Domestic comedy

[The subject was one of Beverly Cleary’s characters.]

“He seems to have . . .”

[And then in unison.]

“. . . a very high opinion of himself!”

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Cute and the dictionary

A “boy” — the still mysterious Johnny Chessler — has called Jean Jarrett cute:


Beverly Cleary, Jean and Johnny (1959).

One could read this passage in relation to W. E. B. DuBois’s idea of double-consciousness: “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.” Double-consciousness is unmistakably at work here: Jean sees herself as insignificant when others call her Half Pint; she begins to see herself as cute when Johnny Chessler pronounces her so. She later looks in a mirror and imagines how she might have looked to Johnny. By the end of the novel, Jean is able to look in a mirror with a stronger sense of self.

To my mind, Cleary’s wit heightens rather than diminishes the pathos in this passage.

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Dowdy-world miracle (From Fifteen )
Jean Jarrett, letter writer
Ramona Quimby and cursive
Ramona Quimby, stationery fan

[Whatever dictionary Jean is using, I don’t have it.]

The New Yorker that and which

Mary Norris’s explanation of The New Yorker approach to that and which is likely, I think, to leave many viewers confused. The New Yorker follows Fowler’s Modern English Usage in using that with restrictive sentence elements and which with non-restrictive elements. The confusion comes with Norris’s sample sentences. Norris attributes these two (which she uses to introduce that and which ) to E. B. White:

The New Yorker is a magazine, which likes “that.”

The New Yorker is the magazine that likes “which.”

The second sentence is fine. But the first doesn’t make sense. It’s comparable to a sentence that says

Il Bambino is a restaurant, which serves paninis.

The unfortunate implication is that a magazine is a thing that likes the word that , and that a restaurant is an establishment that serves paninis.

Norris’s next example, in which that takes the place of which (“a fifty-two-thousand-square-foot gym that passersby sometimes mistake for a megachurch”) raises no complications. But her final example baffles me. What should The New Yorker use here, that , or which ?

[S]he suffered a series of pulled hamstrings, rolled ankles, and stress fractures that required cortisone shots in her elbow.

[S]he suffered a series of pulled hamstrings, rolled ankles, and stress fractures, which required cortisone shots in her elbow.

The New Yorker opted for which , a puzzling which . I would read the sentence as saying that this athlete suffered not just fractures but fractures that required cortisone shots. That’s how serious the fractures were. Norris herself says that that seems fine here. And which could be mistaken, if only for a moment, for the magazine’s irregular restrictive which , in which case it would be the entire series of injuries that required cortisone shots in the elbow (which of course would make no sense). The irregular restrictive which is a complication that Norris does not mention.

I appreciate what seems to be the intent behind these New Yorker videos: to offer the viewer a light-hearted, pain-free engagement with matters of grammar and usage (while proclaiming the magazine’s adherence to high standards). But the history and complications of that and which must be found elsewhere — in, for instance, the three columns of text devoted to the two words in Garner’s Modern English Usage .

Two related posts
Important-ly
Review of Norris’s Between You & Me

One that got away

One more thing I learned on my summer vacation: an Italian-American bookstore opened in Boston’s North End in October 2015. I AM Books calls itself the first Italian-American bookstore in the United States. It’s a small store, with a sampling of used books (large volumes of Leonardo and Michelangelo were just five dollars each) and shelves devoted to children’s books, cookbooks, history, travel, Italian writers (in Italian and in English translation), and Italian-American writers. I picked up a novel by a writer I’d never heard of: Leonardo Sciascia’s The Day of the Owl (1961). And I recommended that the store look into stocking some Gilbert Sorrentino. (Brooklyn, represent.)

Favorite moment: two teenaged girls were browsing and noticed the music playing in the store: “Was Frank Sinatra Italian?” one of them asked.

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Gilbert Sorrentino (1929–2006)
Things I learned on my summer vacation, 2016

[New York City’s S. F. Vanni began in 1884, but that was a bookstore for books in Italian.]

An endless, roiling sea

It hit me when I was reading James Franco’s list of favorite books in The New York Times : roil . In all its forms, it’s a vogue word. I started searching in the Times and in Google News:

June 5: “Slosberg roils fellow Democrats,” “roiling the financial markets,” “roiling markets.”

June 4: “a day already roiled,” “roiled by an alarming rise,” “roiled the architectural establishment,” “Norris’s gut was roiling,” “roiling around an expansive field” “secessionist movements roiling Scotland,” “the roiling cauldron of ambition,” “the roiling blood of a colonial past,” “the roiling column of black smoke,” “roiling confusion,” “a roiling generation,” “flame roiling out of the open garage door.”

June 3: “roils the Republic of Congo,” “Sugar Land roils over Selfie Statue,” “may roil financial markets,” “roil Oregon’s outdoors,” “severe weather and tornadoes roil plains,” “digital technology roiling education, publishing, and visual culture,” “political crisis roiling Venezuela,” “roiling changes,” “Iraq’s roiling impatience,” “the roiling melody,” “roiling rivers,” “roiling sexual scandal,” “a roiling storm,” “a roiling tale of desperation, love and struggle,” “roiling waters,” “currently roiling Europe,” “roiling through the city,” “the emotions roiling.”

June 2: “set to roil Democratic convention,” “roiled the city,” “roiled the Qatif area,” “roiling controversy,” “roiling fury,” “roiling global financial markets,” “a roiling national debate,” “a roiling sea,” “that roiling sea of clouds,” “a roiling sea of volatile nitrogen ice,” “roiling sexual scandal,” “roiling the medical community,” “roiling with divisiveness,” “roiling the waters,” “roiling beneath its surface.”

June 1: “diesel scandal roils,” “school district roiled,” “stocks, sterling roiled,” “the roiling aftermath,” “roiling bass,” “roiling cells of nitrogen ice,” “roiling debates,” “roiling emotions,” “the roiling magma,” “a nation roiling,” “a roiling national debate,” “that record’s roiling title track,” “roiling social debate,” “roiling tensions,” “roiling water,” “the roiling waters,” “roiling the city,” “roiling the fashion industry,” “roiling Libya’s politics,” “a storm roiling underneath the surface,” “a steadily roiling competition,” “an endless, roiling sea of numbers.”

An endless, roiling sea of vogue words! I rest my case.

[A Nation Roiling would make a nice title for a Bob and Ray news spoof. Roiling Tensions would be good for a soap-opera spoof.]

NPR, sheesh

This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday :

“Like a good Chinese son, Bob Hung’s parents expected him to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant.”

“Like a good Chinese son”: a dangling modifier. Because it compares parents to a son, it’s a distracting dangler, so distracting that Elaine and I both said “What?” before the sentence ended. A smaller problem: him lacks a genuine referent. How to make things right:

Like a good Chinese son, Bob Hung was supposed to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant.

Or better:

As a good Chinese son, Bob Hung was supposed to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant.

That the expectations are parental seems clear from context. But if not:

Bob Hung’s parents expected their son to grow up to be a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an accountant — a good Chinese son.

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James Allen, letter writer

James Allen has written a letter to The Washington Post responding to a letter that criticized his comic strip Mark Trail . The best Allen can do: if you don’t like the current stuck-in-a-cave story, well, it will end soon.

Mark, Gabe, and Carina have been stuck in a cave since February 3, interrupted only by a brief sojourn in a sinkhole.


[Mark Trail , June 4, 2016.]

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Ali, Moore, poets

Marianne Moore writes about Muhammad Ali:

He is neat. His brow is high. If beaten, he is still not “beat.” He fights and he writes.

    Is there something I have missed?
    He is a smiling pugilist .

From George Plimpton’s account of Ali (then Cassius Clay) and Moore at Toots Shor’s Restaurant, where they collaborated on a poem. You can read the whole story via Google Books. Moore’s sentences reappear in her liner notes for Ali’s 1963 spoken-word LP I Am the Greatest .

A related post
Carlo Rotella on Muhammad Ali, Homer, and translation

[Muhammad Ali dies yesterday at the age of seventy-four.]

Overheard

“. . . but we couldn’t do the forced smiles.”

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Where are the 2017 Moleskine planners?

Elaine and I stopped into Moleskine stores in Manhattan and Cambridge late last month. (We didn’t know that there were such stores until we happened upon them.) I was looking for the 2017 Pocket Weekly Planner (hardcover, horizontal layout). In past years, the next year’s Moleskine planners became available in May or June. In each Moleskine store this May, eighteen-month 2016–17 planners abounded, but no 2017 planners. Not until November, we were told in Manhattan. Not until October, we were told in Cambridge.

And yet — we walked into an independent bookstore, headed to the Moleskine shelves, and there it was, the 2017 PWP, along with other 2017 Moleskine planners. I asked the clerk about the October/November release date, and she was puzzled. She checked and told me that the store had another eighteeen 2017 PWPs in stock. I checked Amazon and discovered that 2017 Moleskine planners have been available since May 18.

It seems reasonable to wonder whether Moleskine stores are holding off on displaying 2017 planners to give the 2016–17 merchandise a longer shelf life. The Moleskine website shows only 2016 and 2016–17 planners. The company’s Twitter makes reference to 2016–17 planners as “new arrivals” and has nothing to say about 2017 planners. May–June is the new-planner season, at least for those who are slightly obsessive, and there’s something odd and unpleasant about a company holding back merchandise from its regular customers while trying to hook new customers mid-year. I don’t need an eighteen-month Moleskine planner, because I bought a 2016 Moleskine last year.

For now, anyone who’s looking for a 2017 Moleskine planner would do well to look anyplace but a Moleskine store.

*

June 20: I wrote to Moleskine on June 3 and, again, yesterday, with a link to this post. I received a reply this morning. A company representative tells me that “this kind of information hasn’t been released from our offices” and that 2017 planners are now available from the Moleskine website. Which still doesn’t explain why in Moleskine’s stores I was told “October” and “November.”

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