Camembert

The narrator has tried to set the elevator operator straight. But the operator still thinks cheese.

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, trans. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2005).

The lift’s need for logic and clarity is one small source of comedy in the novel. There are many, many others.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Soup’s on

  [Nancy and Nancy revised, July 19, 1955. Click either image for a noisier view.]

To the left, Nancy and Sluggo sup soup. To the right, Elaine and I do the same.

Yesterday’s Nancy was yesterday’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

National Grammar Day

I didn’t know until five minutes ago: it’s National Grammar Day.

A day without grammar are without day grammar a.

Grammars galore

“Can you believe just how crazed people were about English grammar in the 18th and 19th centuries?” From the Grolier Club, an off- and online exhibition from the collection of Bryan Garner, Taming the Tongue: In the Heyday of English Grammar (1711–1851).

Among the writers whose works are on display (with Garner’s commentary): Ann Fisher, the first grammarian to declare that the masculine pronoun includes the feminine; Rowland Jones, who believed that Welsh was the key to language before the incident at Babel; and Lindley Murray, who cautioned against ending a sentence with an adverb, a preposition, or “any inconsiderable word,” as I discovered when tracking down a source for the non-rule that one should not end a sentence with it.

Yes, I once had a student who had been taught that in high school. And another who had been taught that each paragraph should have an odd number of sentences, because odd numbers are pleasing. Can you believe it?

Yes, Michael, there was an Alfred

Thinking about the name Mel Bay got me thinking about the name Alfred, as in Alfred’s Basic Guitar Method, published by the Alfred Music Co. I’m one of the zillion or so people who learned to play by way of Alfred. I went through all six instruction books. After that it was a matter of listening to records and learning how to fingerpick to play what I was hearing. And after that, it was a matter of learning how to play what I wanted to hear.

For anyone who learned to play guitar by way of Alfred: yes, there was an Alfred. But it’s complicated. Here, courtesy of the Internet Archive, is the title page from Book One of the 1959 edition of Alfred’s Basic Guitar Method.

[Same as it ever was. The first three pieces of music: “More,” “Still More,” “No More.” Click for a larger view.]

Here’s where things get strange. Notice the names on the cover: Alfred d’Auberge and Morton Manus. As far as I can tell, there never was an Alfred d’Auberge. I suspect that “he” was just a suave-sounding name to go with the name Alfred Music Co. The real Alfred was Alfred Haase, who sold his music publishing company to Sam Manus in 1930, long before these instruction books were created. Morton Manus was Sam Manus’s son.

Alfred’s Basic Guitar Method lives on, with the first three books now credited to Morty (not Morton) Manus and his son Ron Manus. Books Four, Five, and Six are still credited to Morton Manus and Alfred d’Auberge. Here’s some company history.

[Mel Bay: the lost Spice Guy?]

A Tunes, for beginner violinists

Elaine Fine has a book of violin pieces out from Mel Bay, A Tunes: Capricious Pieces for Beginner Violinists:

Incorporating skills taught in many popular violin methods, these tuneful solo pieces offer a fresh alternative for teachers who would like a stimulating supplement to their usual method. These entertaining and whimsical compositions reinforce and develop violin skills through repetition disguised as lyrical musical phrases. They strengthen the left hand, exercise the fourth finger, and use rests in musically compelling ways that keep the student attentive.

The description continues on the Mel Bay website.

Elaine has written two blog posts — 1, 2 — about how she came to write these pieces.

As a teenager I was baffled by a Mel Bay book of chord progressions for guitar. It was like trying to read cuneiform. And now here I am, married to a Mel Bay author. Life has surprises.

“The Vermeers”

Albertine has been to Amsterdam.

Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, trans. John Sturrock (New York: Penguin, 2005).

Albertine, alas, thinks that the Vermeers are people. Or at least the narrator thinks that Albertine thinks, &c.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

“As seen in Wal-Mart”

A customer, in her fifties at least, no mask, wearing a sweatshirt with this motto:

I’M JUST WTF-ING MY WAY THROUGH LIFE

You said it, lady.

How to improve writing (no. 91)

Sometimes when I look at an old post, say, this one, a review of Benjamin Dreyer’s Dreyer’s English, I wonder how I could have missed what now seems so obvious.

My original sentence:

It’s ready for the next stage in the publication process.

“The publication process,” like “the writing process,” is a ponderous, empty phrase. Newly revised:

It’s ready for the next step toward publication.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 91 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose, including my own. The writing process has no necessary end.]

“Commensurate”?

“If they lose a Democrat, they need a commensurate Republican”: Brian Williams, speaking of the Senate, on The 11th Hour just now.

Meaning: they need a Republican, any Republican. But if there’s a more pompous way to say it, Brian Williams will find it.

Other things Brian Williams has said
False drama : A secret whiteboard : A seven-inch business card : A Great Migration