✓

Amitava Kumar writes about writing and the power of the check mark: “The Oldest Productivity Trick Around” (The New York Times).

Jerry Seinfeld did the same thing with a big X.

[That X is a link.]

Writing and dressmaking

As Marcel thinks about the work of writing he’s about to begin, he tries out various metaphors. He imagines working alongside his servant Françoise: the writer as another dressmaker.

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

And here’s another writer, Godfrey St. Peter, professor, historian, who shares his attic study with a dressmaker, Augusta, who comes to sew for his family, three weeks every spring, three weeks every fall. St. Peter and his wife Lillian are moving to a new and far grander house, but he insists on continuing to rent the old house so that he can work in the attic. And he insists on keeping Augusta’s dress forms there. But he’s willing to let her dress patterns go.

Willa Cather, The Professor’s House (New York: Knopf, 1925).

Cather will later write that it is in the attic that St. Peter’s notes and ideas are ”woven into their proper place in his history.”

Cather called Proust “the greatest French writer of his time,” but there’s no possibility of influence here. The Professor’s House appeared three years after Proust’s death and two years before Le Temps retrouvé. I take these passages as a remarkable instance of synchronicity.

A related post
Proust and Cather

[Supplementary pages? A glance will give you an idea.]

Nancy reflections

It’s hot, and Nancy has been wondering if the heat can melt bubble gum.

[Nancy, September 8, 1955. Click for a larger bubble.]

I like the reflections on the glass, especially the way they cut through the gumballs.

Yesterday’s Nancy is also today’s Nancy.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Merriam-Webster still has the noun as an open compound: bubble gum. Some compound words refuse to be closed.]

When in doubt, scroll

I opened Dropbox on a new iPad for the first time and — uh-oh.


Oh shoot. What’s a cheapskate to do? Scroll! And look closely:


So I removed three devices, two of which were already wiped clean and given away.

Do you think the absence of “Or remove some devices” from the first screen is a matter of accident, or a matter of design?

I still like Dropbox. If you’d like to try it, here’s the obligatory referral code that gives us each an extra 500 MB of free storage.

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.