Illusions and inventions

Steven Millhauser, “Eisenheim the Illusionist,“ in The Barnum Museum (1990).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

[The Illusionist (dir. Neil Burger, 2006) is not bad, but the story is much more satisfying. Words beat special effects, every time.]

Have I heard that song before?

In The New York Times: songs from seven copyright cases.

Blatant borrowing that never went to court: Jimmy Forrest’s “Night Train” borrows from Johnny Hodges’s “That’s the Blues, Old Man” and Duke Ellington’s “Happy-Go-Lucky Local.”

Mats and mattresses

Yesterday on MSNBC, Juanita Tolliver characterized Ted Cruz as “ready to go to the mattress” for a defeated, disgraced, twice-impeached, once-indicted president. I think she meant “mat.” But I’m not sure.

The Oxford English Dictionary on “go to the mat”:

colloquial (originally U.S.). to go to the mat: to take part in a wrestling bout; (figurative) to engage in a vigorous dispute or argument

A 1990 citation: “He likes to have a lawyer who will go to the mat for him!”

From Merriam-Webster:

to make an all-out combative effort (as in support of a position)

From The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms:

Fight until one side or another is victorious, as in The governor said he’d go to the mat for this bill. This term comes from wrestling and evokes the holding of an opponent when both contestants are down on the mat, the padded floor–covering used in matches. It has been used figuratively since about 1900.

But it’s also possible to “go to the mattress” or “the mattresses.” Here’s a colorful but most likely historically dubious explanation of a possible meaning, “to prepare for a battle or adopt a warlike stance”:

In 1530 the combined troops of Charles V and Medici Pope Clement VII lay siege to Florence. The bell tower of San Miniato al Monte was part of the defences. Michelangelo Buonarroti, as he was good at most things, was put in charge of defending the city. He used the ploy of hanging mattresses on the outside of the tower to minimize damage from cannon fire.

Ordinarily we would want to verify such stories before publishing them here as part of a phrase derivation. In this case though it isn’t really important. The meaning of the phrase turns on the association in Italian folk-memory of mattresses with safety in wartime.

Folk-memory indeed. From Artistic Guide to Florence and Its Environs (1914):

The Tower which was built by Baccio d’Agnolo was during the siege a target of the artillery fire of Charles V but was saved by Michelangelo who surrounded it, some say, with earthworks while others assert that he had the exposed parts covered with woollen mattrasses.

“Some say”: uh-oh. I can find no reliable retailer of these mattresses. But their folkloric reality likely accounts for the use of “go to the mattress(es)” in the world of organized crime. From The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:

go to the mattresses; hit the mattresses:

during gang warfare, to retreat in an armed group to a fortified room, apartment or house US

[Joseph] Valachi quoted his boss as saying on one occasion: “We have to go to the mattress again,” and explained that mattress derived from the practice of warring gangs of moving rapidly from place to place, holing up for temporary stays wherever necessary and sleeping on only a simple mattress.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang confirms the underworld meaning: “(orig. US Und.) to hide, to take refuge, esp. when under siege from another gang.” Green’s gives this origin:

the practice of sleeping on mattresses in one’s hideout, rather than in one’s bed at home. Orig. a US Mafia usage, the phr. was widely popularized by the success of Mario Puzo’s book The Godfather (1969) and the films that followed.

You can hear Sonny Corleone (James Caan) talk about going to the mattress(es) in this clip from The Godfather. It sounds to me like “mattress,” but the screenplay has four instances of the plural, and only the plural.

Last year the eldest son of the defeated, disgraced, twice-impeached, once-indicted president was mocked for speaking of “going to the mattresses” with no idea of what the expression means. I wonder if Juanita Tolliver was purposefully echoing Junior’s inept use of the expression to invoke the language of a newer and more dangerous crime family and its associates.

1940s NYC

Julien Boilen’s 1940s NYC, which links points on a map to their WPA tax photographs in the New York City Municipal Archives, now accepts stories about NYC addresses from readers. I’ve been adding bits from my Sunday tax-photograph posts. I think it’s a great way to make the past present.

My favorite thing that someone else has found: 384 Chauncey Street, Brooklyn, home of Freitag the Delicatessen’s. That’s the way they said it on The Honeymooners.

Supreme count

6 + 3 = 9

(6 - 2) + (3 + 2) = 9

4 + 5 = 9

[I’m not even thinking about leaky Alito — just Thomas and, now, Gorsuch. Thanks to Elaine for the post title.]

Headaches

Steven Millhauser, “The Invention of Robert Herendeen,“ in The Barnum Museum (1990).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Eleven at ninety

“I feel like I’m eleven!” says Carol Burnett, who turns ninety tomorrow. A birthday special airs tomorrow on ABC.

Acorn Truckles out

I don’t want to type his name. But he’s out at Fox “News” (NYT gift link). Andy Borowitz of The New Yorker reports that Truckles has been replaced by “a state-of-the-art lying Chatbot.”

*

And now Don Lemon is out (NYT ). But his name looks like it’s already been anagrammed.

[The Lemon link is a regular one. I’m out of gift links.]

Backstayges and Roys

I finally realized what the group trips of Succession remind me of: the group trips of Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife, the Bob and Ray radio-serial spoof. In last night’s episode of Succession the whole gang traveled to Norway: Kendall, Roman, Shiv, Tom, Frank, Greg, &c. In Mary Backstayge, it’s Mary and Harry Backstayge, Calvin Hoogavin, Pop Beloved, and Greg Marlowe, traveling from one adventure to another.

Related reading
Mary Backstayge marigold seeds : “PUISSANCE WITHOUT HAUTEUR”

[Calvin Hoogavin would make a good cousin Greg.]

Harold and Mel

I was writing a review of a book by Harold Bloom. In my review I called Bloom “a comical curmudgeon.” But there was nothing comical about the book I was reviewing. In it, Bloom accused Mel Tormé, his former graduate student, of killing five people in an abandoned house on the north side of town.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]