Walter is a dilettante

Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

[“Dilettante”: that’s the novel’s narrator opining.]

At the table

Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D, New York-8), on CNN this afternoon, deflecting a question about Representative Al Green’s (D, Texas-8) introduction of articles of impeachment: “We should continue to focus on kitchen-table pocketbook issues.” That’s boilerplate language, for Jeffries and other politicians, as a search engine will confirm.

And what’s with pocketbook anyway? The main use for a pocketbook is hitting men over the head. In modern times, purse is a far more common word than handbag or pocketbook. Kitchen-table purse issues, anyone? Or purse and murse?

I know the issues we most talk about at our kitchen table: the dangerous man in the White House and his enablers. They’re kitchen-table issues nos. 1, 2, 3 &c. Elaine, where’s your pocketbook?

WWAHPS?

“So when someone says they are ‘a stable genius,’ that is a real cause for concern, because a healthy person would not say that.” Bandy Lee, psychiatrist and professor, talks with Virginia Heffernan about the mental health of our president and our culture: “Is Trump a Disease? A Medical Perspective” (Trumpcast).

Aaugh!

Self-knowledge:


Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

Mongol?

[Nancy, October 11, 1949. Click for the ferrule.]

Okay, she is after his answers, not his pencil. But that sure looks like a Mongol.

Related reading
All OCA Mongol posts : Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Yesteryear’s Nancy is this year’s Nancy. I wish the syndicate would reproduce the strips with their dates and proper borders. Cranky me.]

Michael Seidenberg (1954–2019)

Michael Seidenberg was the proprietor of Brazenhead Books, a bookstore with several incarnations, the most famous of which was a Manhattan apartment. I read of Michael’s death in Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. The New York Times finally has an obituary. An excerpt:

The speakeasy bookstore (as news articles often called it) on East 84th Street was a place that, it was commonly said, you could go to for the first time only in the company of a regular. But the writer David Burr Gerrard, in a tribute to Mr. Seidenberg posted on lithub.com last week, said that wasn’t really true.

“Michael was, as he liked to say with his trademark this-should-be-obvious-but-nobody-thinks-of-it grin, ‘in the phone book,’” he wrote, “and would happily give his address to any stranger who called him.”

It’s true. Elaine and I visited in 2012, after I looked up the number online and called. We found, among other things, three books by Alexander King, the first husband of our friend Margie King Barab. Talk about serendipity.

Related viewing
Brazenhead C’est Moi (A six-minute film)
There’s No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books (A three-minute film)

NuGrape and some other soda

   
[Life, May 2, June 6, July 11, August 1, 1955. Click any image for a larger view.]

These four advertisements appear to be the only advertisements for NuGrape that appeared in Life.

I don’t know why I was thinking of NuGrape soda this morning. But I know why I think of NuGrape whenever I happen to think of NuGrape: “I Got Your Ice Cold NuGrape”, that haunting recording by the NuGrape Twins. Listen and enjoy.

A related post
The song’s lyrics, transcribed

Represent

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, New York–14), this afternoon:

“He can’t look a child in the face and justify why this country is throwing them in cages, so instead he tells us I should go back to the great borough of the Bronx and make it better, and that’s what I’m here to do.”

[I, too, love the Bronx.]

Credit where it’s due

Two historians — male, tenured — talked on WBUR’s Here and Now about the politics of tobacco. In doing so, they relied, exclusively, it seems, on a forthcoming book by another historian — female, untenured. She and her book were never acknowledged. Her name: Sarah Milov. Her book, which will arrive in October from Harvard University Press: The Cigarette: A Political History. Says Milov, “I mean, my book is about tobacco and I live in Virginia. I would have been a reasonable person to talk to about this topic.” Milov had given the okay to a story based on her book — as long as she received credit.

A WBUR producer blames “researchers” who provided the historians with “talking points” for the broadcast. (It’s always the researchers, am I right?) The station’s belated attempt to give credit where it’s due reads as if Milov were a willing behind-the-scenes helper:

Sarah Milov, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia and author of the forthcoming book, The Cigarette: A Political History [,] provided extensive research material for historians Ed Ayers and Nathan Connolly.

But that’s not what happened. Milov didn’t provide material for Ayers and Connolly to use. Rather, Ayers and Connolly made extensive use of Milov’s book without acknowledging it as their source, or they relied on the work of WBUR researchers without bothering to note where the researchers got their material. Ayers and Connolly then presented themselves as experts on the politics of tobacco, all sorts of choice-quality details at their fingertips. Not a good way to do history.

[If I were Sarah Milov listening to this radio segment, my head would be exploding. It’s exploding anyway.]

*

July 22: WBUR now has a conversation between the two historians and Sarah Milov: “Historians in the Press: Why Citation by the Media Is Important, Even If It Rarely Happens.” No link to this conversation though on the page for the original radio show.

No evens to can’t

“We all know that AOC and this crowd are a bunch of communists. They hate Israel, they hate our own country”: Lindsey Graham, encouraging Donald Trump to refrain from personal attacks and to “aim higher.”

*

Trump has misunderstood Graham’s suggestion to “aim higher”: “These are congressmen. What am I supposed to do, just wait for senators? No.”