Your narrative, Marcel, has under eighty pages to go. Come, confess, before it’s too late. In the company of all those society folk, at those endless luncheons and soirées, like, say, the one in The Guermantes Way that runs for 132 pages, weren’t you ever bored?
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again, trans. Ian Patterson (London: Penguin, 2003).
Slogs gonna slog. But Proust is still the greatest reading experience I’ve had.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Sunday, May 2, 2021
A confession
Saturday, May 1, 2021
Art and speed and haste
“Some used to say,” Marcel says, “that art in a period of speed and haste would be brief, like the people before the war who predicted that it would be over quickly.”
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again, trans. Ian Patterson (London: Penguin, 2003).
No brief art here: our household’s tandem reading club has been at In Search of Lost Time since December 8. We’re set to reach the last page tomorrow.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
[Bicycles can also bring the curious to empty or abandoned churches.]
Today’s Newsday Saturday
Today’s Newsday Saturday crossword, by Greg Johnson, is a killer-diller, the toughest Saturday in many weeks. The southeast corner was, for me, the scene of exceptional difficulty. I’d say that this puzzle qualifies as a Stumper.
Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked:
5-D, four letters, “Dash for cash.” No ATM needed.
6-A, nine letters, “Outdoor accommodations.” I was thinking of “accommodations” as a euphemism — i.e., RESTSTOPS. Though the “accommodations” at a rest stop aren’t outside, unless it’s a rest stop without “facilities.”
Let’s get back on the road, shall we?
19-A, eleven letters, “Supermarket money saver.” Perhaps, but often it’s just the opposite.
33-D, nine letters, “Brit’s sedan.” I have never seen this answer in a puzzle.
45-D, six letters, “With 51 Across, rotini.” Know your 51-A!
55-A, eleven letters, “Time travelers of a sort.” The analog world is pleased.
The last answer I filled in was for 53-A, four letters, “Folk art tinware.” What? It had to be right, and it was.
One quibble: the clue for 1-D, nine letters, should read “Marlon Brando rival.”
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Friday, April 30, 2021
More Adalbert Stifter
I’m excited to learn that there will soon be more of Adalbert Stifter’s writing available in English: New York Review Books is publishing Motley Stones, a sequence of six novellas, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole. Publication date: May 4. Right now, the book is available to order at 30% off.
I've read Stifter's novel The Bachelors and the novella Rock Crystal (included in Motley Stones). It's not hyperbole to say that I’ve never read anything remotely like Adalbert Stifter’s writing.
Related posts
A passage from The Bachelors : A passage from Rock Crystal
[What would my reading life be without NYRB? Greatly diminished.]
“A child immediately rises up”
Things, the narrator tells us, “at the moment we notice them, turn within us into something immaterial, akin to all the preoccupations or sensations we have at that particular time, and mingle indissolubly with them.”
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again, trans. Ian Patterson (London: Penguin, 2003).
An elementary-school kid takes my place when I read Alvin’s Secret Code; a middle-schooler, when I read Deathman, Do Not Follow Me.
See also this Proust passage.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Vintage library supplies
From Smithsonian magazine: “Vintage Supplies that Kept Libraries Running.” I still see a couple of charging cases in my university library’s reference room. I think they hold scratch paper now. And I still see older books with the holes left by perforating stamps. They track the school’s changing names, from “normal school” to college to university.
One bit of more recent library technology I wish I had asked about as a kid: a machine in my branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. A book to be checked out was opened flat under a hood of sorts. A light flashed above, accompanied by a strangely satisfying thunk. At least I think that’s what happened. This machine must have been making photostats for circulation records. I remember that with several books, the librarian would nest them before checking them out.
(Is anyone familiar with what I’m trying to describe?)
Thanks to Gunther at Lexikaliker for passing on the link.
*
May 2: I found two photographs of the charging machine I tried to describe.
*
May 6: More discoveries in the post with the photos.
Related posts
The Card Catalog : Catalog card generator : Celebrity borrowers :
Library slip, 1941, 1992
Thursday, April 29, 2021
Back to the office
“To see March 2020 even though it’s 2021 kind of spooked me a little”: “A return to offices frozen in time” (The Washington Post).
Block that metaphor
Chuck Todd, speaking of Joe Biden on MSNBC not long ago:
“Here he is, now at the precipice of introducing a new era.”Related reading
All OCA metaphor posts (Pinboard)
On Duke Ellington’s birthday
Duke Ellington was born on April 29, 1899.
Here are two recordings made not long before I began listening. They’re from “the stockpile,” the trove of recordings Ellington made at his own expense, unreleased in his lifetime.
From Black, Brown and Beige (1943), “Symphonette.”
Cootie Williams, Money Johnson, Eddie Preston, Richard Williams, trumpets; Booty Wood, Malcolm Taylor, Chuck Connors, trombones; Norris Turney, Buddy Pearson, Paul Gonsalves, Harold Ashby, Harry Carney, reeds; Joe Benjamin, bass; Rufus Jones, drums. Recorded May 6, 1971 and released on The Intimate Ellington (Pablo, 1977). The soloist is Harry Carney on baritone sax.
The UWIS Suite (1972), written for a week-long Ellington festival at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: “The Anticipation,” “Uwis,” “Klop,” and “Loco Madi.”
Duke Ellington, piano; Cootie Williams, Mercer Ellington, Money Johnson, Johnny Coles, trumpets; Booty Wood, Vince Prudente, Chuck Connors, trombones; Russell Procope, Harold Minerve, Norris Turney, Harold Ashby, Russ Andrews, Harry Carney, reeds; Joe Benjamin, bass; Rufus Jones, drums. On “Loco Madi,” Wulf Freedman, electric bass.
“The Anticipation,” for piano alone, was recorded on August 25, 1972 and released on Duke Ellington: An Intimate Piano Session (Storyville, 2017). The other sections were recorded on October 5, 1972 and released on The Ellington Suites (Pablo, 1976).
The soloists on “Uwis”: Carney, baritone; Turney, alto; Procope, clarinet; Ashby: tenor. The closing bit: Turney, flute; Minerve, piccolo; Carney, bass clarinet; Ashby, tenor. On “Loco Madi”: Ashby, tenor; Johnson, trumpet; Turney, alto.
The Ellington band premiered The UWIS Suite on July 21, 1972 in Madison. To my knowledge, that was the single public performance.
Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)
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