” The expression, whose source the Dictionary calls “obscure,” arose in the early nineteenth century:

William Hazlitt, 1822: “If the graduates  . . . express their thoughts in English, it is understood to be infra dignitatem .”

Walter Scott, 1824: “It would be infra dig. in the Provost of this most flourishing and loyal town to associate with Redgauntlet.”

Infra dig has always sounded to me as if it must be an expression of approval from the 1960s. (Dig !) I can imagine the phrase as a bit of dialogue spoken by a Beatle in A Hard Day’s Night: “A bit infra dig , eh wot?” But no, there’s nothing to dig in infra dig .

Thanks, OED.