From the Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Greg Johnson, is difficult. For me, forty-eight minutes of difficulty. Getting the answer, finally, to the ultra-vague 1-Down, “Development facilitator,” let everything else begin to fall into place.

Two clues that I especially liked: 49-Across, ten letters: “Flat-bottomed vessels.” And 58-Down, three letters: “The tennis US Open is played on it.” Talk about your misdirection! No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

“What are they doing to us?”

“What is happening to us? What are they doing to us? We’re being kicked around by crazy people”: Martha Dobie (Miriam Hopkins) in These Three (dir. William Wyler, 1936).

[When I heard this line last night, I thought: current events.]

Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?

[Zippy, August 17, 2018.]

The conversation at the diner has turned to graphic novels. “You like graphic novels, Louise?” “I never read one, Mr. Nesbitt.” Above, Mr. Nesbitt’s reply.

Mr. Nesbitt needs to know that unlike the snows of yesteryear, Nancy and Sluggo will be with us always. On a daily basis, in original and more recent incarnations. And in great big books, though Nancy Loves Sluggo: Complete Dailies 1949-1951 appears to be out of stock at the publisher.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Words from Nineteen Eighty-Four

This week at A.Word.A.Day, words from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four that have entered the English language. Today’s entry: oldspeak. (In the novel, it’s capitalized.)

I think I would have chosen memory hole. As the Oxford English Dictionary defines it: “a slot through which documents recording past events, etc., can be disposed of, as part of the manipulation of memories of the past; also fig.”

Previously: newspeak, doublethink, Big Brother, unperson.

Related reading
All OCA Orwell posts (Pinboard)

Aretha Franklin (1942–2018)

From the New York Times obituary:

In her indelible late-1960s hits, Ms. Franklin brought the righteous fervor of gospel music to secular songs that were about much more than romance. Hits like “Do Right Woman — Do Right Man,” “Think,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Chain of Fools” defined a modern female archetype: sensual and strong, long-suffering but ultimately indomitable, loving but not to be taken for granted.

Did you see her Kennedy Center Honors performance?

Tomatin

When I retired from teaching in 2015, The Crow suggested pouring some single malt Scotch. I bought a bottle of Glenlivet. A few weeks ago, when Elaine went looking for a (third, I think) bottle, the store was out. A clerk recommended Tomatin. I don’t think it’s much like Glenlivet at all. But I like it. I like it. I like it. I’ll let the distillery speak: “A rich, fruity aroma is the prelude to sweet flavours of ripe apples, pears and a subtle hint of nut before the long, pleasantly oily finish.” Can an oily finish be pleasant? Here, have a sip.

Thanks, Martha, for the single-malt suggestion, which I took to heart.

A related post
“Middle school is like Scotch”

[And on a Nineteen Eighty-Four note: Tomatin sure beats Victory Gin.]

Words from Nineteen Eighty-Four

This week at A.Word.A.Day, words from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four that have entered the English language. Today’s entry: unperson. In Orwell’s novel, the word is applied to a Comrade Withers, once honored, now disgraced and to be struck from the historical record: “He did not exist: he had never existed.”

Previously: newspeak, doublethink, Big Brother.

Related reading
All OCA Orwell posts (Pinboard)

A new old Kinks song

“Suddenly it’s too late”: a line from “Time Song,” a previously unreleased Kinks song, no doubt written by Ray Davies. Backstory here.



As a kid, I had time for just one great group. But as I wrote in a 2016 post, “I’m now convinced that there were three great pop groups in the 1960s: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Kinks.” I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger.

Ray, Dave, Mick, it’s not too late to get the band back together.

Then again, it is, really. A reunion would be a sad shadow of its original.

Thanks, Elaine.

The Avital Ronell story

Avital Ronell, professor of German and comp lit at New York University, has been found responsible for sexually harassing a student and has been suspended for the 2018–2019 academic year. Reading the newly available details of this story makes clear (at least to me) that Ronell’s behavior toward her student Nimrod Reitman was an abuse of power — utterly, wildly inappropriate. Says one of Ronell’s defenders, “Avital definitely is a type of her own.” Yep, that’s true.

Read more from The Advocate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times.

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August 18: Reitman is suing Ronell and NYU. There’s now a press release on behalf on Ronell. And there’s more reportage from the Chronicle (1, 2), Salon, and the Times.

A thought after reading Reitman’s complaint: Ronell’s conduct warrants more than a suspension. NYU should have fired Ronell for conduct unbecoming. Unbelievably, appallingly unbecoming.

A thought after reading the press release: it’s surprising to see Ronell identified as an “educator.” See Paul Fussell’s Class (1983):

The next time you meet a distinguished university professor, especially one who fancies himself well known nationally for his ideas and writings, tell him it’s an honor to meet such a famous educator, and watch: first he will look down for a while, then up, but not at you, then away. And very soon he will detach himself from your company. He will be smiling all the time, but inside he will be in torment.

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August 31: Andrea Long Chu, a graduate student at NYU, writes about working with Avital Ronell. An excerpt:

A culture of critics in name only, where genuine criticism is undertaken at the risk of ostracism, marginalization, retribution — this is where abuses like Avital’s grow like moss, or mold. Graduate students know this intuitively; it is written on their bones.

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September 9: Bernd Hüppauf, former chair of the NYU German department, has written an account of department life under Avital Ronell. It’s now available in English translation at Salon. Hüppauf returned from a semester abroad to find that Ronell had displaced him as department chair:

She pursued one goal: The work of Avital Ronell and Jacques Derrida must be at the center of all teaching and research. Instead of an academic program, we were left with boundless narcissism. Once she’d become the head of the German department, she had her secretary announce in a departmental meeting that in the German department no student’s written work would any longer be acceptable unless it cited Derrida and Ronell.

There are, of course, elements of the Avital Ronell story — cult of personality, abuse of power, anointed ones and exiles — everywhere in academia. But I think it’s rare that those elements come together as horribly as they have in the NYU German department.

One especially useful minor aspect of Hüppauf’s account: its response to characterizations of Ronell as a feminist and leftist. No, and no.

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April 30, 2019: Ronell be returning to the classroom in the fall.

A related post
Prestigious signatures

On Academia

“Perry? Paul. I just spoke with Tragg. They found a body — in the canyon, a man, probably in his fifties, looks like he was strangled with a bow tie. That’s right. Yeah, a philologist of some kind. Tragg said the wife identified him from his clothes — said he was wearing his second-best tweed jacket. And get this: there was a pipe in the jacket pocket, but the wife says it wasn’t his briar. Can you meet me in about twenty minutes? At the last house on Academia Drive.”

Related reading
All OCA Perry Mason posts (Pinboard)

[We passed Academia Drive while taking an avoid-the-freeway route to the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles last month. I immediately thought of Paul and Perry and invented this bit of dialogue. “The canyon”? I think it sounds like something from the Mason world. In real life Academia Drive is a dead-end street — I mean, a cul-de-sac.]