The Booksellers

A new documentary about antiquarian booksellers: The Booksellers, directed by D.W. Young. I’d like to be able to see it in a theater. But the trailer alone makes me want to hit Pause again and again and look closely at every shelf on screen.

I like what Fran Lebowitz says in the trailer: “The people that I see reading actual books on the subway are mostly in their twenties. This is one of the few encouraging things you will ever see in a subway.”

[Note that antiquarian means means “dealing in old or rare books.” The or is important.]

Dunning K. Trump*

Donald Trump*, speaking for the cameras about the coronavirus yesterday:

“I like this stuff. You know, my uncle was a great person, he was at MIT. He taught at MIT for I think like a record number of years. He was a great super-genius, Doctor John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of the doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

Related reading
All OCA Dunning-Kruger posts

[My transcription. John G. Trump was at MIT from 1936 to 1973. A long run, but hardly “a record number of years.”]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Greg Johnson — yow. A genuine Stumper. I am proud to have solved it, even if it took forty-seven minutes and change. Or especially if it took me that long. The puzzle is a mix of wit, opacity, and odd bits of fact. The clue that most helped me: 10-D, ten letters, “Extracted.” That seems fitting.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

1-A, four letters, “Eyesore.” I was too clever for my own good and started off with STYE. Nope.

5-A, four letters, “Aramaic word for ‘bread.’” An odd bit of fact, right? But easily guessable, I think.

7-D, five letters, “Quite excited, new-style.” I once made a class laugh heartily when I used this word. Note: I was aiming for laughs.

14-A, four letters, “Range alternative.” Aah, opacity. OVEN? No.

17-A, fifteen letters, “What some bylaws include.” Feel the opacity.

20-A, ten letters, “Mast on the move.” Now that’s witty.

28-A, seven letters, “Performance plan.” As is this clue.

28-D, ten letters, “Dining table container.” More opacity.

32-A, four letters, “Hare hunter.” FUDD? No.

54-D, four letters, “Product sold by Fatworks.” What?!

58-A, fifteen letters, “Cause of a rock group breakup.” Groan.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

McCoy Tyner (1938–2020)

McCoy Tyner, a quintessential modern pianist, has died at the age of eighty-one. The New York Times has an obituary. And here’s a solo recital from 2007.

One of the highlights of my dad’s life as a tile contractor: doing work in McCoy Tyner’s house. My dad loved jazz and knew exactly whom he was working for — and getting to listen to through much of the day. And he never forgot Tyner’s saying that he was “going to bag some Z s.”

I get so tired of having to type the words an obituary, as musicians and writers I’ve admired for ages disappear.

“It is worth the effort”

Time as a river seen from an airplane: one can make out “mountain caves of the mammoth-hunters,” “the smouldering ruins of Carthage,” “smoke rising from factory chimneys,” “the guns of the Great War.” Ahead, “nothing but mist” as the river moves toward an unknown sea:

But now let us quickly drop down in our plane towards the river. From close up, we can see it is a real river, with rippling waves like the sea. A strong wind is blowing and there are little crests of foam on the waves. Look carefully at the millions of shimmering white bubbles rising and then vanishing with each wave. Over and over again, new bubbles come to the surface and then vanish in time with the waves. For a brief instant they are lifted on the wave’s crest and then they sink down and are seen no more. We are like that. Each one of us no more than a tiny glimmering thing, a sparkling droplet on the waves of time which flow past beneath us into an unknown, misty future. We leap up, look around us and, before we know it, we vanish again. We can hardly be seen in the great river of time. New drops keep rising to the surface. And what we call our fate is no more than our struggle in that great multitude of droplets in the rise and fall of one wave. But we must make use of that moment. It is worth the effort.

E.H. Gombrich, A Little History of the World, trans. Caroline Mustill (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

Gombrich’s book was first published in 1936 as Eine furze Weltgeschichte für jungle Leser [A short world history for young readers]. This passage ends (or appears to end) the original text. Translating and revising at the end of his life, Gombrich added a chapter on the later horrors of the twentieth century, with an affirmation of hope for the future.

Related posts
“Betty’s Graduation” : In the Dark Ages

Which knife?

From “Why Do We Meet?,” an episode of the podcast To the Best of Our Knowledge. Priya Parker is talking about how to make gatherings meaningful:

“What I’m arguing against is the sort of the Martha Stewart school of ‘You have to have the right fish knives.’”

Me: “What’s a fish knife?”

This episode is filled with good stuff: about ritual, pointless meetings at work, watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, and ubuntu — the concept, not the Linux distribution.

[Martha Stewart’s video explanation of the fish knife is long gone, even from the Internet Archive. But here’s someone else’s explanation.]

Community spread

From The New Yorker:

A resident of Washington, D.C., has been identified as the source of the community spread of coronavirus misinformation throughout the United States.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that the man had ignored the advice of public-health experts and spewed a toxic strain of ignorance, potentially infecting millions. . . .

A C.D.C. spokesperson in Atlanta said there are steps that the public can take to avoid becoming infected by the man’s noxious contagion of falsehoods.

“According to the data we have, the most virulent misinformation is transmitted via this man’s oral cavity,” the spokesperson said. “If you turn on your TV and see him open his mouth, move as far away as possible.”

“You must persist”

From an e-mail Elizabeth Warren sent this morning to donors, announcing the suspension of her campaign for the presidency:

So if you leave with only one thing, it must be this: Choose to fight only righteous fights, because then when things get tough — and they will — you will know that there is only option ahead of you: nevertheless, you must persist.

That sentence brought unexpected tears to my eyes.

[“Donors”: yes, that would be our household. I think Warren’s sentence should read “only one option.” But I didn’t notice until almost twelve hours later.]

“A designer and a manufacturer”

Boy Staunton, sugar magnate, president and managing director of Alpha Corporation, praises the Reverend George Maldon Leadbeater, “a great prophet from a fashionable New York church”:


Robertson Davies, Fifth Business (1970).

I think the Reverend must owe something to Norman Vincent Peale, no?

Also from this novel
“Fellows of the first importance” : “Visible branch establishments” : “Like a duck to water”

[I skipped a line in transcribing. The passage now reads as Davies wrote it.]

Some Beach Boys history

“Warring” is a bit exaggerated, but this account seems largely accurate: “How the Beach Boys became two separate, warring factions” (Fortune).