From a Van Gogh letter

The religious fervor and sermonizing of Van Gogh’s early letters is occasionally interrupted by a passage of perfect description. Or better: composition. From a letter to brother Theo, October 31, 1876:

It was a bright autumn day and a beautiful walk from here to Richmond along the Thames, in which were mirrored the tall chestnut trees with their burden of yellow leaves and the bright blue sky, and through the tops of those trees the part of Richmond that lies on the hill, the houses with their red roofs and uncurtained windows and green gardens and the grey spire above them, and below, the great grey bridge, with the tall poplars on either side, over which the people could be seen going by as small black figures.

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

In 1876, Van Gogh had not yet begun to paint.

Also from a Van Gogh letter
“Admire as much as you can”

School closures closings

On the radio today, phrasing that got my attention: someone read a long list of “school closures.” I’m not sure I’d ever heard the word closures in relation to weather-related closings.

I looked at several sources to find something relevant. “The New York Times” Manual of Style and Usage (2015) had it:

In references to shutdowns (of airports, businesses, streets, etc.), use closing(s) rather than the stilted closure(s).

That sounds right to me. A school closing might be for a day or two. Closure carries a stronger sense of finality: people are always looking for it. They want to be done .

This short post has now achieved closure.

Franny and Zippy

[Zippy , February 24, 2016.]

Zippy stands outside the Windsor Diner, 135 Main Street, Windsor, Vermont. J. D. Salinger ate lunch there, alone.

Related reading
All OCA Salinger and Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Where’s Franny? Not in the diner. She’s in New York, talking with her brother. But I couldn’t resist this post’s title. Now I’ll wait for the power to go out again.]

Scene from a marriage

[Nancy, January 20, 1951.]

I’m the one on the right. Logic: if the gods had wanted us to shovel snow, they would not have given us such a big driveway. But shovel we must — after the blizzard gets done.

When did you last hear someone say “Naw”?

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
All OCA snow posts

Robert Walser: a metropolis

Robert Walser, “Fire,” in Berlin Stories , trans. Susan Bernofsky (New York: New York Review Books, 2012).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Walser posts (Pinboard)

Thinking and writing (2)

Joseph Joubert:

Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection, trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).

Paul Auster describes the French writer Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) as “a man of letters without portfolio,” “a writer who spent his whole life preparing himself for a work that ever came to be written, a writer of the highest rank who paradoxically never produced a book.” Joubert wrote, for forty years, in notebooks — aphorisms, observations, phrases. His work will be of interest to any reader who values the fragmentary, the provisional, the unfinished.

On my bookshelf, this book will go next to the NYRB edition of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books .

Thinking and writing (1)

Sir Ernest Gowers:

Clear thinking is hard work, but loose thinking is bound to produce loose writing. And clear thinking takes time, but time that has to be given to a job to avoid making a mess of it cannot be time wasted and may in the end be time saved.

The Complete Plain Words , rev. Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut (Boston: David R. Godine, 1988).

I love the plainness of “making a mess of it.”

Sir Ernest Gowers (1880–1966), a British civil servant, wrote Plain Words (1948) and The ABC of Plain Words (1951), books meant to foster clarity and humanity in official English. He combined the two books to make The Complete Plain Words (1954). Gowers also edited the second edition of H. W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1965). The Complete Plain Words has been revised by Bruce Fraser (1973), by Greenbaum and Whitcut (1986), and by Rebecca Gowers, Sir Ernest’s great-granddaughter (2014). I’ve had the 1988 American paperback on a shelf for five or six years. And now I’m reading it.

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.