Pocket notebook sighting

[“A woman in the building, an Ann Stewart, apartment 421, she just called in. Says she saw the man we’re after. Whatever that means.” That’s a streetlight behind the notebook. Click for a larger view.]

An anonymous detective and his notebook, as seen in Pushover (dir. Richard Quine, 1954). The film, which stars Fred MacMurray, Philip Carey, and Kim Novak, has strong overtones of Double Indemnity (dir. Billy Wilder, 1944). Pushover looks to the future too: the story seems to foreshadow Rear Window (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), released just two days later. And because Kim Novak drives around and gets followed a lot, Pushover seems to foreshadow Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958).

And there’s a telephone booth.


[Kim Novak as Lona McLane, in her first credited film role. Click for a larger view.]

More notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dragnet : Extras : Foreign Correspondent : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The Lodger : Murder at the Vanities : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Quai des Orfèvres : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : Route 66 : The Sopranos : Spellbound : State Fair : T-Men : Union Station : The Woman in the Window

EXchange names on screen

Diane Schirf sent these stills from The Blue Dahlia (dir. George Marshall, 1946). That’s Helen Morrison (played by Doris Dowling) placing a call, and Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) taking dictation and using a pay telephone. YOrk. HIllside. PAy. YAy. But it looks like poor Johnny has reached the voice of the future: “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line,” &c.

A telephone exchange name is not a necessary condition for a satisfactory film experience, but it may be sufficient, if you’re me. To heck with plot.

Diane Schirf is a fine writer and photographer. I especially like the writing she’s done about what she calls “relics”: clotheslines, push reel lawnmowers, telephone booths, and other vanishing realities. Thanks, Diane.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Dream House : East Side, West Side : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Side Street : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire

From a Van Gogh letter

Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, January 1874:

Admire as much as you can, most people don’t admire enough.

The Letters of Vincent van Gogh , ed. Ronald de Leeuw, trans. Arnold Pomerans (New York: Penguin, 1997).

This book is the latest fare for our household’s two-person Four Seasons Reading Club. We bought one copy and borrowed another after seeing the Art Institute’s new exhibition Van Gogh’s Bedrooms.

Illinois’s higher-ed crisis on the evening news

NBC Nightly News has taken notice: Illinois students ponder their future amid ongoing state budget crisis.

If the scenes of protest at the Illinois State Capitol recall 2011 scenes of protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol, it’s no coincidence. Bruce Rauner is our version of Scott Walker.

Missing from the NBC story: hundreds of layoffs, and countless other consequences: lack of money for photocopying, for styrofoam food containers in college dining halls, for student travel to present work at conferences, and on, and on, and on.

The Specialist

Casey Miner’s The Specialist is a lively, eye-opening podcast that focuses on unusual occupations: ice guy, lice lady, zoo chef. There’s a brand-new (and much darker) episode just out: search-and-rescue tracker.

How to improve writing (no. 63)

Here’s a sentence from a piece about David Foster Wallace at the The New Yorker website. The books in question are Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion :

Both books have fans, but I think it’s safe to say that no twenty-year-old will ever stick either of them in his or her backpack alongside Infinite Jest when they go trekking in Nepal.

The shift from “his or her” to a singular “they” is awkward. Sticking with singular pronouns — “his or her backpack when he or she goes trekking” — would be awkward too. The sentence needs rethinking. Or as we say in east-central Illinois, the sentence needs rethought:

Both books have fans, but I think it’s safe to say that no twenty-year-old will ever stick either of them in a backpack alongside Infinite Jest when trekking in Nepal.

I’d go further:

Each book has fans, but I doubt that a twenty-year-old will pack either book alongside Infinite Jest for a trek through Nepal.

I’ve removed the boilerplate “I think it’s safe to say,” reduced “stick either of them in a backpack” to “pack,” and made the work of packing precede the trek. And why “either book”? Look at the work “either of them” does in the original sentence:

Both books have fans, but I think it’s safe to say that no twenty-year-old will ever stick either of them . . . .

Having noticed that glitch, I find it impossible to un-notice it. Adding the word “book” keeps those fans out of the backpack.

Related reading
All OCA How to improve writing posts (Pinboard)

[I’ve tried to set a good example by replacing quotation marks with italics for the title Infinite Jest . This post is no. 63 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Editing Donald Trump

From The New Yorker: Copy-Editing Donald Trump.

[Following its own course, The New Yorker spells copy-edit with a hyphen.]

A teaching dream

The clock was running down and I was paging through a well-annotated paperback, trying to find a necessary passage from Walter Pater. (Walter Pater!) But the clock was running down, and the students were getting ready to go. “Make sure to be here on Thursday!” I yelled. “I’ll be assigning a novel you need to read for Monday.” Yes, the entire novel. Some turnaround! The time ran out, the students left the room, and I was still turning pages.

My dad (a tile contractor) told me late in his life that he had been dreaming of work for years after retirement. He was a tile ace. But in every dream, the job was going badly.

A 2006 Wall Street Journal article (or even the small piece of it not behind the paywall) suggests that such dreams are common. Perhaps they allow us to wonder whether we really did as well as we think we did. Or perhaps they remind us that there’s much not to miss about work. Though in that case, I should have dreams in which I’m grading.

This dream marks my second classroom appearance since retiring. The first came last September.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[I loved teaching as long as I was doing it. But I don’t miss it. Thirty years is enough.]

Henry Dreyfuss ice cream

Cooper Hewitt’s Object of the Day: a Henry Dreyfuss design for an ice-cream label. It makes me think of Joe Brainard’s work.

You can subscribe to the Object of the Day e-mail here.

Goodbye, “M”

First the Metropolitan Museum of Art ended the use of the “M” admission button, and now it’s doing away with the “M” altogether, a beautiful and art-historical “M.” Justin Davidson calls the Museum’s new logo “a typographic bus crash.” I agree. And I’d add that there won’t be another bus coming along any time soon.

Elaine, when I just showed her the new logo: “Ew.”

Thanks to Sean at Contrapuntalism for passing on news of the new (ew) design.

[It’s really spelled ew, not eww . Who knew?]