After first reading Ulysses. From a wonderful short essay by Fintan O’Toole, “The Book That Never Stops Changing” (The Atlantic ):
Now I knew what my father and Vincent were joking about and why we were eating plums way up there above the streets of Dublin. The book was in their heads, and they were inhabiting simultaneously Joyce’s comic parable and the present-day city.Related reading
[Click for a much larger view.]
His name was in the credits. But I still didn’t recognize him. Do you?
Please, guess and guess again. I’m going to be away from screens for a bit; I’ll drop a hint in the not too distant future if necessary.
Someone guessed Mark Hamill, and there is a strong resemblance. But this actor was born much earlier.
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Here’s a hint: here the actor is playing a bad guy. But he’s best known for a role on the right side of the law.
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One more hint: That role was in something whose title gave rise to a memorable bit of slang.
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I’ll leave the name in the comments. Anyone who still wants to guess is welcome to do so.
More mystery actors
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In The New York Times, a visit to Portugal’s Conservas Pinhais:
Canned sardines are having a moment in the food world. With exquisitely decorated tins, perceived if questionable sustainability and the decadence of being drenched in oil, they’ve earned a devoted following among youngish people who love them with their whole heart. At Conservas Pinhais e Cia in Matosinhos, a fish-canning factory just a few miles from the center of Porto, visitors are invited to see that their new favorite treat is, in fact, a very old operation.“Youngish people who love them with their whole heart”: that’s me!
NPR: Please, stop calling Mohammed bin Salman MBS. He is not a brand like BMW or IBM. He is not a hip-hop star like DMC or DMX. But the nickname serves to turn bin Salman into a brand, into a star. He is in fact a suave, murderous theocrat.
Ask the bonesaw, if it can be located.
[I listened to too much NPR yesterday.]
~ Conservators at the National Library of France are restoring the first known draft material of À la recherche du temps perdu, the seventy-five pages known as “the seventy-five pages.”
~ El tiempo perdido, a documentary by María Alvarez, will be released in August. It’s about a group of readers in Buenos Aires who have been reading and rereading Proust for eighteen years.
Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)
Fifty years ago, July 17–21, 1972, it was Duke Ellington Week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Here, from the Duke Ellington Society of Sweden, is an account of the proceedings, with links to the program and recorded excerpts.
And here, also from the DESS, is a Zoom discussion of Ellington Week, with Patricia Willard’s firsthand account of the proceedings, followed by a half-hour television broadcast of Ellington talking to and playing for a Uwis audience. I think having an audience mostly of young people must have pleased Ellington: I’ve never seen him speak with greater ease and openness. The highlight: Paul Gonsalves’s unexpected appearance on stage, an episode I wrote about in a 2016 post.
Why Uwis? Because Ellington marked the occasion with with The Uwis Suite. It’s in three parts as released on the The Ellington Suites (Pablo, 1976): “Uwis,” “Klop,” and “Loco Madi.” A recording of a fourth (first) section, “The Anticipation,” for solo piano, was released on Duke Ellington: An Intimate Piano Session (Storyville, 2017). Here they are, all four: “The Anticipation,” “Uwis,” “Klop,” and “Loco Madi.” “Uwis” is one of my favorite pieces of late Ellington: serene, urbane, with just a hint of the polka that appears in “Klop.”
Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)
Mary Miller (R, IL-15) was one of just eighteen members of the House of Representatives (all Republicans) to vote against H.Res. 1130, a resolution expressing support for Finland’s and Sweden’s applications to join NATO. Here’s the vote.
There’s something about Mary.
Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)
In The New York Times, “How ‘Stop the Steal’ Captured the American Right”:
History, faith, crime, retribution: These are the rudiments of a new strain of Republican politics, shaped by the last year of Trump’s presidency — the second impeachment trial, the coronavirus pandemic, the campaign — but destined to extend far beyond it.
Stephen Dedalus speaks. From the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode:
James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).
Stephen’s words click with a Bloom thought earlier in the day: “Wander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet him.” “Meet him”: a pun on metempsychosis (“met him pike hoses”), a word Bloom attempts to explain to Molly earlier in the day. There’s another click to come.
Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)
[As seen on a window sill.]
The sun was just right the other day. I drew on the picture, not on the curtain in front of the aloe.
“Always meeting ourselves,” as Stephen Dedalus would say. Faces everywhere.
