Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021)

[Bernadette Peters sings “No One Is Alone,” from Into the Woods, words and music by Stephen Sondheim. From “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration,” May 2020.]

The New York Times has an obituary.

A handful of Sondheim posts
“The Ladies Who Lunch” : On education : Paper and pencil : Writing habits

Woolworth’s

[Margaret “Mick” Kelly (Sondra Locke), store clerk. From The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (dir. Robert Ellis Miller, 1968). Click either image for a much larger view.]

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was filmed on location in Selma, Alabama. That has to be a genuine Woolworth’s.

My one and only Woolworth’s stood at 4318 13th Avenue, Brooklyn. I remember the candy display and the tables with all sorts of inexpensive stuff. I remember buying Christmas presents for my grandparents: a comb, a hand mirror. (I was a little kid.) I remember buying Silly Putty for myself, packaged in what looked like a television set. (I was a little kid.) I remember retail density, the thing I still most admire in hardware and housewares stores. S. Feldman, I’m thinking of you.

That’s my shopping for today.

Modern mondegreen

Watching the first part of Peter Jackson’s Get Back, I realized that I’ve been mishearing a word in “Get Back” since 1969. The lyric references “sweet Loretta Martin,” not “sweet Loretta Modern.” I will consider “sweet Loretta Modern” my very own mondegreen.

I have more thoughts about this documentary, but that’s all for now.

Related reading
All OCA Beatles posts (Pinboard)

Thanksgiving 1921

[“Beggars’ Holiday Mars Thanksgiving: Throngs of Children in Garbs, Tattered or Classic, Invade City’s Crowded Centres.” The New York Times, November 25, 1921. Click for a larger view.]

No full-grown oaths at the dinner table, or while shooting craps!

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

[“Latin” seems to be the Times word for “Mediterranean.” My people, or half of them.]

NYT “Best Book”

The New York Times has assembled, from readers’ recommendations, a list of twenty-five contenders for the title of “best book of the past 125 years.” It’s a silly, sorry list, starting with the word “best,” which seems to mean “what you like.” “Book” means “novel,” and “novel” means “novel in English” (with one exception). Just two “books” date from the 1920s, two from the 1930s, and two from the 1940s. And some of the choices: Charlotte’s Web? A Confederacy of Dunces? They are (or were) wonderful novels (John Kennedy Toole’s humor has dated badly), but sheesh. Gone with the Wind? Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone? Sheesh again.

The work most conspicuously missing from this list: Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. It’s difficult to think that no reader thought to suggest it. Perhaps the Times didn’t want to privilege a particular translation by using the title In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past. One publisher or another might be cross.

But is Proust’s “book” the best book of the past 125 years? It’s a silly question. As T.S. Eliot said in “East Coker” about the work of the writer, “there is no competition.” Or as the poet William Bronk said, in response to a survey asking for the ten best books of American poetry published since 1945, “Don’t ask me. I believe the arts are not competitive.”

Who else is missing from this list? Well, T.S. Eliot and William Bronk. Also Jorge Luis Borges, Willa Cather, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, W.G. Sebald, and Virginia Woolf, for starters. If you’re going to make such a list, make it a good one.

Recently updated

Words of the year Now with NFT.

Guilty, guilty, guilty

In the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers: Travis McMichael, guilty on all nine counts; Gregory McMichael, guilty on eight of nine counts; William Bryan, guilty on six of nine counts.

Mimestream, a Mac app for Gmail

“Combines your favorite Gmail features with the power of a native macOS app so you can move through your email effortlessly”: Mimestream is free to download and use while it’s in beta. I downloaded the app yesterday and am impressed by its design and ease of use. It should prove especially handy for anyone who manages multiple Gmail accounts.

I wish I had known about Mimestream sooner — it’s been around for more than a year. I plan to pay for the app when it goes to market, even (so help me) if it’s available only by subscription.

5B or 6B

The animator and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, talking to Ligaya Mishan of The New York Times:

“I believe that the tool of an animator is the pencil,” he tells me. (We speak through an interpreter, Yuriko Banno.) Japanese pencils are particularly good, he notes: The graphite is delicate and responsive — in the 2013 documentary The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, directed by Mami Sunada, he mocks himself for having to rely on a soft 5B or even softer 6B as he gets older — and encased in sugi (Japanese cedar), although, he muses, “I don’t see that many quality wood trees left in Japan anymore.”

Thanks to Chris at Dreamers Rise.

Related reading
All OCA pencils posts (Pinboard)

A Verilux sale

From Verilux, through December 29:

~ 20% off on orders up to $99 with the code BFCM20

~ 25% off on orders over $100 with the code BFCM25

My only connection to Verilux: I’m a happy customer. My Verilux doesn’t utterly rout grey skies, but it sure helps.