Eat a peach?

J. Alfred Prufrock’s “Do I dare to eat a peach?” makes sense as a trivialized version of his “overwhelming question” and as a speculation about transgression and forbidden fruit. “No, thank you, I don’t think I should,” Prufrock might have said to the woman in the garden. And then there’s the messy juiciness of peach-eating, perhaps a painful thought for one who is painfully self-conscious.

But it may be worse than that. Imagine trying to eat a peach, or even an apple or an orange, in the manner described in Mrs. Humphry’s Etiquette for Every Day (London: Grant Richards, 1904):



However sharp or strong the dessert knife might be, this procedure seems (to me, anyway) to guarantee Prufrockian angst. Either that or Three Stooges hijinks.

In 1914, after protracted discussion, Grant Richards published James Joyce’s Dubliners. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” appeared in Poetry in 1915.

Fast software, best software

Craig Mod: “Fast software is not always good software, but slow software is rarely able to rise to greatness.” Mod praises the Mac app nvALT, “the fastest piece of text cataloging software” he’s used. At the bottom of the heap: iTunes, “the absolute nadir of software clunkery.”

[Found via Michael Tsai.]

“Only one head, his own”

The “woman-killer” Christian Moosbrugger in his cell:


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

Reminds me of someone — I just can’t put my finger on it, or him.

Related reading
All OCA Musil posts (Pinboard)

The Honeymooners and Zippy

[“Meanwhile, at 328 Chauncey Street.” Zippy, July 29, 2019.]

The Flintstones, natch. But Seinfeld? If, as Ralph explains, he’s George, and Norton is Kramer, and Elaine is Alice, where’s Jerry? Down at the Gotham Bus Depot? In Trixie’s arms?

Related reading
All OCA Honeymoooners posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Also saying what must be said

From an opinion piece by Clarence J. Fluker, C. Kinder, Jesse Moore, and Khalilah M. Harris, co-signed by 145 more staff members of the Obama administration. This piece was published in The Washington Post this past Friday, before Donald Trump began telling Elijah Cummings (Democrat, Maryland-7) to go back to Baltimore:

As 149 African Americans who served in the last administration, we witnessed firsthand the relentless attacks on the legitimacy of President Barack Obama and his family from our front-row seats to America’s first black presidency. Witnessing racism surge in our country, both during and after Obama’s service and ours, has been a shattering reality, to say the least. But it has also provided jet-fuel for our activism, especially in moments such as these.

We stand with congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, as well as all those currently under attack by President Trump, along with his supporters and his enablers, who feel deputized to decide who belongs here — and who does not. There is truly nothing more un-American than calling on fellow citizens to leave our country — by citing their immigrant roots, or ancestry, or their unwillingness to sit in quiet obedience while democracy is being undermined.

Victor Blackwell says what must be said

Today’s Saturday Stumper

I’m tiring of the word difficult as a descriptor of the Saturday Stumper. So I’ll say that today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, was difficile — at least for me. How do you say “at least for me” in Italian?

I began in the midwest with 29-D, ten letters, “Here’s something to think about,” not sure about the answer, obviously, but pretty sure that it might be right. (It was, mostly.) That answer gave me 45-A, seven letters, “Major influence on Matisse.” Then I saw 38-A, seven letters, “Scholar who debated Luther.” Ah, a random obvious answer that took me back to college reading. But then things became more difficile.

Choice quality: 6-D, four letters, “Servers with squad goals.” 7-D, five letters, “Spirit of fulfillment.” 51-D, five letters, “Rolls at the ballpark.” 52-A, five letters, “Hash tag.” And my favorite: 30-A, seven letters, “Come to question?” How might those clues might be translated into Italian? I lift my hands and shoulders and shrug.

No spoilers: the answers, in English, are in the comments.

Robert Musil in the Times

“No culture can rest on a crooked relationship to truth”: Robert Musil, quoted by Roger Cohen in a New York Times column. Cohen quoted a longer version in a 2018 column:

That which we call culture presumably does not directly have the concept of truth as a criterion, but no culture can rest on a crooked relationship to truth.

The source for this passage (translator uncredited) is not easy to find. Cohen references printed matter accompanying a 2018 art exhibition, Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930s. Searching for the longer or shorter passage or any assortment of key words yields Cohen’s columns and little more. I decided to search for musil and kultur and wahrheit in Google Books, and that’s where I found the source. The passage is part of a much longer sentence:

was wir Kultur nennen, wohl nicht unmittelbar den Begriff der Wahrheit zum Kriterium hat, doch aber keine Kultur auf einem schiefen Verhältnis zur Wahrheit ruhen kann.

This passage appears in notes for a talk Musil gave in Paris, in July 1935, to the First International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture. The words bear repeating in translation:

That which we call culture presumably does not directly have the concept of truth as a criterion, but no culture can rest on a crooked relationship to truth.

*

I found another translation, by Burton Pike and David S. Luft, Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses (1995), a gathering of Musil’s non-fiction. This volume makes clear that the passage comes from Musil’s notes, not from the talk itself:

what we call culture is not directly subservient to the criterion of truth; but no great culture can rest on a distorted relationship to truth.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Musil posts (Pinboard)

Hi-tems in a series

[Hi and Lois, July 27, 2019.]

Looks like Hi has been reading Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself: A Manual for Everyone Who Works with Words (1982). See this post for an explanation.

Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

About retronyms

“An unexpected delight of summer”: Caren Lissner writes about retronyms.

As an acoustic guitarist, I like retronyms. Thanks, Murray.

Related posts
Old-Fashioned : “Snail Mail,” 1968