Zweig’s Yesterday tomorrow

News from Pushkin Press: Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, translated by Anthea Bell, will be on sale tomorrow, as a Kindle e-book from Amazon, for 99P ($1.23). It’s a great memoir of a lost Europe — pictures of the gone world.

Elaine and I are partial to the dowdier Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger translation, but it’d be silly not to get a copy of this translation as well. We’ve read much of Zweig’s fiction in Bell’s translations.

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May 7: As I discovered this morning, this offer is available only through Amazon.co.uk, whose Kindle offerings are not available in the United States.

Three passages from The World of Yesterday
School v. city : Urban pastoral, with stationery : “A tremendous desire for order” : “Somewhere in the invisible”

Desk organizers

The New York Times has a guide to shopping for desk organizers. Prices range from $19 to $284. LOL. My favorite passage, which quotes “a London-based interior designer”:

“It’s important for your mind to have a really nice desk to work from, so when you come and sit down, it doesn’t just feel like a mess,” Ms. [Kelly] Hoppen said.

That’s where a desk organizer comes in — soothing frayed nerves by establishing a sense of order, with everything you need right where you need it.

LOL again.

But I do believe in desk organizers. Here’s my desk, before and after the addition of a Muji plastic tray for pens and pencils ($7 or so, I think):


[Without. 2015.]


[With. 2020. Click either image for a larger desk.]

You can see, right away, the difference the organizer makes, even if it’s difficult to spot the organizer.

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Jackie Wilson, twice

[Shindig!, October 21, 1964. The IMDb lists Teri Garr as one of the dancers. I think she’s on Wilson’s right. Willy Nelson — who’s not Willie Nelson — is in the white pants.]


[Shindig!, November 6, 1965. If you’re wondering where the Stones are, their performance was recorded in England.]

Jackie Wilson wrote “Baby Workout” with Alonzo Tucker. The song was released in March 1963 and went to #1 on the R&B charts and #5 on the pop charts. Jackie Wilson — Mr. Excitement — performed in five Shindig! episodes and closed two.

[Why is it charts? Were there several charts in each category? Did a song hit the same number on every chart?]

A name for the taking

A name for the taking that might be useful to anyone writing family fiction: Sonny LaMattina. “Sonny” LaMattina. Big Sonny. Ding dang dong. Ding dang dong.

When I was a kid, I had no idea what the words meant. I thought Sonny LaMattina was something like semolina, as in pasta.

Out and about

I had to visit our Toyota dealer for service on our car and to pick up a novel by Willa Cather for a thesis I was directing. I stopped first at a beauty salon/restaurant. A young woman offered to take my jacket. Certainly.

I stood and waited a while, and when I was ready to leave, I walked to the rack where she had hung my jacket. No jacket. I asked if she knew where it was, and she directed me to a booth where another young woman sat wearing a brown jacket with a hood. But that wasn’t my jacket (Lands’ End, men’s, brown, no hood).

Freaking out a bit, I looked for the manager, having realized that my car key was in my jacket pocket. “I have to get to        ,” I told him. He waved someone over to assist me. “What are we going to do?” I asked. “Walk?” Yes. It was a ten-mile walk.

In my waking life, I have all of Willa Cather’s fiction.

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Perry Mason and John Keats A reader writes to point out the “burrs” in Keats’s poem.

“Like a phonograph before its time”

Fernando Pessoa, from text 224, The Book of Disquiet, trans. from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2003).

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“By the Book” for the rest of us Pete Anderson offers his responses to The Guardian ’s “Books that made me” prompts. And, inspired by Pete’s effort, Elaine Fine offers her responses to those prompts.

Orange Crate Art returns

Coming June 26, from Omnivore Recordings, a remastered reissue of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’s 1995 album Orange Crate Art, with instrumental tracks and three unreleased songs, including an affecting interpretation of “What a Wonderful World.” You can hear that song now via Rolling Stone.

To my mind, Van Dyke’s “Orange Crate Art” is, as the sidebar says, one of the great American songs. It’s twenty-five years old. It’s also timeless.

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“Nostalgia for scenes”

Fernando Pessoa, from text 208, The Book of Disquiet, trans. from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2003).

This passage made me think of Ted Berrigan’s poem “Cranston Near the City Line.” Which in turn made me think of the bamboo aperitif cups in my grandparents’ house. Exactly like these.

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