Steven Millhauser and K-pop

The group is Billlie; the song is “Enchanted Night,” which shares its title with Steven Millhauser’s 1999 novella. You can see a member of the group holding the paperback in this video. Here’s a still.

Readers of the novella will notice a clear connection: young women entering a house at night. In the novella, they are Summer Storm, Black Star, Night Rider, Paper Doll, and Fast Lane. They wear black masks and leave notes reading WE ARE YOUR DAUGHTERS.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

“She has seen this one before”

Steven Millhauser, “Mannequin Mischief,” in Enchanted Night (1999).

Anything can happen in the dark, especially if it’s the dark in a Steven Millhauser novella.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

They’ve got an awful lot of Outback in Brazil

A Washington Post reporter investigates the popularity of Outback Steakhouse in Brazil.

[Post title with apologies to “The Coffee Song.”]

Old magazines

In The New York Times, Brian Dillon recommends reading old magazines as “cheap time machines.” He assures the reader that no rabbit holes await. But as a browser of the Google Books archive of Life, I have to disagree.

Juneteenth Manzarene

To mark Juneteenth, Dust-to-Digital is offering a free download of the 76-page book that accompanied its 2016 release Washington Phillips and His Manzarene Dreams. Washington Phillips (1880–1954) recorded eighteen sides between 1927 and 1929, singing and accompanying himself on an instrument he called the Manzarene. Its sound is haunting and disarmingly beautiful. I’d call it the sound of peace.

Dust-to-Digital notes that Phillips’s neighbor Doris Nealy recalled Juneteenth as a day of great importance to Phillips: “The son of freed slaves, Phillips would often lead the preaching and singing at the annual Juneteenth celebration in his hometown of Simsboro, Texas.”

Here is just one sample of Phillips in the recording studio: “I Had a Good Father and Mother.”

A related post
My review of Washington Phillips and His Manazrene Dreams

[Note: the free download is for the book. You’ll have to navigate the order form and apply the code JUNETEENTH. Phillips's sixteen surviving recordings stream widely, and a limited number of CD-and-book sets are still available for purchase.]

“Under the rays of moonlight”

Steven Millhauser, “The Moon and the Mannequin,” in Enchanted Night (1999).

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Juneteenth

From the Library of Congress: Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, recordings from 1932, 1933, 1940, 1941, and 1949.

It’s staggering to know that the last survivor of American slavery died in 1975.

Three Juneteenth posts
A flag : Eugene Robinson on Juneteenth : From Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth

Father’s Day

My dad stopped by in advance of this Father’s Day. It was the night of June 3, or it might have been the morning of June 4. I wasn’t looking at the clock. He was working at his desk, figuring something out with pencil on paper. I leaned down and kissed him on his head.

The more time that passes, the more I (a non-believer) agree with words attributed to John Chrysostom: “Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are.”

Happy Father’s Day to all.

Five-and-ten, five-and-dime

Re: 33-A in today’s Saturday Stumper and a question in a comment:

A 1958 note in American Speech investigates usage: “Five-and-Ten, Five-and-Dime.” The unidentified writer, who grew up in New York City, recalls the five-and-ten-cent store, the five-and-ten, and the ten-cent store as the terms in use in his youth. He thinks that ‑dime forms are latecomers, with their fortunes on the rise. But is he happy about that?

To my ear, the expressions dime store and five-and-dime (store ) have an air of affectation. Several other native New Yorkers to whom I have put the question feel that the dime-expressions have pretensions.

That’s as far down that rabbit hole as I’m gonna go.

There’s also variety store. Did that term catch on when prices made five and ten and dime implausible?

[The article is available from JSTOR. Anyone without library access can create a free account to read a limited number of articles each month. I can’t type that sentence without thinking about the short, tragic life of Aaron Swartz.]

“Ghost Town” on Soul Music

“In the interests of balance, I think you should play ‘Ghost Town’ every night after ‘God Save the King’ — how about that?” Jerry Dammers, in a Soul Music episode about his song (BBC Radio 4).