Teaching Infinite Jest

I was about to begin teaching David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest in a one o’clock class. But I couldn’t bring myself to go, so I retreated to the library and sat down to watch the clock. At two I left to walk to the classroom, and the students, five of them, were still there waiting. I told them that I had lost track of time in the library and that we were now going to begin Infinite Jest. And then, if we had time, we’d dip into The Pale King. I had a copy of Infinite Jest with me but no notes and no reading assignment to hand out. I decided to say a few things about the novel. No chapters, but sections marked with a moon-like ❍. And subsections. Highly autobiographical: “I am in here” is one the first sentences, but not a retelling of the writer’s life. And there are endnotes, which you have to read.

When I tried to show where the notes began, my paperback Infinite Jest turned into my hardcover Modern Library Ulysses, and I was paging through the “Ithaca” episode. Class dismissed. After which several new students showed up, and I went through my flimsy introduction to the novel all over again. After which I walked back to the library and found yet another student who had just signed up for my class. He wore a blue dress shirt and sat at a table. An Eagle Scout stood by his side, serving, it seemed, as a bodyguard. The new student explained that he had signed up for the class because there was a spot open. “But do you want to put in the time to read Infinite Jest ?” I asked him. “That’s my decision!” he shouted. “Of course,” I said. “I’m just wondering if it’s something you want to invest time in.”

I then walked out to a parking lot to call Elaine for a ride home. But I needed numbers to stick on my phone to make the call. I tried to buy some at a newsstand, but they were sold out.

This is the eleventh teaching-related dream I’ve had since retiring. None of them have gone well. The others: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10.

[Elaine identified some likely influences on this dream. “Ithaca”: DFW’s time in Syracuse. The Eagle Scout: the Honeymooners episode “The Hero,” in which Ralph claims to be an Eagle Scout. The numbers: the pages of stickers that came with my 2018 Moleskine planner. I can add one more possible influence: looking up Modern Library logos last night.]

Whose whom?

From New York magazine’s excerpting of Michael Wolff’s forthcoming Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House:

He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate.

From Donald Trump’s statement today about Steve Bannon:

Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

Those tidy hyphens, that complex syntax, that whom — I’d bet a Happy Meal that Trump didn’t write this statement.

It was though written by someone adept at channeling and stroking the executive ego. Notice the demotion of Bannon to a “staffer,” the celebration of Trump’s primary victories, the references to the “base” and “our historic victory,” and the claim that “Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look.”

I suspect that Trump thinks of all books as phony, except of course those written by his ghostwriters.

*

January 4: The Daily Beast reports that “Trump personally dictated key parts of the statement bashing his former chief strategist to senior communications staff” and that he was “emphatic about including put-downs,” among them the assertion that Bannon had little to do with “our historic victory” and the line about making winning look easy. I would note though that insisting on put-downs isn’t the same as creating them. And more importantly, dictation isn’t writing. (“One hyphen on hyphen one?” Really?) I still cannot imagine Trump writing the sentence I wrote about in this post.

Related posts
Another tweet with a hyphen
Donald Trump’s spelling
Who’s tweeting?

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Van Dyke Parks in The Honeymooners The episode with VDP as Tommy Manicotti is back online.

The GRamercy Five

I’m still listening my way through my dad’s CDs: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Matt Dennis, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Stéphane Grappelli, Bobby Hackett, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dick Hyman, Harry James, Hank Jones, Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Peggy Lee, Mary Ann McCall, Susannah McCorkle, Dave McKenna, Ray McKinley, Marian McPartland, Johnny Mercer, Helen Merrill, Glenn Miller, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Red Norvo, Anita O’Day, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, Art Pepper, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Boyd Raeburn, Django Reinhardt, Marcus Roberts, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Rushing, Catherine Russell, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra.

And now, Artie Shaw, about fourteen hours of Artie Shaw. What a band. I had no idea. But also: what a small group, the Gramercy Five, its name inspired by Shaw’s telephone exchange. Here are two Gramercy Five sides:

“Special Delivery Stomp” (Artie Shaw). Recorded in Hollywood, September 3, 1940.

“My Blue Heaven” (Walter Donaldson–George A. Whiting). Recorded in Hollywood, December 5, 1940.

The links will take you to digitized 78s from the George Blood collection at Archive.org. (The RCA Bluebird Complete Gramercy Five Sessions presents the music with much cleaner sound.) On both sides: Artie Shaw, clarinet; Billy Butterfield, trumpet; Johnny Guarnieri, harpsichord; Al Hendrickson, electric guitar; Jud DeNaut, bass; Nick Fatool drums.

“Special Delivery Stomp” puts me in mind of Raymond Scott. On both recordings, the electric guitar and harpischord (which sounds at times almost like a pedal steel guitar) make me think of Western swing. Seventy-seven years after the fact, it’s amazing music. Ralph Waldo Emerson had the explanation, even if he didn’t get to hear the Gramercy Five: “This perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.”

Artie Shaw was a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon. On the difference between Benny Goodman and himself: “I played music. Goodman played the clarinet.”

Also from my dad’s CDs
Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Charlie Christian : Blossom Dearie : Duke Ellington : Coleman Hawkins : Billie Holiday : Louis Jordan : Charlie Parker : Jimmy Rushing

[Another ensemble whose name may have been inspired by an exchange name: the Stuyvesant Quartet.]

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Close the door Now with a comment from Anton Schwartz noting the death of Alan Bleviss, whose voice is heard on the PSA.

LA to Vegas (all in the fambly)

LA to Vegas premieres tonight on Fox, 9:00 Eastern. Will Ferrell and Steve Levitan (Modern Family) are among those bringing the show to television. Good pedigree. And our son-in-law Seth is one of the show’s writers. Excellent pedigree. The trailer suggests that the series will be genuinely funny.

Our household will be watching. Go Seth!

Talking like a Raymond Chandler novel

[Zippy, January 2, 2018.]

Someone’s been reading Raymond Chandler.

The Big Sleep (1939): “The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom.”

Farewell My Lovely (1940): “Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

Raymond Chandler had strong responses to figures of speech. He famously faulted Ross Macdonald for describing a car as “acned with rust.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Peggy Cummins (1925–2017)

The actress Peggy Cummins has died at the age of ninety-two. She is best known for her performance as the sharpshooter-turned-criminal Annie Laurie Starr in the deliriously twisted Gun Crazy (dir. John H. Lewis, 1949).

Where to see Gun Crazy? Amazon is streaming it. Netflix finally has it as a DVD.

New Year’s Eve’s morning

A charming idea: the Orpheum Children’s Museum’s Noon Day Drop, a celebration of New Year’s Eve that began at 10:30 a.m. on December 31 and ended at 1:00 p.m. that same day, with party hats, crafts, and thousands of balloons dropping “at the strike of noon.” Here is an eyewitness report.

Our fambly has special affection for the Orpheum, which, as its name suggests, inhabits an old theater. A babysitter for our children worked at the museum for a while after college. Thus it was Heather’s Museum, or as Ben then pronounced it, Hevverd’s Muhceeum. Heather gave us a tour of the Orpheum many years ago, onto the stage and up to the projection booth.

A quick Google search suggests that a noon New Year’s party for children is a common practice, common enough to have a familiar name: Noon Year’s Eve. I still like the awkward David Foster Wallace-esque multiple possessive New Year’s Eve’s morning.

A related post
LADIES’ RETIRING ROOM (As seen in the Orpheum)

Isaac Barrow on bookishness

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), mathematician and theologian, on learnedness, or what I’ll call bookishness:

It is a calling that fitteth a man for all conditions and fortunes; so that he can enjoy prosperity with moderation, and sustain adversity with comfort: he that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.

I spotted an inscription with the final clause (“he that loveth”) high on a wall at the Chicago Cultural Center years ago and finally got around to looking up the source: a sermon entitled “Of Industry in Our Particular Calling, as Scholars,” found in The Works of Dr. Isaac Barrow, Volume Three, ed. T.S. Hughes (1831), available at Google Books.

[I’ve borrowed bookishness from George Steiner.]