Orange Crate Art

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Happy, harmonious nation-state

“The nation-state remains the true foundation of happiness and harmony.”

Who said it? Kim Jong-il? Kim Jong-un? Mao? No: Donald Trump.

Front as guest

A talking head on MSNBC earlier this afternoon:

“. . . have ushered in a new front in the battle between the front-runners . . .”

More about thusly :

Webster’s Second labels the word “colloquial.” Webster’s Third drops the label and adds a citation from the Congressional Record : “he summoned his counselors and spoke ∼ to them.”

The first and second editions of Fowler’s Modern English Usage make no reference to the word.

Bergen Evans and Cornelia Evans’s A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage (1957) suggests that the word is “the product of illiteracy or exuberance.” The Evanses’ conclusion: “Thus is an adverb and nothing is gained by attaching the regular adverbial suffix -ly to it.”

Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer (1965) calls the word a casualism, and a superfluous one: “it says nothing that thus does not say.”

Wilson Follett’s Modern American Usage: A Guide (1966) mentions the word in passing: “we add -ly for ridiculous or jocular effects to forms that are already adverbs: muchly , thusly .”

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage (1989) makes a point missing from other discussions:

One reason thusly has gradually been able to gain a secure foothold in the language is undoubtedly that it is used primarily in ways that are, to some degree, distinct from the principal uses of thus .

M-W points out that “thusly almost always follows the verb it modifies” and that “its most frequent use is as an introductory word preceeding a quotation or other passage set off by a colon.” Zounds! That’s just how I’ve used the word. For instance:

The American Heritage Dictionary . . . defines banausic thusly: &c.

The Magic Rub’s maker, Prismacolor, describes the eraser thusly: &c.

I knew I wasn’t being ridiculous or jocular.

M-W is not my favorite usage guide: too often its advice seems to be to do what you like. But I like its advice about thusly :

[W]hatever its origins, thusly is not now merely an ignorant or comic substitute for thus : it is a distinct adverb that is used in a distinct way in standard speech and writing. Knowledge of the subtleties of its use may give you the courage to face down its critics, but if discretion, prudence, or faintheartedness compels you to shun it (or if you just dislike it), our advice is not to replace it automatically with thus but to consider instead a more natural-sounding phrase such as “in this way” or “as follows.”

I’m not faint of heart: I’ve restored the two thusly s I’ve quoted above. The third remains gone, replaced by a plain, more suitable as :

Gevalia describes its Traditional Roast ~~thusly:~~ as &c.

[Google’s Ngram Viewer shows thusly rising sharply since 1996.]

Thusly

Something I learned from an interview with Bryan Garner about Garner’s Modern English Usage : thusly is a word one might want to avoid. Garner calls it a nonword, and places it in the company of irregardless , muchly , and two dozen other dubious characters. He gives this explanation in GMEU :

Thus itself being an adverb, it needs no -ly . Although the nonword *thusly has appeared in otherwise respectable writing since it emerged in the late 19th century, it remains a lapse.

The American Heritage Dictionary gives a fuller explanation:

The adverb thusly was created in the 1800s as an alternative for thus in sentences such as Hold it thus or He put it thus . It appears to have been first used by humorists, who may have been imitating the speech of poorly educated people straining to sound stylish. The word has subsequently gained some currency in educated usage, but it has long been deplored by usage commentators as a “nonword.” A large majority of the Usage Panel found it unacceptable in 1966, and this sentiment was echoed nearly forty years later in our 2002 survey, in which 86 percent of the Panel disapproved of the sentence His letter to the editor ended thusly: “It is time to stop fooling ourselves.”

The Oxford English Dictionary has a first citation that indeed suggests mockery: “It happened, as J. Billings would say, ‘thusly.’” (Harper’s, December 1865).

You’ll search in vain for thusly in Orange Crate Art: I have already searched and have zapped its three appearances.

Related reading
All OCA Bryan Garner posts (Pinboard)

*

12:06 p.m.: But wait; there’s more. And it’s more complicated: More thusly.

[Garner’s Modern English Usage is the renamed fourth edition of Garner’s Modern American Usage . The new book makes use of Google ngrams to show the frequency of words and phrases. For thus and *thusly, the frequency is 1,016:1. The Garner asterisk marks an “invariably inferior form.” Orange Crate Art is a Garner-friendly zone.]

Overheard

“What was the name of those shoes you had on yesterday?”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Goodbye, Thompson’s General Store

For a little over a year now, Elaine and I have been stopping by Thompson’s General Store in Camargo, Illinois (population 449). The store was started in 1946 by Opal and Ralph Thompson, the parents of Jack Thompson, who now runs the store with his daughter. Jack has a terrific meat counter: he grinds hamburger, slices liverwurst, and writes prices on butcher paper. The store even lets locals run a tab: I know, because I asked about the cheese box full of worn cards behind the counter.

When we stopped by Thompson’s today, the store was closed. And then we saw the notice on the door: Thompson’s is closing for keeps this coming Saturday. Here is an article that explains. Long story short: too many Camargo residents are doing their shopping outside Camargo. Now they’ll be able to do all their shopping outside Camargo. “Don’t it always seem to go,” &c.

Goodbye, Thompson’s General Store. Thank you for the memories.

Another dozen movies

[And no spoilers.]

The Bigamist (dir. Ida Lupino, 1953). D.O.A. (dir. Rudolph Maté, 1950) fixed my sense of Edmond O’Brien on the screen: sweaty, hapless, despairing, doomed. In this film we find his character Harry Graham married to two women. (He’s a traveling salesman.) Trouble develops when Harry and first wife Eve (Joan Fontaine) decide to adopt a child. What will happen when adoption agent Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn) finds out about Phyllis Martin (Ida Lupino)? Cue sweaty , hapless , despairing , and, maybe, doomed . The Bigamist is said to be the first film in which a woman directed herself.

*

The Big Short (dir. Adam McKay, 2015). The collapse of our economy as a tragicomedy. I’ll quote from an earlier post about the film: “an inventive approach to telling a Strangelovian story.” It was the end of the world as we knew it, and they — those bastards — felt fine.

*

Carol (dir. Todd Haynes, 2015). Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird, Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet, in a story of attraction at first sight. I thought of Brief Encounter (dir. David Lean, 1945), another story of two people in a relationship for which there are no guidelines. And I thought of the words Tony Asher wrote for Brian Wilson: Wouldn’t it be nice to live together, in the kind of the world where we belong? Carol and Therese, unlike the Brits, take to the road. Optional essay question: What might it mean that the film is named for only one of its two leads?

*

Ride the Pink Horse (dir. Robert Montgomery, 1947). Lucky Gagin (Montgomery), post-WWII, travels to New Mexico to avenge a comrade’s death. The real stars here are the supporting players: Fred Clark, Thomas Gomez, Wanda Hendrix, Art Smith. Anyone who’s seen Touch of Evil (dir. Orson Welles, 1958) will recognize the atmosphere. But Ride the Pink Horse moves very slowly.

*

The Lady Killers (dir. Alexander Mackendrick, 1955). Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness) — or should that be “Professor” Marcus? — and associates plot to rob an armored car. My mom spoke up strongly for Katie Johnson’s performance as Mrs. Louisa Alexandra Wilberforce, an archetypal little old lady. And yes, it’s a wonderful performance. And so are the musical “performances” (via phonograph) wonderful. But I still prefer The Lavender Hill Mob (dir. Charles Crichton, 1951). Sorry, Mom.

*

Don’t Look Now (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1973). Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, in Venice, as a couple who have lost a child. The poet Kenneth Koch said somewhere that Venice is the most beautiful city in the world. Here it’s a damp, grey city of the dead, in which the plainest everyday moment feels ominous. Great atmosphere, many genuine shocks. There’s also a sex scene with Christie and Sutherland, controversial then, a little hilarious now.

*

Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (dir. Alex Gibney, 2015). It begins reverently, with scenes of people lighting candles and weeping in front of Apple stores in the aftermath of Jobs’s death. And it then turns negative. Jobs treated Steve Wozniak badly. He treated the mother of his oldest child badly. He treated that child badly. He treated many other people badly, some of whom appear on screen (along with Apple veterans who speak of Jobs with tearful affection). And it’s all true. But so much is missing: Jobs’s carpentering father, calligraphy at Reed College, Xerox PARC, and, most of all, the Mac: what made it different from the PC, its reception and influence in the tech world. This documentary is more a tearing down of a public figure than an exploration of his work. (Note: Jobs for me is no hero. I read his life as a cautionary tale.)

*

Larceny, Inc. (dir. Lloyd Bacon, 1942). Edward G. Robinson as “Pressure” Maxwell, a hoodlum who takes over a luggage shop so that he can tunnel into the bank next door. Broad slapstick (watch Robinson wrap a suitcase), snappy one-liners. Anthony Quinn has a turn as a George Raft wannabe (at least I think that’s how we’re supposed to see him). If you know Jane Wyman from Johnny Belinda (dir. Jean Negulesco, 1948), you will be surprised by her ultra-glamorous appearance here as Maxwell’s adopted daughter. Jackie Gleason steals a scene as a soda jerk. My mind boggles at distances and how quickly they shorten: S. J. Perelman, one this film’s writers, was a friend of our friend Margie King Barab.

*

A Master Builder (dir. Jonathan Demme, 2014). Wallace Shawn’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen. Foundation damage and sexual rivalries in the house of a great architect. With André Gregory, Julie Hagerty (Airplane ), and Lisa Joyce. I’m baffled that this adaptation was the stuff of fourteen years of rehearsals and private performances, some of that can be seen in the tedious documentary André Gregory: Before and After Dinner (dir. Cindy Kleine, 2013). I have come, alas, to realize that my affection for “André” and “Wally” may always be limited to My Dinner with André (dir. Louis Malle, 1981). I found nothing to care about here.

*

The Spirit of St. Louis (dir. Billy Wilder, 1957). Jimmy Stewart’s Charles Lindbergh is mostly Jimmy Stewart, which means that Lindbergh remains a cipher: all we really know of him is his impulse to fly. When he shouts to Irish farmers from his plane, I hear the voice of George Bailey: “Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building and Loan.” The best elements in this film: the design and construction of an airplane and the preparations for flight. I think of this film as a long, digressive instructional video: The Spirit of St. Louis; or, How to Cross the Atlantic Ocean by Plane .

*

The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960). I wanted to see another Wilder after The Spirit of St. Louis, and I was struck more than ever by the cynical carnality of the executives who exploit the men (Jack Lemmon’s C. C. Baxter) and women (Shirley MacLaine’s Fran Kubelik) beneath them. (I’m aware of the pun in “beneath them.”) I love the odd intimacy that develops when Miss Kubelik ends up in Mr. Baxter’s apartment: she’s sleeping in his bed, and he doesn’t know her first name. The best moments: the office party and the broken mirror, Dr. Dreyfuss’s (Jack Kruschen) “Walk, Fran” and his advice to be a mensch, Mr. Baxter’s account of attempting suicide, Miss Kubelik’s closing line. The screenplay does the film one better, adding a line: “And that’s about it. Story-wise.”

*

The Wicker Man (dir. Robin Hardy, 1973). It’s been called the Citizen Kane of horror movies, praise that baffles me. An upright, uptight police sergeant (Edward Woodward) travels to an island in the Hebrides to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. A spectacular ending, but there’s little here to horrify and much that’s campy or silly. The procession of singing and swaying islanders made me think of the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour (1967). If The Wicker Man isn’t the Citizen Kane of horror, what might be? I’d vote for The Shining (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1980), though when it comes to horror, I am a low-information voter.

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)
Twelve more movies : Thirteen more : Fourteen more : Another thirteen more

Russel Wright’s American Modern

Cooper Hewitt’s Object of the Day: a brochure for Steubenville Pottery’s American Modern dinnerware. Our household has not a single piece of American Modern, but our house itself almost certainly owes a debt to Russel Wright, American Modern’s designer. Mary and Russel Wright wrote the best-selling Guide to Easier Living (1950), the book that we think must have inspired the people who designed our house in 1959. Our downstairs is an all-in-one room.

Related posts
Easier living with Mary and Russel Wright
The all-in-one room

Monday, April 25, 2016

Café culture

With a dinner break:

By the end of the nineteenth century the café represented a ritual which could absorb the better part of the day. “In the old days,” wrote Jean Moréas, one of the great habitués and lion of the Vachette, “I arrived around one in the afternoon . . . stayed till seven, and then went to dine. About eight we came back, and didn’t finally leave untll one in the morning.” It was a life into itself.

Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I , rev. ed. (New York: Vintage, 1968).

[Jean Moréas, poet (1856–1910). In 1913 the Café Vachette was nearing the end of its life.]