Bloomsday 2020

From “Ithaca,” my favorite episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). Here is Leopold Bloom, “potential poet”:



Other Bloomsday posts
2007 (The first page)
2008 (“Love’s Old Sweet Song”)
2009 (Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses)
2010 (Leopold Bloom, “water lover”)
2011 (“[T]he creature cocoa”)
2012 (Plumtree’s Potted Meat)
2013, 2013 (Bloom and fatherhood)
2014 (Bloom, Stephen, their respective ages)
2015 (Stephen and company, very drunk)
2016 (“I dont like books with a Molly in them”)
2017 (Bloom and Stephen, “like and unlike reactions”)
2018 (“One sole unique advertisement”)
2019 (“To knock or not to knock”)

[Bloomsday : “the 16th of June 1904. Also: the 16th of June of any year, on which celebrations take place, esp. in Ireland, to mark the anniversary of the events in Joyce’s Ulysses” (Oxford English Dictionary).]

Rights

Human rights should be a self-evident good in our world. But that’s not the case, so there is cause for celebration when rights are affirmed. As with the rights of LGBTQ people in today’s Supreme Court ruling.

[The New York Times says LGBT. CNN, NPR, and The Washington Post say LGBTQ. No acronyms appear in the the text of the decision and dissents. The acronyms LGB and LGBQT+ appear in Samuel Alito’s dissent in the titles of footnoted sources.]

“A bridge between two mysteries”

Fernando Pessoa, from “Self-Examination,” The Book of Disquiet, trans. from the Portuguese by Richard Zenith (New York: Penguin, 2003).

Bernardo Soares, the authorial identity to whom Pessoa attributes The Book of Disquiet, sometimes seems to speak for everyone, sometimes only for himself. Here, I’d say, he speaks for us all.

Senhor Soares has come to remind me of Henry Darger: like Darger, he is a secret maker, the creator of imaginary worlds known only to him. No one passing Soares on the street would have any idea, &c. Soares also reminds me of J. Alfred Prufrock: like Prufrock, he lives as an observer of life, removed, renunciatory, acutely aware of what he calls “the shy and ridiculous abnormality of my soul.”

I also think of Soares in the company of Joseph Joubert and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, writers whose work survives as pieces whose only order is the order of their composition. I think of Soares as especially close to Joubert: though Soares is far less given to aphorism, he too is a writer whose writing is always a preparation for writing, notes toward a project never to be realized. Here writing becomes a form of life: not the making of a great work but just what one does.

I once described Joubert as a writer who would be of interest to a reader who values “the fragmentary, the provisional, the unfinished.” So too Fernando Pessoa, in the person of Bernardo Soares.

This passage is the last I’m posting from The Book of Disquiet.

Related reading
All OCA Pessoa posts (Pinboard)

RZ, i.m.

I miss my friend Rob Zseleczky. We will toast to his memory tonight.

Say Their Names

[Kadir Nelson, Say Their Names. The New Yorker, June 22, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

What you really need to see: a The New Yorker online feature about this artwork, identifying the men, women, and children depicted therein.

In a parallel universe

“Sir, I’m guessing that you’ve had to much too drink, and if that’s the case, I’m glad that I found you asleep here and not on the road. Tell you what we can do, if you like: I can drive you home in my car. And if you’re willing to give me your keys, my partner can drive your car home for you, and we’ll make sure that you get there safely, because this is really no place to be sleeping, and I’m sure you’d agree with me about that. And in the future, please do not get behind the wheel if you’ve had too much to drink.” And so on.

If only.

*

When I wrote this post, I didn’t know that Rayshard Brooks had proposed to police that he lock up his car and walk to his sister’s house.

Using both hands

Donald Trump* is at West Point using both hands to drink water from a glass, one hand holding the glass, the other propping it up from the bottom. As a friend of mine would say, Not normal!

[I don’t mean to make light of disability. I do mean to call attention to yet another odd feature of Donald Trump*’s public presentation. We’ve also seen him use two hands when drinking from a water bottle. Something’s not right. Here’s a compilation of Trump* and water.]

Misheard

I had the television on while I did the dishes. A commercial spoke of “Pushbuttonese.”

No, it didn’t. It spoke of “push-button ease.” But for a moment I thought of push-buttons and pictographs: ⏏︎. Listening to the television with only cursory attention has its rewards.

Related reading
All OCA misheard posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Matthew Sewell, and it’s pretty easy by Sewell standards. But not too easy. Stacks of three eleven-letter answers give the puzzle a bracing start and finish. I started with an eleven-letter clue, 17-A, “Source for Vermeer's blues.” Blue paint — it’s gotta be, right?

Clue-and-answer pairs that I especially liked:

4-D. three letters, “Henry Louis Gates, circa 1971.” PHD? No, too young.

13-D, eight letters, “‘Outrageous!’” I imagine the answer as spoken by Nancy Ritz.

22-D, eight letters, “Built like the Eiffel Tower.” A lovely word that should see more use.

32-A, seven letters, “What Lysol lacks.” If you say so.

34-A, five letters, “Union capital.” Clever.

34-D, three letters, “Hip replacement?” I, like, dig.

36-D, eight letters, “Kerosene antecedent.” Makes me think of a certain work of literature.

39-A, four letters, “Half of New Delhi.” A smart way to clue a bit of familiar crosswordese. I saw it right away.

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

Trump* interviewed

Aaron Rupar has a Twitter thread collecting choice moments from Donald Trump*’s interview with Harris Faulkner (Fox News). Must be seen and heard to be believed.

Especially choice: Trump*’s comment about Abraham Lincoln. I didn’t realize at first that Trump* was joking about Lincoln’s assassination. At least I think he was joking about Lincoln’s assassination. I first thought he was joking about slavery.