On Proust’s birthday

Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

I don’t know whether I have told you that this book is a novel. At least it deviates least from the novel form. There is a Monsieur who narrates and who says “I”; there are a great many characters; in the first volume they are “prepared” in such a way that what they do in the second is exactly the opposite of what one would expect from the first. From the publisher’s point of view, unfortunately, this first volume is much less narrative than the second. And from the point of view of composition, it is so complex that it will not be clear until much later when all the “themes” have begun to be combined. You see, there is nothing very engaging about all this. But under the conditions we have discussed, it seems to me that M. Grasset cannot lose anything, and, literarily speaking, I do not think that he will be “déclassé ” because of it.

Marcel Proust, in a letter to René Blum, February 24, 1913. From Letters of Marcel Proust, translated by Mina Curtiss (New York: Helen Marx Books / Books & Co., 2006).

René Blum arranged for the publisher Bernard Grasset to publish “this first volume,” Du côté de chez Swann, at Proust’s expense. Blum (1878–1942) was a journalist, art collector, and ballet impresario. He died in Auschwitz.

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All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Double articles

Grammarphobia offers everything you always wanted to know about double articles, as in “the El Niño effect.” Which reminds me of the El Phoenix Room. Gone but not forgotten.

I have the strongest of suspicions that the El Phoenix is the model for The Unexamined Life, a Boston bar in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. Notice the capitalized article in the bar’s name. In the El Phoenix’s place stands Harry’s Bar & Grill, unless something has already taken its place.

A related post
Infinite Jest, “night-noises”

Life before air-conditioning

“Broadway had open trolleys with no side walls, in which you at least caught the breeze, hot though it was, so that desperate people, unable to endure their apartments, would simply pay a nickel and ride around aimlessly for a couple of hours to cool off”: in 1998, Arthur Miller wrote for The New Yorker about life before air-conditioning.

See also 99% Invisible on “thermal delight.”

A coffee quiz

[Life, October 31, 1938. Click for a slightly larger view.]

Insomniacs drinking coffee — sounds like homeopathy. Football teams drinking coffee at halftime — I wouldn’t know. Regular habits — like golf? No, not golf. “The gentle wave-like motion” — my inner twelve-year-old is snickering. Hangovers — my inner twenty-four-year-old is thinking that coffee cures them.

So many claims, such “oceans of notions” — and, as William Butler Yeats might have put it, “The coffee cup’s in the midst of all.” Yes, where there’s life — there’s coffee! I like that dowdy cup, steam rising, message written in cream by an exceedingly skilled barista. Oh, wait: it’s 1938. No barista.

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All OCA coffee posts (Pinboard)

Trump vs. breast-feeding

“The intensity of the [Trump] administration’s opposition to the breast-feeding resolution stunned public health officials and foreign diplomats, who described it as a marked contrast to the Obama administration, which largely supported [the World Health Organization’s] longstanding policy of encouraging breast-feeding”: “U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials” (The New York Times).

For someone like Donald Trump, women’s breasts have but one purpose, no?

And even in this story, there’s a Russia connection.

Domestic comedy

[While watching 90 Day Fiancé. It was very late.]

“It’s like Jerry Springer.”

“In houses.”

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From the Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Frank Longo, is a tough one. I had to look up three answers to finish: a bit of crosswordese, a fairly obscure quotation, and a term that left me baffled, ending in BOX. (A what?)

Two clues that I especially liked: 1-Across, four letters: “Galaxy cluster.” And 11-Down, four letters: “Joiner of many clubs?”

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, July 7, 2018. Click for a much larger view.]

I doubt that Nancy has ever stepped into a church. Or if she has, it was probably to “borrow” a dime from the collection box (for a soda). Or candles for Sluggo’s birthday cake. Or something. All that aside: today’s strip is a pleasing assembly of comic-strip characters, all of whom attend a Christian house of worship with non-representational stained-glass windows. From front to back, left to right, I see Nancy, Curtis Wilkins, Dennis the Menace, Mary Worth, Archie Andrews, Earl Pickles (where’s Opal?), Popeye the Sailor, Perfesser Cosmo Fishhawk (Shoe), and Dick Tracy. The couple in the second row, the guy with the red tie, and the angry-looking bird: no idea. Anyone? A little help?

A mystery of the Hi and Lois interstice: the guy with the red tie changes his seat between the first and second panels.

July 8: Eric Reaves, the strip’s artist, explained in a comment at Comics Kingdom: “The couple is my wife and I (the artist of the strip). The red tie guy is a character I created many years ago for a rejected comic strip idea, and the lady in purple is my grandmother!”

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All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[Perhaps that bird is an Angry Bird. The Angry Birds now have a comic strip.]

Beautiful libraries

From the BBC, some of the world’s most beautiful libraries.

The most beautiful library I’ve ever used: Fordham University’s Duane Library, with tiers, nooks, crannies, passageways, mysterious doors, and spiral staircases. Here is a 1951 photograph that gives a good idea of the library’s main space. Dig the tiers! (When I was a student, tables alternated with the shelves, making for cozy little workspaces.) And here are recent photographs of the remodeled multi-purpose Duane, tiers and shelves removed, no longer a library. I liked working in the little room with the spiral staircase, which I think was in the Bs: philosophy. What’s the most beautiful library you know?

“All coming out of a tube”

Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz. 1929. Trans. Michael Hoffman (New York: New York Review Books, 2018).

A great novel, and not nearly as intimidating as you might think.

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