“Michael Paul Smith has moved to Elgin Park”: the creator of an imaginary town has died.
[I wish I’d known about Elgin Park years ago.]
Friday, December 14, 2018
Moving to Elgin Park
Letters for all occasions
Elaine and I are having a grand time reading Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey Through England and France. Here is an excerpt. The scene: Yorick, our narrator, must reply to a letter from Madame de L***, a young woman he has met in Calais. Now the two are in Amiens, where Madame de L***’s brother, the Count de L***, is on the scene. Madame has written Yorick a letter, delivered by her servant, who (tipsy) brings Yorick’s servant La Fleur back with him to the Count’s apartment. And look, here’s Madame. When she asks for Yorick’s reply, La Fleur says that — oops — he has forgotten to bring it. And now Yorick is stuck figuring out what to say:
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768). Text from the 2001 Penguin edition, ed. Paul Goring.
I have already confessed in a letter to a friend that Yorick and La Fleur remind me of Larry (Larry David) and Leon (J.B. Smoove) in Curb Your Enthusiasm. “What should I say to her, Leon?” “I got this, Larry.” Except Leon wouldn’t apologize or tremble.
Also from this novel
Yorick, distracted
[Translation, from Penguin edition: “I am filled with the deepest sadness and at the same time reduced to despair by this unforeseen return of the Corporal, which renders our meeting tonight the most impossible thing in the world. But let there be joy! And all of my joy will be in thinking of you. Love is nothing without sentiment. And sentiment is even less without love. It is said that one should never despair. It is also said that Monsieur le Corporal will be mounting guard on Wednesday: then it will be my turn. Everyone has his turn. While we wait — Long live love! And long live sweet nothings! I am, Madame, with all the most respectful and tender sentiments, all yours.” Goring points out that the letter echoes one of Sterne’s: “‘l’amour’ (say they) ‘n’est rien sans sentiment.’”]
Thursday, December 13, 2018
“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” in the news
In The New York Times: “How ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ Went From Parlor Act to Problematic.” It’s a wonderful song, especially when performed by Ray Charles and Betty Carter, but yes, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is problematic indeed.
Years ago, or ages ago, I used to have students read the lyrics of Frank Loesser’s song alongside Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Sir Walter Ralegh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd.” The implications of Loesser’s lyrics were clear to late-twentieth-century students, for sure (and with no coaching from me): “Say, what's in this drink?” “What’s the sense of hurting my pride?” “Baby, don’t hold out.” “How can you do this thing to me?” The song is about pursuit and persuasion and power, as the party pursued finally agrees with the party pursuing: “Ahh, but it’s cold outside.” Capitulation, it sounds like, whoever is capitulating to whom.
But if I had to choose between Ray Charles and Betty Carter’s performance of Loesser’s song and Lydia Liza and Josiah Lemanski’s updated version (it accompanies the Times article), I’d vote for Charles and Carter, though with an eyes-open understanding of the song’s import.
Two other songs immediately come to mind as ones whose import many people miss: Jacques Morali and Victor Willis’s “Y.M.C.A.” (which I've heard sung by an elementary-school chorus) and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” (not a patriotic anthem). Another song of pursuit that might be paired with “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”: “Come Up to My Place” from On the Town ( Leonard Bernstein–Betty Comden–Adolph Green). There a female cabbie is the pursuer. Or “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” (Jerry Ross–Kenny Gamble) as recorded by Diana Ross and The Supremes, and The Temptations, with all singers as both pursuers and the pursued.
[“Say, what’s in this drink?” No implication of a date-rape drug. But it’s a stiff drink, mixed stronger than someone might expect. In the updated version, it’s Pomegranate LaCroix.]
Pareidolia
[About half an inch from top to bottom. Unretouched.]
A bit of an egg-roll wrapper, looking like a distant relative of the man who lived on my office floor. I wonder if he’s still there.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
The job market in English
“There is no doubt we are at historic lows”: at The Chronicle of Higher Education, Jonathan Kramnick looks at the job market in English.
Briefly: far fewer jobs than in the past, and far fewer of them tenure-track. Composition has fewer positions but a larger percentage of all positions. The only area in which hiring has increased: creative writing.
Related posts
Academic futures
English studies and adjunct labor
Fluke life, or, how I got a job
Undergrads and creative writing
Domestic comedy
[Who’s our fixer?]
“You’re the fixer. You fixed the pencil sharpener . . . no, you tried to fix the pencil sharpener.”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
Fingers or numbers
Elaine and I wondered while walking: which meaning of digit came first, finger, or number?
Answer: number.
The Oxford English Dictionary dates that meaning (“a whole number less than ten,“ &c.) to about 1400. Fingers (and thumbs and toes) don’t come along until 1644.
The word digit derives from the classical Latin digitus, which means “finger, finger’s breadth.” In post-classical Latin digitus also means “each of the numerals below ten.” And whence digitus? The OED doesn’t know (“of uncertain origin”) but suggests that the word probably comes from a variant of the same Indo-European base as the obsolete English verb tee, “to accuse.” And so I think of the children’s song: Where is pointer? Where is pointer? Here I am.
And why digitalis? Because of its finger-like flowers.
On an unrelated note, I am happy to see that the OED has a place for Clueless: “Look, he’s getting her digits!”
A tenuously related post
P Is for Pterodactyl
A calendar for Sluggo
[Nancy, January 4, 1955.]
Sluggo, those 1955 calendars will no longer do. You can get the latest model right here, before the new year begins. Act today!
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