“Memory’s pictures”

When young, the narrator regarded the Bois du Boulogne as “an artificial place and, in the zoological or mythological sense of the word, a Garden.” But everything changes. From the final paragraph of Swann’s Way :

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

This post concludes one-Proust-sentence-a-day. I’ll post passages from the remaining volumes now and then. Onward!

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[Translator’s note: “In Dodona, in Epirus, the priests of Zeus’ sanctuary gave oracles by interpreting the sound of the wind in the sacred oaks.”]

Nancy Dunning-Kruger

[Nancy, December 29, 2020.]

For a better 2021, read Nancy every day.

Related reading
All OCA Dunning-Kruger posts and Nancy posts (Pinboard)

A 2021 calendar

Free to good home: a 2021 calendar, three months per page, Gill Sans, with minimal holiday markings. It’s a PDF, right here for downloading.

I’ve been making calendars in Pages since late 2009. Good cheap fun.

Here comes Gilberte

Gilberte Swann makes an appearance on the Champs-Élysées:

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

The narrator’s early meetings with Gilberte are strange stuff, combining elements of childhood (marbles, governesses, snowballs down the back) with talk of the theater and an out-of-print book about Racine.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Word Matters

An excellent podcast: Word Matters, with Merriam-Webster editors Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. I’ve especially enjoyed the sixth and seventh episodes, one looking at the changing meaning of matriculate, the other busting the myth that Shakespeare invented x number of words.

In college, I never understood matriculate, and it never occurred to me to look it up. Every semester at registration I’d see the question: “Are you matriculated?” Sometimes I’d check Y. Sometimes, N. It didn’t seem to matter. I suspect that the coach who borrowed matriculate for football purposes didn’t understand the word either.

Edward M. Stringham’s archives

“The papers of Edward M. Stringham fall roughly into three categories: diaries; notes on literature, music, and art; and correspondence.” Mary Norris writes about the extraordinary archives of a New Yorker collator: “The Archives of an Unfulfilled Genius” (The New Yorker ).

Swann, dreaming

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

The young man in a fez is Swann himself: “like certain novelists, he had divided his personality between two characters, the one having the dream, and another he saw before him wearing a fez.”

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

“Audiophile’s purchase”

Re: 8-D, seven letters, “Audiophile’s purchase,” see Anthony Tommasini, “No, I Am Not Getting Rid of My Thousands of CDs” (The New York Times).

Unknown, known

Charles Swann, making people’s lives make sense to him:

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

Donald Rumsfeld’s talk of “known knowns,” “known unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns” (what we know we know, what we know we don’t know, and what we don’t know we don’t know) is easily mocked, but it does make sense. The part of a person’s life we don’t know must count as an unknown unknown, no? Swann converts the unknown unknown into a known known by an act of imagination. Here’s hoping.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Stan Newman, the Newsday puzzle editor, is on vacation until January 2. Today’s Saturday Stumper, by Doug Peterson, is an update of a Stumper published in 2010. It’s surprising/not surprising how dated some of the clues feel ten years after. Take 8-D, seven letters, “Audiophile’s purchase.” Well, yes, but where? Or 11-D, eight letters, “It weighs less than one ounce.” Should that be weighed? Or 21-D, four letters, “Product once pitched by Garfield.” Easily guessable, but there’s no reason that anyone in 2020 (except Jim Davis) should be expected to remember it. Or 66-A, nine letters, “Erstwhile airline.” Erstwhile indeed. I’m not disrespecting the puzzle; I’m just observing that the recent past often feels much more dated than older pasts.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I admire:

3-D, ten letters, “Flip one.” I immediately thought of “the bird.”

17-A, nine letters, “Unwanted overhang.” I immediately thought of gutters.

20-A, nine letters, “‘The Clue in the Crossword Cipher’ solver.” Could be fun to seek out.

32-D, five letters, “Crud!” An exclamation that calls for a revival. I’m surprised to see that crud is an old, old word. My guess would have been that it’s a recent euphemism for crap.

40-D, four letters, “Element of change.” What’s “change”?

49-A, five letters, “Pickup provider.” I’m surprised to see that it’s still around.

57-A, five letters, “‘Darn it, dude!’” Suddenly I’m back in high school, or on a basketball court after school. The answer fits, but no one would have been saying “darn.”

64-A, nine letters, “Some of them are overlaid.” And coming soon to my part of Illinois.

No spoilers: the answers are in the comments.