IRA = BFD

IRA: the Inflation Reduction Act.

BFD: Self-explanatory, I hope. If not, ask Joe Biden.

Along came Mary, and a bookstore

[Hamburger Mary and the Liveright Bookshop, 15 and 17 West 51st Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

“Hamburger Mary”? I know that name. William Burroughs, from a Paris Review interview (Fall 1965):

There was a place in New York called Hamburger Mary’s. I was in Hamburger Mary’s when a friend gave me a batch of morphine syrettes. That was my first experience with morphine, and then I built up a whole picture of Hamburger Mary. She is also an actual person. I don’t like to give her name for fear of being sued for libel, but she was a Scientologist who started out in a hamburger joint in Portland, Oregon, and now has eleven million dollars.

In Burroughs’s fiction, Hamburger Mary is a member of the Nova Mob, a group dedicated to creating galactic chaos. (I’m simplifying greatly.) Among the mob’s members: Izzy the Push, The Subliminal Kid, and Mr Bradly Mr Martin. In our world, there’s now Hamburger Mary’s, “a drag-themed burger restaurant chain.” Any relation to West 51st or Burroughs? If there is one, the company’s history page isn’t saying. Wikipedia points to the use of “Mary” as a slang term for a gay man as the explanation.

Next door to Mary, the Liveright Bookshop. Boni & Liveright, the publishing firm founded by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright in 1917, was and still is a distinguished name in modern American literature. A 1963 New Yorker item describes the Liveright Bookshop as the work of two sisters, Addie and Babette Liveright, in business from 1924 to 1952. They were Horace Liveright’s cousins. A 1925 advertisement for the bookshop (which was then on West 49th Street) made an appearance in this OCA post.

If my map-reading skills are firing, 15 and 17 West 51st have been subsumed by 75 Rockefeller Plaza and an American Girl store.

*

August 12: I went to the library to look up “Nostalgic Twins,” the 1963 New Yorker item about the Liveright sisters. Addie (1883–1968) and Babette (1883–1969) were twins, born in Philadelphia, educated in Quaker schools. “We are not intellectuals,” Babette told The New Yorker. Babette worked as a secretary, came to New York and took a course in bookselling, developed a following at Stern’s (a department store), and persuaded Addie to join her in starting a bookstore. The sisters began at 4 West 49th and moved to 15 West 51st in 1929. In 1945 they moved to the Associated Press Building on Rockefeller Plaza. John D. was among their customers. Others: Oscar Hammerstein II, Sinclair Lewis, Dorothy Parker, Dawn Powell, A.S.W. Rosenbach, and the Holland-America Line.

The New Yorker item ends with a joke: “‘Dr. Rosenbach bought from us, but we didn’t buy from him,’ Addie said.” A.S.W. Rosenbach was a buyer, seller, and collector of rare books. He owned the manuscripts of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Ulysses.

Related reading
More OCA posts with photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives

The Vignelli map

From the New York Transit Museum: Towards a Better Way: The “Vignelli” Map at 50.

[An excerpt from the map, showing a bit of Brooklyn.]

Rats in cars

“The ‘check engine’ light came on, and I brought it to my mechanic, who popped the hood and found chicken bones, some bread and part of a bacon, egg and cheese sandwich sitting there”: “Why So Many Cars Have Rats in Them Now” (The New York Times ).

A tip our Toyota dealer offered: set the ventilation to recirculate if you’re leaving a car parked for any length of time — say in an airport parking lot. Doing so keeps at least some of the innards off-limits to critters.

The sound of the Senate

I’m watching me some C-SPAN2. As voting remains open on whether to begin debate on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the sound of the Senate is extremely odd. It suggests to me a cross between a laundromat and a gathering of chanting ghosts, led perhaps by Diane Feinstein and Charles Grassley.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

The Newsday Saturday Stumper seems to once again be available from the Newsday site without a subscription. Hurrah! Today’s Stumper is by “Anna Stiga,” or Stan Again, Stan Newman, the puzzle’s editor. The pseudonym marks an easier Stumper, and this one is indeed easier, though several clues made me struggle. 8-D, nine letters, “Baker of artisanal breads”? Well, it’s not PEPPERIDGEFARM.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, six letters, “Unsuccessful.” I always think of the answer as a word I learned in college.

12-D, three letters, “Know how.” Sneaky.

20-A, twelve letters, “French president’s term.” Pretty Stumpery. I thought the answer had to be in French, and there is an answer in French that looks right, but it’s wrong.

21-D, four letters, “‘_____ travail!’ (‘Too much work!’: Fr.).” Part of the reason I thought the answer for 20-A was in French.

28-A, three letters, “Common contents of bookcases.” ART? CDS? Also pretty Stumpery.

30-A, seven letters, “Hershiser in ’88, Pujols in ’04”: uh, sports? No doubt many solvers will just know this, but not me.

41-A, seven letters, “‘Father’ to ‘père,’ per Wikipedia.” I just liked seeing the answer.

47-D, six letters, “One of four in Romeo and Juliet.” I caught on.

48-D, six letters, “Museum pieces.” There’s a poem that comes to mind.

58-A, four letters, “Fair pair.” I always like an answer that I think I understand until I realize that I’ve probably misunderstood it. It’s like getting a bonus answer when the puzzle is done.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Dad, i.m.

My dad, James Leddy, died seven years ago today. He’d have been ninety-four this year. I’ll listen to one or more of his CDs today — maybe Ethel Waters, maybe Lee Wiley. Here is what I wrote after my dad died.

The new Bloomusalem

Leopold Bloom ascendant. From the hallucinatory “Circe” episode.

James Joyce, Ulysses (1922).

A few notes:

~ Derwan: In 1904 Michael Derham and James Derwin were both Dublin builders (Don Gifford, Ulysses Annotated ).

~ “Morituri te salutant”: “They who are about to die salute you,” as gladiators said to the Roman emperor.

~ The man in the macintosh is a small mystery of the novel. He’s seen at Patrick Dignam’s funeral, but who is he? A misunderstood remark gets him into the funeral notice as M’Intosh.

~ “Fireraiser”: an arsonist.

~ Higgins: Bloom’s mother’s maiden name.

~ “Rubber preservatives”: condoms.

~ “Toad in the hole”: meat cooked in batter (Wikipedia).

~ “Jeyes’ fluid”: “a disinfectant for drains or sewers” (Gifford).

~ “Purchase stamps”: trading stamps.

~ According to Gifford, the book titles are, save perhaps for Care of the Baby, most likely invented. Drat.

~ Baby Boardman appears in “Nausicaa.” He may be the brother of Gerty MacDowell’s friend Edy Boardman. Bloom, like any capable civic leader, is kind to babies.

None of these bits of detail should obscure the comedy of Bloom’s ideal city taking the form of “a huge pork kidney.” Why a kidney? Here’s why.

Related reading
All OCA Joyce posts (Pinboard)

Nancy meta

[Nancy, September 23, 1949. Click for a larger view.]

The final panel explains: E. Bushmiller broke his glasses.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[In the final panel, I like the way the hallway and door are nice and neat. Only Nancy and Sluggo, the products of the artist’s pen, are messed up there.]

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Thirteenth Avenue Retail Market Now with new links, an opening date, and a statement from Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.