Homer’s Odyssey, Joe Sachs’s translation

Homer, Odyssey, closing lines of book 2, translated by Joe Sachs (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2014).

I wanted to keep the translator’s long lines intact, without indenting the runover words of virtually every line. So just click for a larger view. And then hear the six-stress lines: “And ALL through the NIGHT and into the DAWN the SHIP CUT her WAY.” And the Anglo-Saxon touches: “set it into its socket,” “fastened it in place with forestays.”

I’m not sure how I found my way to Joe Sachs’s translation of the Odyssey , a translation that seems to have met with widespread indifference. But two episodes in, I think I’ve found a new favorite to place alongside Robert Fitzgerald’s and Stanley Lombardo’s versions of the poem. Things here have heft. And they are luminous. Highly recommended.

Related reading
All OCA Homer posts (Pinboard)

[Elaine and I are reading the poem aloud in this translation, an episode or two a day. Such a pleasure.]

Twelve more movies

[No spoilers.]

The Hound of the Baskervilles (dir. Sidney Lanfield, 1939). The first appearance of Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. It is pleasant to sojourn, at least for a short time, in a world where the mind can make sense of all things. Bonuses: handwritten letters and sardines.

*

The Long Day Closes (dir. Terence Davies, 1992). It begins brilliantly, with what sounds like the J. Arthur Rank gong, followed by the 20th-Century Fox fanfare. And between them, a bit of dialogue from The Happiest Days of Your Life (dir. Frank Lauder, 1950): “A tap, Gossage, I said a tap! You’re not introducing a film!” What follows is a plotless evocation of a Liverpool boyhood, 1955–1956, lonely, almost certainly gay, and filled with music and film musicals. The most Proustian film I’ve seen. Painterly, too. A masterpiece. And to think that I found it by browsing in the L s.


[Bud (Leigh McCormack) and his mum (Marjorie Yates), looking like a Vermeer. Click for a larger view.]

*

Knock on Any Door (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1949). Humphrey Bogart as a tough kid turned lawyer, now defending another tough kid (John Derek). Though I love Casablanca , High Sierra , and The Maltese Falcon , I am forced to concede that Bogart was not an especially good actor. But we’ll always have Paris. Look for Dooley Wilson (uncredited) at the piano in a nightclub scene.

*

The Madonna’s Secret (dir. William Thiele, 1946). One after another, a painter’s models end up dead. Who done it? A B-ish B-movie, with the great gift of John Alton’s cinematography.

*

Bottle Rocket (dir. Wes Anderson, 1996). Three stooges (Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Robert Musgrave) rob a bookstore (a bookstore) and aspire to greater things. Good-natured, unabashedly male-centric idiocy. Favorite bits: the notebook, the farewell conversation via interpreter, the phone call. The notebook’s pages are online for close reading.

*

The Fits (dir. Anna Rose Holmer, 2015). This film divided our household. Elaine didn’t like it. I did, a lot. Something is going wrong in a Cincinnati community center, where boys, girls, young men, and young women spar and work out and dance. A deeply unnerving film. To say anything more would be to give something — I’m not sure what — away. My favorite lines: “They’re filling up a container. They look like astronauts.” I would love to teach this film and hear what students make of it.


[Click for a larger view.]

*

Amanda Knox (dir. Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn, 2016). This film might be described as Making a Murderer: The Study-Abroad Edition . An outrageous story of prosecutorial and media malpractice. Giuliano Mignini and Nick Pisa, prosecutor and pseudo-journalist, respectively, will live on in infamy in this documentary.

*

The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years (dir. Ron Howard, 2016). When Ron Howard passed right by the Beatles’ great performance on the Swedish television show Drop In (1963), I knew that this documentary would be much more than a rehash of material from The Beatles Anthology . A wonderful, mild reminder of the happiness and exhaustion of Beatlemania. (No sex, and nothing stronger than pot.) The film’s pacing is remarkable: fifty minutes or so in, I began to feel tired for these guys, and then they begin to spend time in the studio.

I wish that Howard had been able to track down an unknown fan or two or three who spoke to reporters back then — they would have been at least as interesting to hear from as the celebrity commenters. But I found Whoopi Goldberg’s observation true to my childhood experience of the Beatles: “The whole world lit up.” That was it, exactly.

A bonus: in theaters, the film is followed by a thirty-minute version of the group’s August 15, 1965, performance at Shea Stadium.

*

The Commitments (dir. Alan Parker, 1991). Would you rather be an unemployed pipefitter, or an unemployed musician? Yeah, I thought so. A soul band takes shape in the slums of Dublin. An endearing, winning film, with genuine musical excitement, and a lead singer who seems to be channeling Joe Cocker (but with no need for a translator). My alternate title: Waiting for Wilson Pickett . My favorite moment: watching these musical aspirants watch James Brown in the 1964 concert film T.A.M.I. Show .

If all culture is theft, this film is about breaking into Fort Knox.

*

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (dir. Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2016). Suppose they gave a war and after a while nobody thought it was still newsworthy? Tina Fey as Kim Baker, a real-life journalist who packs up for Afghanistan with little preparation and few second thoughts. The dark comedy of desparate circumstances. “Hearts and minds: that’s the two best places to shoot somebody.”

*

Criss Cross (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1949). Had I seen it before? Criss Cross is both memorable and forgettable enough to make me wonder. (I’m still not sure.) Burt Lancaster and Yvonne DeCarlo as doomed lovers, Dan Duryea as a criminal mastermind. The film’s unusual bits — a surreal heist, a menacing hospital scene — help offset the more predictable elements.

*

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (dir. Blake Edwards, 1961). It’s streaming at Netflix, a good enough reason to watch it again. Mr. Yunioshi aside, I love the film’s Janus-like picture of mid-century Manhattan as playground for free spirits and island of lost souls. I keep Breakfast at Tiffany’s in my head with The Apartment , The World of Henry Orient , and A Thousand Clowns . Are there other films that I should know about along these mid-century bittersweet lines?


[Varjak, Paul (George Peppard) explains the card catalogue to Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn): “Each one of these little drawers is stuffed with little cards, and each little card is a book or an author.” “I think that’s fascinating!” Click for a larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)
Fourteen more : Thirteen more : Twelve more : Another thirteen more : Another dozen : Yet another dozen : Another twelve : And another twelve : Still another twelve : Twelve more

Mildred Bailey sings

If you’ve never heard the verse to “Georgia on My Mind,” or if you’ve never heard the verse to “Honeysuckle Rose,” or if you’ve never heard the verse to either, or if you’ve never heard Mildred Bailey, or even if you have:

 

“Georgia on My Mind” (Hoagy Carmichael–Stuart Gorrell). Mildred Bailey and a sextet directed by Matty Malneck: Nat Natoli, trumpet; John “Bullet” Cordaro, clarinet; Malneck, violin; Roy Bargy, piano; Fritz Ciccone, guitar; Mike Trafficante, tuba. November 24, 1931.

“Honeysuckle Rose” (Thomas “Fats” Waller–Andy Razaf). Mildred Bailey and Her Alley Cats: Bunny Berigan, trumpet; Johnny Hodges, alto sax; Teddy Wilson, piano; Grachan Moncur, bass. December 6, 1935.

Before listening to five CDs’ worth of Mildred Bailey, I knew her voice just slightly. And I had never heard these verses. So I have just realized that the verse to “Georgia on My Mind” strongly (and appropriately) echoes Franz Liszt’s Liebestraum no. 3. Who knew!

[I’m making my way through my dad’s CDs. Adderley, Julian “Cannonball”; Anderson, Ivie; Armstrong, Louis; Astaire, Fred; Bailey, Mildred. Next stop: Basie, Count.]

Mark Trail , recycling through the years

 
 
[Mark Trail, revised, May 10, 2014; May 14, 2015; April 28, 2016; October 15, 2016.]

The key revisions to today’s face look pretty slapdash: elevated eyebrows, a blue swash for a forelock. But that left ear never changes. Don’t mess with perfection.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[Swash : “an extended flourish on a printed character.” It’s a metaphorical swash, on a comic-strip character.]

From the Saturday Stumper

Here’s an exceptionally clever clue from today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell. It’s 31-Down, four letters: “Undo a body modification, perhaps.” No spoilers: the answer is in the comments.

Spotting liars

No, nothing to do with politics. It’s a New York Times quiz: “Can You Spot the Liar?” I got eight of ten right. I would have had nine, but I second-guessed myself. And that’s the truth.

From an old notebook

Alfred Appel Jr., interviewed about his book The Art of Celebration: Twentieth-Century Painting, Literature, Sculpture, Photography, and Jazz (1992):

“I began the lecture with some ringing phrase like, ‘Modern man is isolated and alienated,’ he recalled in an interview at the Museum of Modern Art, where he was about to view the Matisse exhibit. I said, ‘We are all the denizens of T. S. Eliot’s “Waste Land,”’ and I built from there.” But then, he recalled, he stopped, looked out over the students eagerly taking notes and thought, “I don't think I’ve ever seen so many happy, contented faces. Wait a minute, they’re not isolated, they're not alienated. . . . Let me think twice about this ‘Waste Land’ idea. It's what we call an epiphany.”

The current Matisse exhibit, he said, is clear evidence of what people want from art. “The great popularity of this show suggests there is a kind of exit poll being taken at the end of the 20th century, and the vote is in favor of eros over thanatos. Matisse is everyone’s person for celebrating the simple things that all the wars and disasters of the 20th century have not obliterated from the lives of ordinary people.”

From “Eros by a Landslide,” an interview with Jon Elsen, The New York Times Book Review , December 20, 1992.

Also from this notebook
Alfalfa, Ted Berrigan, Jack Kerouac, metaphors
Beauty and the Beast and kid talk
John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch
Plato, Shirley Temple, vulgarity, wisdom, Stan Laurel

Comics synchronicity

[Mark Trail , October 11, 2016.]


[Nancy , October 16, 1951. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Random Acts of Nancy panel (“Come on, Sluggo”) sent me to Nancy Loves Sluggo: Dailies, 1949–1951 (2014), the third volume in Fantagraphics’s Nancy series. (Collect them all.)

Sixty-five years ago, a girl was leading the way. Come on, Mark.

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Michelle Obama speaks

Michelle Obama, campaigning in New Hampshire today:

“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn’t matter what party you belong to.”

Read a transcript or watch and listen.

If our children were still wee pals at home, we’d be watching and listening to this speech with them after dinner tonight.

[I feel honored to have met Michelle Obama in 2004, right here in downstate Illinois. I still hope that someday she’ll run for Senate. Richard Durbin will be weeks short of seventy-six when he is up for reelection in 2020.]

Block that metaphor

On CNN this afternoon:

“They’re trying to find the middle ground where they can straddle this awkward situation.”

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All OCA metaphor posts (Pinboard)
Further awkward straddling