“Bob & Timmy & Lassie”

Fresca, l’astronave, has made a photo-collage to go with my story “The Poet”: it’s “Bob & Timmy & Lassie.”

[All of this silliness reminds me of something the owner of a corner grocery in Brookline, Massachusetts, said to Elaine and me one night in the mid-1980s: “It’s good to get away from reality once in a while.” Confirming what we already knew.]

“A radiance behind it”

Once a year, Robin travels by train to Stratford, Ontario, to see a Shakespeare play:


Alice Munro, “Tricks,” in Runaway (New York: Vintage, 2005).

Also from this book
One Munro sentence : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling”

Astonishment

The New York Times, from a story about Rex Tillerson:

Although he insisted he had never considered resigning, several people close to Mr. Tillerson said he has had to be talked out of drafting a letter of resignation on more than one occasion by his closest allies, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff. And they said he has regularly expressed astonishment at how little Mr. Trump understands the basics of foreign policy.

I’m astonished that he’s astonished.

Nancy rain

[Nancy, September 26, 1950.]

I’ve been waiting for the chance to identify with Nancy. We had less than a quarter-inch of rain in September. Today, it’s raining, for real.

Rain or no rain, you can read Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy six days a week at GoComics.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Stoner movie

The Hollywood Reporter reports that John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner is being adapted as a movie, directed by Joe Wright and starring Casey Affleck. A press release from the companies behind the movie describes the novel as the story of

the hardscrabble life of William Stoner, a dirt-poor farmer turned academic, who emerges as an unlikely existential hero while making his way through the first half of the 20th century.

Key elements in that description — “hardscrabble,” “dirt-poor,” “unlikely existential hero” — are lifted from the back cover of the New York Review Books paperback edition. But the press release still manages to get something wrong: Stoner is not “a dirt-poor farmer turned academic”: he’s the son of a farming family.

I’m sure I’ll see this movie, though I’m prepared to be disappointed.

Other Stoner posts
John Williams on Stoner and teaching : On “the true nature of the University” : Stoner and adjunct life : Stoner FTW

[And what’s with the producer’s claim that the novel is “not well-known”? It is. In 2013 NPR reported that the novel was a bestseller through much of Europe.]

“The Poet”

This post contains the text of a second short piece of fan fiction, by me: “The Poet,” a Timmy and Lassie story. Featuring a Major American Poet! This story began as what if and quickly turned into why not. Why not?

“The Poet” assumes a working acquaintance with the Lassie world, “outside Calverton,” and with some poetry. You can click on each image for a larger view. Whistling the opening and closing Lassie themes is optional. In its Martin-farm form, Lassie was a major part of my childhood.







 
 

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

Four more Lassie stories
“The ’Clipse” : “Bon Appétit!” (with Julia Child) : “On the Road” (with Tod and Buz from Route 66) : “The Case of the Purloined Prairie” (with Perry Mason and friends)

[Sources for the old poet’s words: “The Figure a Poem Makes” (1939), “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923). For the leopard, lion, and wolf: the first canto of Dante’s Inferno. Suffice to say that the old poet of this story is a figment of someone’s imagination.]

Proustian music

In 2008, I wished for “a CD or two assembling Proust-related music: likely inspirations for Vinteuil’s sonata, songs by Reynaldo Hahn, all in period recordings, if possible.” And lookit: violinist Maria Milstein and pianist Nathalia Milstein are releasing a CD, The Vinteuil Sonata, with music by Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, Gabriel Pierné, and Camille Saint-Saëns.

The Milstein sisters suspect that Gabriel Pierné’s Sonata for violin and piano in D minor, op. 36 is a source for the Vinteuil Sonata, the imaginary composition with the “little phrase” that so moves Charles Swann in In Search of Lost Time.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard) : “One phrase rising” : Swann’s little phrase : The “little phrase” again

A Garner quiz

Bryan Garner offers a quiz in minimalist editing: “Eyes for Errors” (ABA Journal). How many errors, glaring and venial, can you spot?

Related reading
All OCA Garner-related posts (Pinboard)

Muriel who?

[Henry, October 3, 2017.]

Henrietta is not pleased. Muriel probably wouldn’t be pleased either. If Henrietta and Muriel decide that Henry isn’t worth fighting over, they could argue about which girl’s name is more remote for early-twenty-first-century readers.

But Muriel may be a lost love. Perhaps she has left town. If so, and if Henry (whose own name remains popular for early-twenty-first-century newborns) could sing, he might offer these words: “Muriel, since you left town, the clubs closed down, and there’s one more burned-out lamppost on Main Street, down where we used to stroll.” But he can’t.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)
Vic loves Muriel / Muriel loves Victor

Shimkus fail

Terrible news out of Las Vegas this morning. Violence and hate are never the answer.

— John Shimkus (@RepShimkus) October 2, 2017

My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), has offered nothing more than this tweet. He hasn’t even mentioned the now-obligatory “thoughts and prayers.”

Shimkus has an A lifetime rating from the NRA. He leads Illinois congressional Republicans in total contributions from the NRA. Truly, his concern about “the destruction of human life” seems limited to prenatal life.

I called Shimkus’s office this afternoon to suggest that while violence and hate are never “the answer,” legislation concerning gun-ownership would be at least a large part of an answer to the problem of gun violence. No hunter needs an assault rifle to hunt. No hunter needs a “bump stock” or “gat crank” to turn a semi-automatic rifle into a homemade machine gun. No modern industrial nation knows the levels of gun violence that we in the United States know.

Have you called your representative and senators today?

Other john Shimkus posts
At work and play : No town halls (1) : No town halls (2) : Shimkus on prenatal care and men’s health insurance : Shimkus and the telecommunications industry : Shimkus unwittingly likens an Illinois gubernatorial candidate to Benito Mussolini