Today’s Newsday Saturday crossword is by Greg Johnson. Pretty dang easy — it makes me miss the Stumper.
Clue-and-answer pairs I especially like:
1-A, ten letters, “Face covering.” A nice bit of misdirection to start things off.
7-D, three letters, “Name that looks like a number.” Fun to suss out.
9-D, nine letters, “Devoted a whole show to, say.” I like the dowdiness.
17-A, ten letters, “Show watched by Spanish learners.” My first idiosyncratic (and dated) thought: ¿Qué Pasa, USA?
33-D, five letters, “Goddess well-regarded by Athenians.” Nice to know what her name means.
39-D, eight letters, “Archie Comics hangout.” For the characters, I presume, not the artists and writers.
41-A, six letters, “Dolly’s ‘I cannot compete with you’ woman.” Sung by two generations in my fambly.
60-A, ten letters, “Moby-Dick, e.g.” That’s a name, not a title.
66-A, ten letters, “Shaving in the kitchen.” Sounds like a Depression life hack. “The dish of water you set out last night over the stove’s pilot light will now be warm,” &c.
No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.
Saturday, July 10, 2021
Today’s Newsday Saturday
By Michael Leddy at 8:01 AM comments: 1
Friday, July 9, 2021
Mr. Goodman
Our narrator, V., has a strong antipathy to a Mr. Goodman, his half-brother’s secretary, who has already written a biography, The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, a “slapdash and very misleading book” that makes no mention of V. Watch what happens with Mr. Goodman’s name in these paragraphs.
Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).
Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 9:02 AM comments: 0
Thursday, July 8, 2021
Avant-garde
Gotta love it that someone with the name Avant-garde just won the Scripps National Spelling Bee: Zaila Avant-garde. Her winning word: murraya.
By Michael Leddy at 8:57 PM comments: 0
Los Beach Boys
Los Lobos cover “Sail On, Sailor” — and other songs from Los Angeles.
By Michael Leddy at 12:58 PM comments: 0
“Everything”
Sebastian Knight at Cambridge:
Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).
This novel, Nabokov’s first in English, raises, again and again, the question that runs through Pnin: how does the narrator (here V., Sebastian’s half-brother) know these things? Whose nostalgia is at work here?
Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 8:20 AM comments: 0
Wednesday, July 7, 2021
Following a leader
Wow. But not surprising. And where do you think he, with his dim grasp of history, might have heard this kind of thing?
(The ghost of Fred Trump walks.)
Nor is it suprising when a hard-right congressional non-entity declares that
“Hitler was right on one thing.”
By Michael Leddy at 12:59 PM comments: 0
Mr. H
V. has been going through the drawers of his late brother Sebastian’s desk. V. expects to find photographs of “lots of girls,” “smiling in the sun, summer snapshots.” But no:
Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941).
Sebastian Knight never wrote such a work. But his intention to use photographs in the service of fiction anticipates W. G. Sebald.
Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)
By Michael Leddy at 8:14 AM comments: 0
The Los Feliz Murder Mansion
The Los Feliz Murder Mansion is a seven-episode podcast from Cloudy Day Pictures. It begins with a 1959 murder-suicide and goes on to explore one Los Feliz house’s history from its construction to the present day, chasing down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. Stick it out after the first-episode hype and you’ll likely be impressed.
By Michael Leddy at 8:12 AM comments: 0
Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Domestic comedy
“O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can I know my trousers from my pants?”
Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)
[With apologies to William Butler Yeats.]
By Michael Leddy at 2:48 PM comments: 2