Giggles and glances

Marcel is enduring the actress Rachel’s dreadful recitation:

Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again, trans. Ian Patterson (London: Penguin, 2003).

Oh those young people. I recall from grad school days a poetry reading with an ultra-distinguished poet who begged off reading his work after repeated starts and stops. He had a cold. He announced that he would comment on his poems, which would be read by the fellow who introduced him, a Jesuit priest who had not been prepared for this eventuality. (Who would be?) I think it was a line about thighs &c. that set us off — just the incongruity of it all.

On a more reserved note, I recall sitting at a dinner table with my friend Rob Zseleczky, both of us waiting to see how one was supposed to eat an artichoke. Innocents abroad, or at least in someone else’s house. I bet Rob would remember it too. Our host was gracious.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Adam Gopnik on Proust

Adam Gopnik, in a cranky essay on Proust in The New Yorker:

Proust front-loads his novel with his philosophy of time. One of the oddities is that its most famous incident happens within the first dozen pages, and is, nonetheless, isolated from the rest: the narrator (Proustians haughtily resist identifying him with Proust himself, or referring to him as Marcel, though he obviously is) eats the crumbs of a madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea and is suddenly thrust back to his childhood at Combray.

Well, no. And no.

In the Penguin edition of the novel, the madeleine episode begins on page forty-five. And “Proustians,” whoever they are, often refer to the narrator as Marcel. See, for instance, the brief commentaries by translators in the Penguin edition. Or see, for instance, the novel itself. In The Prisoner, we are told that when Albertine speaks to the narrator,

her first words were “darling” or “my darling,” followed by my Christian name, which, if we give the narrator the same name as the author of this book, would produce “darling Marcel” or “my darling Marcel.”

Granted, that’s a bit coy. But in the same volume, Albertine writes a letter that begins “Dear darling Marcel” and ends “Oh Marcel, Marcel!” These are the only references to “Marcel” in the novel, but they’re enough to confer that name upon the narrator.

So much strangeness in this essay. Gopnik seems disgruntled that all sorts of minor Proustian efforts are seeing publication. He declares that there is “nothing humanly unconvincing” about the cipher Albertine. He casts Proust as a “Belle Époque Tolkien” and suggests that he is an unusual figure in inspiring debate among non-specialists about preferred translations. Homer? Cervantes? Kafka? Enough.

Related reading
Adam Gopnik on Duke Ellington : All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

[Quotations from Carol Clark’s translation of The Prisoner (London: Penguin, 2003). Thanks to the reader who pointed out an egregious typo in my final paragraph.]

Recently updated

Charge! Now with a link to a film from the Brooklyn Public Library that shows the Remington Rand photocharger in action.

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

Low-hanging fruit, I think. But I was surprised to see the face. Leave your best guess in the comments. I’ll drop hints if needed.

*

The actor’s name is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ? : ?

Additional reverie

“It all checks out, Perry. The bookmobiles in both Indy and Brooklyn use Remington Rand. The Brooklyn branch libraries: also Remington Rand.”

[Paul Drake flips his notebook shut.]

“That covers the charging systems, Paul. But there’s still something we don’t know: what book Mrs. Dorothy Deck checked out — and when it’s due.”

[Drake rolls eyes, exits, and heads for the Los Angeles International Airport to book a seat on the next flight to Indianapolis.]

Charge!

In a post about vintage library supplies, I fell into in a reverie about the book-charging technology of my childhood. A librarian dropped the name in a comment: the Remington Rand Photocharger. Finding anything about this device online is difficult; finding a photograph or film clip, nearly impossible. But search we must.

That must be a charging device on the desk.

[“Fare ’Nuff.” The Indianapolis News, July 17, 1953. The text reads: “You don’t need a zone check on this bus, all the Public Library bookmobile asks for is your library card! Trying to make a decision at the Windsor Village station is Mrs. Dorothy Deck, while Allen Thompson, driver of the mobile library, acts as charge-out clerk.”]

But there has to be a better photograph, right? After endless searches in Google Books and the Internet Archive, I ended up searching in JSTOR. And there I found a much better photograph of what I remember:

[Dorothy Van Gorder, “What to do About Shelving and Equipment.” ALA Bulletin (November 1948). Click for a larger view.]

It’s the same machine as in the Indianapolis bookmobile. And I found something of a confirmation that the machine I’m seeing here is what I saw as a boy:

The bookmobiles of the Brooklyn Public Library use the same model Remington Rand photocharger as the branches.

Earl H. Gray, James C. Foutts, Dallas R. Shawkey, Nancy E. Miller, A. T. Dickinson Jr., and E. Stanley Beacock, “Bookmobile Service Today III: The New Bookmobile.” ALA Bulletin (July–August 1957).

That’s some years before my use of a Brooklyn branch library, but it’s close enough.

Now to get hold of a Remington Rand manual. Until then, here’s Bob McGrath of Sesame Street and a decidedly unsleek charging machine in the background.


You can watch the video at YouTube.

*

May 3: Stephen at pencil talk found a a post from the Brooklyn Public Library blog with a short educational film that shows the photocharger, The Library: A Family Affair (1952). If you’re impatient, go to the 9:37 mark in part one and get ready for the charger’s dramatic entrance. Both parts of the film are also at YouTube (unembeddable): 1 and 2.

As I now see, the photocharger photographed catalog cards, not title pages.

*

May 6: An anonymous librarian passes on an item from the Brooklyn Eagle column “Living in Brooklyn,” “Old Library Card Relic of the Past,” by Margaret Mara, July 14, 1952:

In case you are not up to date on your Brooklyn public library, you may not be aware that a revolutionary project put into effect last Fall has streamlined the system. Installed in the main library and all of the 48 borough branches are Remington Rand Photochargers which photograph, in one push-button, flash operation, a record of your identification card, book number and date on sensitized paper. Books can be returned to the shelves immediately, with no hold-up as in the past, while librarians and clerks labor over carts.

Six weeks after the date that books are issued the records of that date are scanned for overdue books. Only the overdue records are retained. The balance of that day’s records are then destroyed.

Incidentally, the proportion of overdue books amounts to approximately 5 percent.

Brooklyn is the only one of the five boroughs which has this system in its libraries. The machines are small, compact arrangements set right on the counter.

The photocharger differs from the library in the 42d St., Manhattan, library, where a microfilm is used. The photo charger reproduces on paper, 40% smaller than the original, whereas microfilm reproduces on film.

Only a librarian can truly appreciate this new system which has retired the mossy old library card stamped again and again with dates. That archaic system swamped the librarians with clerical work. Today a librarian has ample time to help the library patrons in selecting books. No longer is the limited personnel harried with stacks of books piled up and waiting to be checked and records transferred.

A confession

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)

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.

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.]