“Say, have you got frogs’ legs?”

Magnus Eisengrim describes Charlie Wanless’s monologist routine “on the bottom shelf of vaudeville.” Wanless, Eisengrim says, possessed “little but the self-assurance necessary for the job.”


Robertson Davies, World of Wonders (1975).

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[“That tribute to motherhood”: the song “M-O-T-H-E-R (A Word That Means the World to Me)” (Howard Johnson–Theodore Morse), imperfectly quoted elsewhere in the novel.]

No questions

Elaine just told me that Donald Trump* has taken to Twitter to brag about the television ratings for his coronavirus briefings. His ratings. I won’t link, but it’s true.

I will shout into the void a suggestion that I thought of earlier today: When Trump* says that he’ll take questions from reporters, they should remain silent. And after a suitable silence: “We have some questions for Dr. Fauci.” No reporter is obligated to give a narcissist further opportunities to lie, exalt himself, and propagandize.

And a suggestion for the rest of us: Just don’t watch. Read a book. Sing a song. Wash your hands.

Margaret Atwood on pandemics

“So here we are again”: Margaret Atwood writes about pandemics and this pandemic. She offers six possible responses (individual, not institutional) and recommends nos. 1, 3, 5, and 6.

Our household has already picked those four, but I still find it helpful to hear (in my head) what Atwood has written. And we need all the encouraging, helpful words we can get.

Thanks, Stephen.

[I recognize that Atwood doesn’t address the dangers and economic hardship that many people face in this pandemic. And yes, I hear the words in my head as I read. I am a slow reader.]

Fred Hersch pencils

The pianist Fred Hersch writes his music by hand, as seen in the documentary film The Ballad of Fred Hersch. He prefers to keep things analog:

“My life is binder clips. . . . I am kind of a dinosaur in that way. You know, I’m a pencil geek. I buy my pencils — I get these special English pencils. I sort of like the ritual of the whole thing, trying to figure out what kind of paper. I mean, even the copying and taping of the parts is somewhat of a ritual.”

We see a variety of pencils on camera. First, a Mirado Black Warrior.


[Click on any image for a larger view.]


[The titles are from My Coma Dreams (2011), a theater piece, music by Hersch, libretto by Herschel Garfein.]

Next, a Mirado.



Finally, what appears to be a Derwent Graphic. That’s English, yes. The red stripe reveals its identity.



Here and there, a Dixon Ticonderoga and a Staples pencil appear in other hands.

The Ballad of Fred Hersch (dir. Charlotte Lagarde and Carrie Lozanois, 2016) is now streaming, no charge, at Vimeo. And Fred Hersch is playing online, via Facebook, nearly every day, at noon Eastern. I’m more and more taken with his music. My favorite Hersch piece so far: “At the Close of the Day.” When I heard it (unidentified) in the film, it sounded like something I’ve known for years. But no — I had heard it just once before, earlier this week. And here’s a 1999 performance.

[Note: You don’t need a Facebook account to watch and listen.]

Digital vs. analog Nancy

In today’s Nancy, children debate the advantages of reading in pixels and print. Highly inventive stuff from Olivia Jaimes.

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Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, hit the spot. Plenty of challenges, but still a puzzle whose answers fell into place. But almost didn’t in the southeast corner. But finally did. But I still don’t understand one of them: 58-D, three letters, “Whispery direction.” What? Aha: I figured it out when I typed the answer in the comments.

My entry into this puzzle came by way of three three-letter answers: 6-, 7-, and 8-Down, “Successful runners,” “Things ripped and burned,” “Nostalgic division.” Those three gave me two ten-letter answers, 1-, 15, and 17-A, ten letters, “Big word for ‘big-hearted’” and “Ptolemaic Kingdom capital.” And the game, or puzzle, was afoot.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

17-A, ten letters, “Flaubert protg.” I thought protagonist before realizing that protg must be a botched rendering of protégé. There must have been a problem at the diacritics desk. Anyway, I liked seeing the answer.

19-A, four letters, “Round tab.” I see what you did there, Matthew Sewell.

22-A, nine letters, “Ancient Polynesian invention.” For a second time I meet up with this word in a Saturday Stumper, which I know from a short essay about Muhammad Ali and Homeric translation. Thanks to the dictionary.

36-A, seven letters, “Improvised lines.” A nice bit of misdirection for anyone who first thinks of ADLIBS.

48-A, seven letters, “Regular gal or guy.” I like the slight clash between the informal clue and the tonier answer. At least I think it’s tonier. Though possibly in a louche way.

54-D, four letters, “Nickname like Reese.” Wait, Reese is a nickname?

57-D, three letters, “Music from Cremona.” Once again, an answer I didn’t understand until well after finishing the puzzle.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

Intellectual prostration

Catching up on The New Yorker, I paused when I hit this sentence, from the historian Charles Beard, quoted in “In Every Dark Hour,” Jill Lepore’s piece on the prospects of democracy, past, present, and future:

The kind of universal intellectual prostration required by Bolshevism and Fascism is decidedly foreign to American “intelligence.”

Lepore likens this kind of intelligence to “street smarts — reasonableness, open-mindedness, level-headedness.”

And then I recalled this praise of our president:

“He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data. And I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues. Because in the end, data is data, and he understands the importance of the granularity.”

That’s Deborah Birx, Dr. Birx, she of the thousand and one scarves, speaking to the Christian Broadcasting Network this past Wednesday. And if her praise of the president isn’t an instance of intellectual prostration, I don’t know what is.

And I’ll add: when it comes to the coronavirus, there can be no meaningful granularity without sufficient testing. That’e because granularity is “the extent to which a larger entity is subdivided.” I know a little bit about granularity.

[Lepore’s piece is in the February 3 New Yorker. Online, the title is “The Last Time Democracy Almost Died.”]

Feelings and beliefs

“I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be. I don’t believe you need thirty thousand or forty thousand ventilators. You know, you go into major hospitals sometimes, they’ll have two ventilators”: Donald Trump* speaking to state TV last night. The Delphic orifice can never be wrong.

[I’m not the first person to think up the phrase “Delphic orifice” (Google shows six results), but this post appears to be the first instance of the phrase being applied to Donald Trump*.]

A National Emergency Library

The Internet Archive has suspended waitlists for all books in its collection to create a National Emergency Library.

The duration of the NEL is tied to the duration of the pandemic in the United States, but the books are available to readers everywhere.

“Pretty smart”

Willard the Wizard of Wanless’s World of Wonders tells “his great joke.” It concerns the naming of his carnival assistant:


Robertson Davies, World of Wonders (1975).

Wikipedia has the poop on Fletcher’s Castoria, now known as Fletcher’s Laxative. The old name can still be seen in fading advertisements: for instance, and for instance. And in full-page advertisements in Life:


[Life, March 25, 1940. Click for a much larger view.]

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