Sundays

Georg Miermann, editor, and Emil Gohlisch, reporter, talk shop:


Gabriele Tergit, Käsebier Takes Berlin. 1932. Trans. from the German by Sophie Duvernoy (New York: New York Review Books, 2019).

I suspect this exchange might be a joke on the journalistic habit of recycling a familiar premise: it appears that Herr Andor has recycled the premise of the wonderful film Menschen am Sonntag [People on Sunday] (dir. Robert Siodmark and Edgar G. Ulmer, 1930). Herr Andor has also written, more than once, about “The Last Horse-Cart Driver.” Recall in our time continued media attention to shoe and typewriter repairpersons.

Käsebier Takes Berlin is yet another NYRB rediscovery. It’s a sharp satire of fad as culture in Weimar Germany, with an unremarkable singer named Käsebier becoming the inspiration for everything from fountain pens to a Weimar version of Hudson Yards.

A related post
People on Sunday

[The exchange between Miermann and Gohlisch takes place in 1929. Menschen am Sonntag was released on February 4, 1930. So the chronology is off. But I still think it likely that Tergit, writing in 1931, was making a joke on the film and that a reader in 1932 would have taken Andor’s story as inspired by Menschen am Sonntag. A Borgesian possibility: Siodmark and Ulmer got hold of the fictional Andor’s unpublished story and took it as the inspiration for their film.]

Donald Trump*, desperado

Donald Trump* is a desperado, “one in despair or in desperate straits.” He is also a desperado, “a bold or violent criminal.” Commuting Roger Stone’s sentence is the act of a desperado.

I think there are two possible explanations of this commutation.

One: In despair or in desperate straits, afraid that Stone might seek a reduced sentence by spilling some beans and making more difficulties for the November election, Trump* issued a commutation. Commuting the sentence of someone who has lied to protect you: about as bold as it gets.

Two: In despair or in desperate straits, knowing that he will never be reelected and not caring what people make of his action, Trump* issued a commutation. Commuting the sentence of someone who has lied to protect you: again, about as bold as it gets.

But to be in despair is to have lost hope, and I’m not sure I can imagine Donald Trump* as having ever been humble enough to have hoped. But he’s still a desperado. And he’s never coming to his senses.

[Definitions from Webster’s Third. Thanks to George Bodmer for snapping me out of a trance by reminding me that it was a commutation, not a pardon.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday Saturday Stumper is by Andrew Bell Lewis. Nearly every ABL Stumper I’ve done has been on the difficult side. This puzzle too — a word here, a word here. Thirty-three minutes later, I had all the words.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I look upon with favor:

12-D, ten letters, “Symbol of simple living.”

15-A, eight letters, “Focus of a Buenos Aires museum.” Just weird. I heard the answer yesterday, in a BBC Radio Great Lives episode about Jorge Luis Borges. But it would have been easy enough to get anyway.

18-A, six letters, “‘He IS American music,’ per Kern.” Well, yes, he is. But so are Louis Armstrong, the Carter Family, Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, &c.

25-A, eight letters, “Drop-off spot.” I was trying to think of something having to do with kids and school. No.

38-D, eight letters, “What makes flamingos pink.” I don’t know how I know, but I do.

40-A, nine letters, “Austronesian transportation invention.” Again, looking up a word years ago pays off.

45-D, six letters, “Gum for the office.” Yeah. Heck yeah.

47-D, five letters, “Onset of evening.” Eh, a little forced. But there’s something I like about clues whose answers I don’t understand until some time after solving.

52-D, four letters, “Swimmer or blister.” A bit of a stretch, but I like the defamiliarization.

64-A, eight letters, “Faux glow.” Ick.

My favorite clue in today’s puzzle: 59-A, eight letters, “Pawn’s purpose.” Pretty clever.

And one clue whose answer is unpersuasive: 62-A, eight letters, “The ultimate scholarship.” I think it’s more commonly called something else.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

*

After the fact: I figured out from a reference to “Brad and Matt” (here) that “Andrew Bell Lewis” is Matthew Sewell and Brad Wilber. Look at their last names.

“What happens when they don’t?”

From Paul Murphy, a third-grade teacher, the big question about guidelines (any guidelines) for re-opening schools: “What happens when they don’t?”

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Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust

Marcel Proust was born on this day in 1871. Here he describes how he felt when he came to the end of a book in childhood, secretly reading late at night in bed:

One would have so much liked for the book to continue or, if that was impossible, to have other facts about all these characters, to learn something of their lives now, to employ our own on things not altogether unconnected with the love they have inspired in us, whose object was now all of a sudden gone from us, not to have loved in vain, for an hour, human beings who tomorrow will be no more than a name on a forgotten page, in a book unrelated to our lives and as to whose value we were certainly mistaken since its fate here below, as we could now see and as our parents had taught us when need arose by a dismissive phrase, was not at all, as we had thought, to contain the universe and our own destiny, but to occupy a very narrow space in the lawyer’s bookcase, between the unglamorous archives of the Journal de modes illustré and La Géographie d’Eure-et-Loir.

Marcel Proust, “Days of Reading.” 1906. In Days of Reading, translated by John Sturrock (London: Penguin, 2008). This essay was originally published as “Sur la lecture” [On reading], a preface to Proust’s translation of John Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[This description of reading at night began with I. And now it’s shifted to one and we : Proust speaking for himself and for us. The shifts are, of course, in the French original.]

Misheard

I was playing serving man: “We have rosé, chilled, and red.”

Elaine thought that I was calling rosé “children’s red.” Which is not a bad description of rosé. But call us children: we like rosé (dry, please) in the summer. Also in spring and fall. It’s like the iced tea of wines.

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All OCA misheard posts (Pinboard)

Tammy Duckworth responds

In The New York Times, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) responds to attacks on her patriotism from the Trump* world. An excerpt:

It’s better for Mr. Trump to have you focused on whether an Asian-American woman is sufficiently American than to have you mourning the 130,000 Americans killed by a virus he claimed would disappear in February. It’s better for his campaign to distract Americans with whether a combat veteran is sufficiently patriotic than for people to recall that this failed commander in chief has still apparently done nothing about reports of Russia putting bounties on the heads of American troops in Afghanistan.

Mr. Trump and his team have made the political calculation that, no matter what, they can’t let Americans remember that so many of his decisions suggest that he cares more about lining his pockets and bolstering his political prospects than he does about protecting our troops or our nation.

They should know, though, that attacks from self-serving, insecure men who can’t tell the difference between true patriotism and hateful nationalism will never diminish my love for this country — or my willingness to sacrifice for it so they don’t have to. These titanium legs don’t buckle.

I think Joe Biden may have found himself a vice president.

[For anyone who doesn’t know: as an Army helicopter pilot in Iraq, Duckworth lost both legs.]

Manhattan SPA

Outside a Manhattan Trader Joe’s, every day is SPA day, as residents take amusing action against those who line up outside their building, hours early, talking on their cell phones (The New York Times). There’s an Instagram account.

[SPA: my acronym for “sparring passive-aggressively,” as when encountering shoppers who wear no masks and pay no attention to one-way aisles or social distancing. For me, shopping is now SPA day.]

An EXchange name sighting

[Pitfall (dir. Andre de Toth, 1948). Click for a larger telegram.]

Mona Stevens needs help. But has she given her real number? I can find no evidence that GRiffith was ever a Los Angeles County exchange.

I think that an exchange name in a telegram counts as a dowdy-world twofer.

More EXchange names on screen
Act of Violence : The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Armored Car Robbery : Baby Face : Blast of Silence : The Blue Dahlia : Blue Gardenia : Boardwalk Empire : Born Yesterday : The Brasher Doubloon : The Brothers Rico : Chinatown : Danger Zone : The Dark Corner : Dark Passage : Deception : Deux hommes dans Manhattan : Dick Tracy’s Deception : Down Three Dark Streets : Dream House : East Side, West Side : Fallen Angel : Framed : The Little Giant : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Modern Marvels : Murder by Contract : Murder, My Sweet : My Week with Marilyn : Naked City (1) : Naked City (2) : Naked City (3) : Naked City (4) : Naked City (5) : Naked City (6) : Naked City (7) : Nightfall : Nightmare Alley : Out of the Past : Perry Mason : The Public Enemy : Railroaded! : Red Light : Side Street : The Slender Thread : Stage Fright : Sweet Smell of Success : Tension : This Gun for Hire : Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Nancy meta

[Nancy, July 9, 2020.]

Today’s Nancy turns meta in this second panel, as Aunt Fritzi begins to tell her niece “the story this tree trunk tells.” It’s worth clicking through to see the snapper. If you’re like me, or me, you’ll have to look closely to see it.

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All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[“Snapper”: Ernie Bushmiller’s name for the gag that comes in a Nancy strip’s final panel.]