Domestic comedy

[While starting up the iPad.]

“Let me ask Picture Picture.”

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All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[For anyone who’s puzzled.]

The life of Vivian Maier

In The New York Times , new details from the life of the photographer Vivian Maier: “Digging Deeper Into
Vivian Maier’s Past,” “A Peek Into Vivian Maier’s Family Album.”

The source for these articles: Vivian Maier Developed, an investigation by Ann Marks (“a retired business executive”) and Francoise Perron (“a retired judge from Maier’s French hometown”).

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Henry Darger and Vivian Maier

[For clarity: Maier’s mother Marie Jaussaud was born in St. Julien, France. Maier was born in New York City. Mother and daughter lived in France for some of Maier’s childhood.]

Word of the day: banausic

It appears in David Foster Wallace’s The Pale KIng (2011), in the extraordinary last-class hortation spoken by a Jesuit substitute instructor of accountancy. He is speaking of the work of the accountant, which he describes as an surprising form of heroism:

‘Exacting? Prosaic? Banausic to the point of drudgery? Sometimes. Often tedious? Perhaps.’

The American Heritage Dictionary (Wallace’s dictionary, in a way, as he was a member of its Usage Panel, from 1999 to his death) defines banausic thusly:

1. Merely mechanical; routine: “a sensitive, self-conscious creature . . . in sad revolt against uncongenially banausic employment” (London Magazine) .
2. Of or relating to a mechanic.

Webster’s Third gives a greater array of meanings:

1a. governed by or suggestive of utilitarian purposes : practical
b. common in taste, thought, or intention : dull and menial
2. moneymaking, breadwinning : vocational : commercially minded : materialistic.

The Oxford English Dictionary is terse: “merely mechanical, proper to a mechanic.” Webster’s Second is terser still and tart: “smacking of the workshop.” Sounds a bit like the Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Whence banausic ? The AHD is helpful:

Greek banausikos, of or for craftsmen, from banausos, craftsman who works with fire, smith, potter, probably dissimilated from earlier *baunausos : baunos, furnace, forge (probably of pre-Greek substrate origin) + auein, to light a fire, get a light from; akin to Latin haurīre, to draw water.

Learning about banausic made me wonder: could banal be related? No, it had a different beginning. From the AHD:

Drearily commonplace and often predictable; trite: “Blunt language cannot hide a banal conception” (James Wolcott).

French, from Old French, shared by tenants in a feudal jurisdiction, from ban, summons to military service, of Germanic origin.

So whatever is common to all (or, at least, to all tenants) is banal. Webster’s Second has a definition which heightens the element of contempt in the word: “showing no individual taste.” The Dowager Countess strikes again!

It is reassuring to those of us who can never decide how to pronounce banal that at least some members of the AHD Usage Panel share the problem: “A number of Panelists admitted to being so vexed by the word that they tended to avoid it in conversation.” Thank goodness this post is written, not spoken.

Did Wallace discover banausic by way of this William Safire column? I wonder.

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Overheard

[Flipping channels.]

“As first impressions are the most important asset, that’s where we’re going to start first.”

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All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Younger, sepia

I’ve posted snapshots of a younger me with my mom and dad for Mother’s and Father’s Days. But here is a solo studio outing. I was ready for my close-up, as ready as I ever would be. Why are you seeing this photograph? Because Fresca has suggested to her readers that they post baby pictures.

A question I cannot answer: was sepia still common in the 1950s?

*

3:45 p.m.: I still can’t answer that question, but my mom confirms that this photo was tinted. (It’s not a faded black-and-white photo.)

David Bowie (1947–2016)

From David Bowie’s reply to his first piece of fan mail from the United States:

In answer to your questions, my real name is David Jones and I don’t have to tell you why I changed it. “Nobody’s going to make a monkey out of you” said my manager. My birthday is January 8th and I guess I’m 5'10". There is a Fan Club here in England, but if things go well in the States then we’ll have one there I suppose. It’s a little early to even think about it.

The New York Times has an obituary.

One Word of the Year: singular they

The American Dialect Society has chosen singular they as its 2015 Word of the Year. I like the idea of a plainish Word of the Year. I like too the idea of a Word of the Year that’s a word, not an emoji — which is what Oxford Dictionaries chose as its 2015 Word of the Year. (Clickbait might have been a more honest choice.)

My thoughts about singular they are in two posts: this post and this other one, over here. I continue to think that singular they is sometimes a good choice in writing, and sometimes not a good choice at all. I used singular they in a recent post, where it seemed idiomatic and appropriately colloquial: “Who in their right mind,” &c. But the more formal the discourse, the less appropriate singular they becomes, at least without checking in advance.

Chestnuts, pigeons, statues

Gay Talese, New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).

It behooves me to say that the part about the hoofs is not accurate. But it was the chestnuts, or rather their aroma, that drew me to this passage. I’m ten again, leaving the American Museum of Natural History. I don’t like chestnuts, just the aroma.

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“Fo-wer, fi-yiv, sev-ven, ni-yen”

[The statue that first comes to my mind: the Sherman Memorial, with one hoof off the ground. William Tecumseh Sherman did not die of wounds received in battle. Frank O’Hara put that statue in a poem.]

On ambition

The philosopher Mark Kingwell on ambition:

The idea that somehow ambition is always about achievement in measurable ways itself needs to be queried. We’re here for a mortal span whose length we know not, and our ambition should really be to make the most of the time that we have, not knowing how much of it there is. And there is no time to be spent feeling shame at not doing things. You should find things you can do — however, whatever, method works for that — and enjoy doing them.

From the 2011 To the Best of Our Knowledge episode “ProcrastiNation,” recently rebroadcast.

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“Fo-wer, fi-yiv, sev-ven, ni-yen”

Gay Talese, New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).

What a wonderful book, odds and ends of all sorts about the city and its creatures, human and non-. I saw a reference to the book (Talese’s first) in a New York Times piece last Saturday that Matt Thomas linked to. (Talk about serendipity.)

New York: A Serendipiter’s Journey is out of print and hard to find. AbeBooks and Alibris list a single copy for sale ($61.01). I snagged a copy as an interlibrary loan and have already suggested to New York Review Books that the book merits reissuing. For now, I’m xeroxing.

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Gay Talese’s address book