A World Book cameo

[“As seen on TV.” Specifically, on MSNBC.]

I’m pretty certain the background is a picture. (Elaine says it is.) I’m absolutely certain that the green and white spines belong to volumes of that childhood standby, the World Book Encyclopedia.

Reader, I’d now like to refer you to Nicholson Baker’s essay “Books as Furniture,” but it’s behind the New Yorker paywall.

Other books in the background
T.S. Eliot’s Complete Poems and Plays: 1909–1950 on MSNBC : The World Book in Stranger Things

“Like pasta in a soup”

“Princes here, princes there, princes, princes, everywhere!” Maupassant calls Cannes “the city of titles”:


Guy de Maupassant, Afloat, trans. Douglas Parmée (New York: New York Review Books, 2008).

Afloat (first published in 1888 as Sur l’eau) is something of a daybook, eight long entries purportedly written in the course of a sailing trip along the French Mediterranean, one writer-passenger and a crew of two. Maupassant’s attention ranges everywhere: to social satire (as here), scenic description, writerly double consciousness (which turns the writer’s emotions into something to observe), crowds and mob mentality, a memory of a visit to a household wracked by diphtheria, a story about Paganini’s corpse. The reader’s work: to follow the writer’s attention as it moves from one possibility to another to another.

Also from Maupassant
“La belle nature” : “What was it around him” : “All that has been, is now, and ever will be done by painters until the day of doom” ; “Swept strangely clean”

Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind

Here’s the latest installment of WGBH’s The Rewind, “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” hosted by our son Ben. You can find all episodes of The Rewind at YouTube.

Whoa again, at least a local whoa

Commenting on Donald Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria, our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), told an interviewer, “Pull my name off the ‘I support Donald Trump’ list.” Shimkus called Trump’s decision “despicable.” He later released (where?) a statement:

While my votes will continue to support the president’s domestic policy agenda, because of this terrible foreign policy decision I asked that my name be removed from his campaign’s official list of supporters.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

Whoa again

Last night I looked at my phone and said “Whoa.” This morning I checked the news again and said “Whoa.” From The Washington Post:

Two business associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani have been charged with a scheme to route foreign money into U.S. elections, according to a newly unsealed indictment.

The two men [Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman], who helped Giuliani investigate former vice president Joe Biden, were arrested Wednesday night in Virginia, according to a person familiar with the charges. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. . . .

According to the indictment, Parnas, Fruman and other defendants “conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office so that the defendants could buy potential influence with the candidates, campaigns, and the candidates’ governments.”

These are the days of whoa.

*

And more whoa : William Barr has long known about the investigation into Parnas’s and Fruman’s doings. The two men were arrested as they were about to leave the country. Gosh, it’s almost as if someone tipped them off.

*

And more: It would appear that Rudolph Giuliani was also planning a trip, though not with a one-way ticket, to meet these business associates in Vienna.

Nancy, and more Nancy

Highly recommended, two new books from Olivia Jaimes: Nancy: A Comic Collection, which collects the first nine months’ worth of Jaimes’s version of the comic strip, and Nancy’s Genius Plan, a board book that enlists its reader in Nancy’s scheme to sneak a piece of cornbread. Funny, clever, wonderful stuff. Nancy includes an interview with the pseudonymous Jaimes, an appreciation by cartoonist Hilary B. Price (of Rhymes with Orange), and “Fan Art of Nancy,” by Jaimes. Here’s a sample, Ecce Sluggo:



Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[If the Sluggo baffles you, this news item will help. Olivia Jaimes is no doubt aware of Joe Brainard’s Nancy hijinks, which you can see here and here.]

The Idiod

This bit from Stephen Colbert’s monologue last night delighted me:

“In the end Trump may be defeated by his greatest weakness — his Achilles mouth. It's all detailed in the epic poem The Idiod. It’s The Idiod and The Oddity.”

And this black-figure-pottery cover appeared on the screen:



Related reading
Victor Davis Hanson on Ajax, Achilles, and Trump : Agamemnon, Oedipus, Creon, and Trump : Trump, the Iliad, and PTSD : #TrumpBookReport

Whoa

From Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump pressed then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to help persuade the Justice Department to drop a criminal case against an Iranian-Turkish gold trader who was a client of Rudy Giuliani, according to three people familiar with the 2017 meeting in the Oval Office.

Tillerson refused, arguing it would constitute interference in an ongoing investigation of the trader, Reza Zarrab, according to the people. They said other participants in the Oval Office were shocked by the request.

It’s really beginning to feel as if floodgates are opening, walls are closing in, and clichés are taking over this sentence.

Among the oranges

[Click for larger fruit.]

“Ah, South California”: I love that line from Paul Simon’s song “Punky’s Dilemma.” Elaine and I just spent a few days there — in the state, not the song, hanging out outdoors and in- with our daughter Rachel, her husband Seth, their daughters Talia and newborn Josie, and our son Ben. Parks, pizza, Play-Doh, and pumpkins. And helping out. And early nights. And much happiness.

Marshall Efron (1938–2019)

Marshall Efron, a mainstay of The Great American Dream Machine, has died at the age of eighty-one. The New York Times has an obituary. I was a GADM fan and a Marshall Efron fan. I think I even wrote him a fan letter. His comedy was heady, subversive stuff for a bookish, skeptical high-school student. I still remember “Olives.”