Sort of quixotic

Donald Trump*’s effort to overturn the result of the presidential election is not quixotic. But Donald has one thing in common with the Don: they both tilt at windmills.

New Year’s Eve 1920

In hotels, no serving, only looking the other way. In other establishments, a different approach.

[“Sober Crowds Jam Streets of City on New Year’s Eve: Bigger Celebration Than for Several Years, but Alcoholic Revelry Is Subdued.” The New York Times, January 1, 1921.]

You can hear the wheels turning as the reporter tries out elegant (or inelegant) variations: “a peg of whisky,” “a pony of pure fire.”

May 2021 be a better year than the year that ends tonight. I want to borrow from D.H. Lawrence and say, Look! We have come through! But so many have not.

Not quixotic

An MSNBC anchor referred to Donald Trump*’s “quixotic quest” to overturn the result of the presidential election. Uh, no.

Trump* is out of touch with reality, and his quest is bound to fail. But his effort isn’t quixotic, not “foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals,” not “marked by rash lofty romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action” (Merriam-Webster). To the contrary, Trump*’s effort is base, ignoble, and self-serving, a subversion of democracy and a cheap con. There’s nothing quixotic about it.

Needs rephrased

From a TV commercial for a community college: “Choose a major that will prepare you for a promising future or university transfer.”

[Need + past participle is a thing.]

Berger’s Deli

[From the Naked City episode “Go Fight City Hall,” October 31, 1962. Click for a larger street.]

Here’s another instance of what I’ll call the Naked City effect, turning Manhattan into a small town of immediately recognizable locations. That’s Berger’s Deli, at 44 West 47th Street, in the Diamond District. You might know the street from Marathon Man. You might also know it as the longtime home of the Gotham Book Mart, which stood at no. 41. My friend Aldo Carrasco and I once had lunch at Berger’s after a visit to the Gotham. My fambly had lunch at Berger’s somewhere in the 1990s after visiting an exhibition of Edward Gorey’s work at the Gotham. And when I made a trip to New York in 2002 to see a Henry Darger exhibit and hear John Ashbery read from his work, I had lunch at Berger’s after what turned out to be a final trip to the Gotham. Here’s the menu — I took a copy.

Proust reminds us that “houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.” Yes, it’s true. The Gotham is gone, and Berger’s is now at 2 East 39th Street. Here’s the current menu.

You can see the Gotham’s “Wise Men Fish Here” sign and Berger’s at 0:25 in this clip from Marathon Man.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

[From Swann's Way, trans. Lydia Davis (New York: Viking, 2002).]

“Rheumatism rather than literature”

The narrator wants to be a writer. M. de Norpois, former ambassador, knows of a friend’s son with the same ambition:

Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, trans. James Grieve (New York: Penguin, 2002).

I had planned to end my sentence-a-day posts with the end of Swann’s Way. But I had to share this sentence.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Dwight D. Ritz

[Nancy, December 30, 2020. Click for a larger view.]

Aunt Fritzi has said that Nancy better have “some kind of justification” for writing on the window. Nancy offers that justification in the form of an Eisenhower matrix. Of course she’s replaced important/unimportant/urgent/not urgent with her own terms.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

“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.