Blackout

Swann begins to wonder if the words “kept woman” might apply to Odette.

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).

Swann then resolves to try to send Odette not five but six or seven thousand francs next month.

Related reading
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A Backblaze offer

Backblaze is an online backup service. Wirecutter continues to recommend it as “the best cloud backup service for most people.”

If you’d like a free month of Backblaze, use this referral code. If you sign up — $6 a month or $60 a year or $110 for two years, each price for unlimited backup — you’ll get two more months for free, and I’ll get three free months too. The offer runs through January 31. You can read the details on this page.

One caution: without ultra-speedy wireless, the initial backup is likely to take several days. You just have to be patient, or find a library or other location with fast wireless. You can, of course, do other things on the computer while Backblaze is backing up. And you can control how much bandwidth it uses. Once the initial backup is done, you’re unlikely to ever notice Backblaze at work — until, that is, you need to restore a file or hard drive.

I switched to Backblaze from Mozy in 2018. This post explains why.

Make your own pencils

From Bridge City Tool Works: Pencil Precision, everything you need to make your own pencils (twenty-five of them). Available for pre-ordering, $699.

Thanks, Steven.

Losing his mind

Writing in The Atlantic, Peter Wehner says that Donald Trump* is losing his mind:

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him — in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat — he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

And yet, as the psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee points out, this Washington Post report on the Trump* administration’s mishandling of COVID-19 says nothing about the part the president’s mental health has played in creating our current crisis.

Hurry, January.

“Under a Rembrandt-style hat”

A friend of Charles Swann’s has seen Odette de Crécy walking, dressed in “a ‘visiting cloak’ trimmed with skunk, under a ‘Rembrandt-style’ hat, and with a bouquet of violets in her bodice.”

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).

Related reading
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Mooch Brown, Earl van Pelt

Mutts channels Peanuts.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with another lockdown.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” one of the names Stan Newman uses with easier Stumpers of his making. This puzzle could be the work of P. Soffkayk — it’s that easy. Certainly the easiest Stumper I’ve seen. Look at the start: 1-A, seven letters, “Snow job.” And 1-D, seven letters, “Carrot kin.” See? There some a couple of tough spots in the lower left: 38-D, seven letters, “Calixa Lavallée’s best-known tune” and 63-A, seven letters, “They’re hysterical” had me thinking that I would have to guess. But things fell together after all.

If you noticed the sevens: like the December 5 Stumper, also by Stan Newman, this puzzle is fully symmetrical. Thirty-six of its seventy-two answers have seven letters.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:

7-D, seven letters, “’60s TV superstar.” I was surprised at how obvious the answer was once I had a cross.

14-D, seven letters, “China groups.” Pairs nicely with its downstairs neighbor, 44-D, seven letters, “‘Free gift’ ads.”

19-A, five letters, “Pens that don’t write.” I’ve found the Pilot G-Tec-C3 prone to skipping.

39-D, seven letters, “Foolish folks.” A word that’s seen a revival of late.

46-A, seven letters, “Western associate.” My first thought: COUNTRY. But it’s not that kind of Stumper.

64-A, seven letters, “Lavalava wearers.” Does everyone already know this?

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.

The little phrase on the move

At the Verdurins’, a pianist plays for Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy “the little phrase“ from Vinteuil’s sonata for violin and piano "that was like the anthem of their love.“

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).

I like the description of music in painterly terms. Eric Karpeles pairs this passage with the painting Mother Lacing Her Bodice Against a Cradle. Here is a detail.

[Pieter de Hooch, detail from Mother Lacing Her Bodice Against a Cradle (1670). Click for a larger view.]

Not long ago Elaine and I were talking about de Hooch’s Courtyard with an Arbour. We believe we’ve seen it, but where? The Met? In The Age of Rembrandt? But that exhibition was Met holdings only, and Courtyard with an Arbour is in a private collection. Besides, we wouldn’t have been in Mew York when that exhibition ran. I suspect that we looked up the painting after reading about it — somewhere. In which case, we’ve seen not the painting but a reproduction.

Related reading
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[Eric Karpeles’s Paintings in Proust (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008) is a helpful book to have on hand.]

“Encased or lost”

Odette de Crécy disappears beneath her clothes:

Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[To make sense of the syntax: read “that led” and “that directed” as parallel.]