Blue canard

From an Open Culture post about Robert Johnson and Keith Richards:

Figuring out what Johnson did still consumes his biggest fans. Since his recordings were intentionally sped up, interpreters of his music must make their best guesses about his tunings.

No, there’s no evidence that Robert Johnson’s recordings were intentionally speeded up. I left a comment on the Open Culture post saying just that, with links to relevant commentary by Elijah Wald and me. That was early yesterday morning. My comment hasn’t yet appeared, and I’m guessing that it won’t be appearing.

It’s crazy-making to me that what began as a “theory” about Johnson’s recordings seems to be acquiring the status of a fact. But it’s only a blue canard.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Johnson posts (Pinboard)

[I opt for speeded up. Garner’s Modern English Usage: “The best past tense and past-participial form is sped, not *speeded. It has been so since the 17th century. But there’s one exception: the phrasal verb speed up (= to accelerate) <she speeded up to 80 m.p.h.>”]

Domestic comedy

“It’s a ‘known fact,’ as you would say.”

“Don’t turn my words against me!”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Nobody and Somebody

Ginevra Fanshawe, Miss Thing herself, wants to know, “Who are you, Miss Snowe?”


And a little later:

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

A rising character indeed. Lucy Snowe is a protagonist in a novel.

I would like to imagine that these passages from Villette stand behind Emily Dickinson’s 260 (1862):

260, from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Ralph W. Franklin (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998).

Noting that Dickinson read “competitively,” seeking to outdo other poets, Richard B. Sewall points to a different inspiration for 260: “Little Nobody,” a trite poem by Charles Mackay that appeared in the Springfield Republican (1858). The closing lines of its two stanzas: “I’m but little Nobody — Nobody am I,” “Who would be a Somebody? — Nobody am I.” Okay. But I’d rather think of Dickinson finding inspiration in Brontë’s protagonist, whose life of aloneness, walking by herself in empty classrooms, stealing away to an attic to read a letter, must have made compelling reading for the poet.

There were two copies of Villette in the Dickinson family library: one from 1853, one from 1859. In neither are the passages I’ve quoted marked. Then again, in all of Jane Eyre there are just two passages that Dickinson marked.

”Who are you, Miss Dickinson?”

“I am a rising character — Vesuvius at home.”

Related reading
All OCA Brontë posts and Dickinson posts (Pinboard)

[Miss Fanshawe doesn’t speak the word “somebody”: the contrast between “nobody” and “somebody” is Lucy’s. Sewall writes about Mackay’s poem in The Life of Emily Dickinson (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974). Sewall doesn’t mention Villette in relation to 260. “Vesuvius at home”: from Dickinson’s 1691, which ends, “A Crater I may contemplate / Vesuvius at home.” The phrase became the title of Adrienne Rich’s 1976 essay “Vesuvius at Home.”]

Some of the old songs, Sam

That Applebee’s commercials rely on the theme songs from Cheers and Welcome Back, Kotter to encourage a return to in-person eating tells you something about the chain’s target audience. Cheers signed off twenty-eight years ago; Welcome Back, Kotter, forty-two years ago.

[Let the record show: Elaine and I have been to an Applebee’s just once. We did not laugh; we were not needed; and no one knew our names.]

Paving-stones

Back at Madame Beck’s school after a concert.

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

This passage seems to presage one in Marcel Proust’s Finding Time Again (1927). As Proust’s narrator enters the Guermantes’ Paris courtyard, its uneven paving stones bring back the past: “And almost at once I realized that it was Venice,” and the narrator experiences the sensation he felt “on the two uneven flagstones in the baptistery of St. Mark’s.” There’s nothing like an exact resemblance here: Lucy Snowe is back at the scene of a crucial moment in her life; remembering it, she notices a detail she noticed then. For Proust’s narrator, one discrete moment brings back another without conscious effort. Still, paving-stones.

A colorful detail about one of the hired men in the male brothel in this volume of Proust’s novel: he was involved in the murder of a concierge at La Villette. La Villette is a Paris park.

Related reading
All OCA Charlotte Brontë posts (Pinboard)

[Translation by Ian Patterson (London: Penguin, 2003).]

Memorial Day

[“Gloucester, Massachusetts. Memorial Day, 1943. A Legionnaire sounding taps for the War dead during services.” Photograph by Gordon Parks. From the Library of Congress. Click for a much larger view.]

“The radiant present”

Off to a concert. Lucy Snowe begins to see more of the city of Villette, capital of the fictional French-speaking kingdom of Labassecour.

Charlotte Brontë, Villette (1853).

Related reading
All OCA Charlotte Brontë posts (Pinboard)

Lois Ehlert (1934–2021)

Lois Ehlert, artist and author of countless books for children, has died at the age of eighty-six. Publishers Weekly has a lengthy obituary and appreciation.

If Lois Ehlert’s name doesn’t ring a bell, think Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Today’s Newsday Saturday

Today’s Newsday  Saturday crossword is credited to “Stock and Vasquez.” I think this must be their first Newsday Saturday. Matthew Stock has a site where he publishes crosswords: Happy Little Puzzles. Quiara Vasquez has a site too: QVXWordz. I’ve seen their names together on an Atlantic Sunday crossword.

Today’s puzzle is tough but fair, as students sometimes say of teachers. And verging, I’d say, on Saturday Stumper difficulty, as students probably never say when describing teachers.

Some clue-and-answer pairs I especially liked (with a minor hint for 44-D):

10-D, six letters, “Matthau’s Odd Couple costar on Broadway.” No, not him. Another guy, and I’m ashamed to say it was news to me.

13-D, five letters, “Piece of one’s mind.” Clever, and a good reminder of what it, the piece, is meant to be.

15-A, nine letters, “They’re tinny and tasty.” My mind went first to ALTOIDS. Too short, or small.

20-A, four letters, “Squat.” Clever.

24-A, twelve letters, “Field full of seeds in the spring.” Even I got this one easily, which might be one reason I liked it.

37-A, three letters, “Open-and-shut case grp.” The clue redeems the answer.

39-D, seven letters, “The ____ did it (solution to ‘Murder at the Winery’).” Groan.

44-D, five letters, “Legislate or recreate.” Heteronym alert!

48-A, four letters, “Sticks together to keep youngsters safe.” Youngsters — that’s sweet.

56-A, nine letters, “Renegade and Renaissance, for the Obamas.” I swear that my first thought was GOLDFISH. Did Malia and Sasha have pet fish way back when? I came back to reality soon enough.

One answer that still baffles me a bit: 55-D, three letters, “Fusion-reaction energy source.” When I typed in the final letter, I thought it had to be wrong. It seems odd to pair this answer with a clue involving science. But I may be missing something.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

From the television

“For many of us, Memorial Day marks the official start of summer.”

I think they mean unofficial.

But as Elaine said, official is the new unofficial.