Joyeux anniversaire, M. Proust

Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

One thing hurt me, which you certainly did not say out of malice! At the moment, when I am to publish Sodome et Gomorrhe, and when, because I talk about Sodome no one will have the courage to defend me, you (without malice, I am sure) blaze the trail in advance for all the mischief makers by calling me “feminine.” From feminine to effeminate is a mere step. My seconds in duels can tell you whether I behave with the weakness of an effeminate man. Again, I am sure that you said this without malice aforethought.

Marcel Proust, in a letter to Paul Souday, November 6–8, 1920. From Letters of Marcel Proust, translated by Mina Curtiss (New York: Helen Marx Books / Books & Co., 2006).

Paul Souday (1869–1929): journalist, literary critic for Le Temps. He wrote a largely negative review of Swann’s Way for Le Temps but later claimed to be the first critic to have discovered Proust. For a previous Proust letter to Souday, see this 2021 birthday post.

Proust, a duellist? In February 1897 he fought a duel with pistols with the writer Jean Lorrain, who had published a nasty review of Pleasures and Days. Neither man was hit. Proust’s primary concern “was not the bullets but having to rise, dress, and go out in the morning. Fortunately, his seconds were able to arrange an afternoon confrontation”: William C. Carter, Marcel Proust: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

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All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)

Revising

I took a look at How to e-mail a professor the other night and noticed three sentences that needed revision. Before and after photos:

Before
The cryptic or cutesy or salacious personal e-mail address that might be okay when you send an e-mail to a friend is not appropriate when you’re writing to a professor.

After
A cryptic or cutesy or salacious personal e-mail address is not appropriate when you’re writing to a professor.

(Because in 2023 how many students are likely to be e-mailing their friends?)

Before
All your English professor's classes are English classes; she or he still needs to know which one is yours.

After
All your English professor’s classes are English classes; your professor needs to know which one is yours.

(No need for gender-specific language.)

Before
Many e-mail messages end up never reaching their intended recipients, for reasons of human and technological error, so it's always appropriate to acknowledge that someone's message got through.

After
It’s easy to overlook an e-mail message or have it disappear into a spam folder, so it’s always appropriate to acknowledge that someone’s message got through.

(Less dramatic, more realistic.)

As the sidebar says, How to e-mail a professor is my #1 hit. It continues to get visits daily. One change I haven’t made: even though email is now twice as common as e-mail in print, I still prefer the old-school hyphen.

Recently updated

Coffee-and Now with a working link to Balzac’s hair-raising essay “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee.”

Thanks, Steven.

Clarence Thomas and Horatio Alger

The New York Times has a long article (gift link) about Clarence Thomas’s relationship with the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. New revelations — and more vacations!

The Horatio Alger Association describes itself as dedicated to “the simple but powerful belief that hard work, honesty and determination can conquer all obstacles.” The Times article describes the organization as dedicated to a “defining ethos of meritocratic success — that anyone can achieve the American dream with hard work, pluck and a little luck.” But anyone who’s read an Alger novel knows that success requires more than hard work and a little luck. A steady supply of luck is necessary, beginning with a chance encounter with a wealthy potential benefactor. The Alger success story is, really, a story of patronage. One might even call it a story of affirmative action, practiced not by institutions but by individuals.

If you haven’t yet seen it, the Frontline documentary “Clarence and Ginni Thomas: Politics, Power and the Supreme Court” is well worth watching.

Retail density

[106 East 14th Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

What led me to this address? No. 106 was the original home of the Munson Lunch Company, the company behind the diner in this tax photograph and several other Manhattan diners. I wondered if there might be some trace of the MLC in this photograph. No soap. But I stayed for the great retail density: it’s as if all the furniture in a room has been piled in one corner, leaving nothing but empty space — and, in this street scene, FOR RENT signs. Today 106 is a twenty-story apartment building.

The photograph is very large. Do click through for its many details.

When did you last see vertical pivot windows? Outside of a tax photo, that is.

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More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, July 8, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

At a glance you can see that something’s wrong in today’s Hi and Lois. Or that some things are wrong:

~ A tiny bit of the door is missing at the bottom.

~ The wall that holds the doorframe is at a 10° angle. (I used an online protractor to check.)

~ The door cannot close on its (imaginary?) sill. More floor is needed for that to be possible.

Feel free to draw on your screen to check these claims.

Construction is often haphazard in the Hi and Lois world — this panel is still my favorite example — but today’s strip represents a radical departure from the norms of design.

And to think that the strip was once created with a floor plan for the Flagstons’ house.

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All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[A bonus in today’s strip: the boat in its first panel has the name BIG 2♡ED on its side.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is an easy one, much easier that last week’s “Lester Ruff” (less rough) puzzle. I began with 15-D, fourteen letters, “‘Great big, thick, hot, juicy’ 1971 debut,” thinking my guess had to be right. I didn’t even count letters. And lo: 15-A, four letters, “Place for cast offs?” confirmed it.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, fourteen letters, “Besties’ milestone.” How would one date it?

8-D, eight letters, “Category for Dracula.” A surprising way to think of it.

11-D, three letters, “‘All we demanded __ right to twinkle’: Marilyn Monroe (with 10 Down).” Not in Bartlett’s, but the quotation seems to be genuine.

17-A, nine letters, “Make whole.” Appropriately Stumper-y.

20-D, three letters, “Elevated opening.” A clever way to redeem a bit of crosswordese.

22-A, seven letters, “Mustachioed modern mythmaker.” His name was in the air (our fambly’s air) last week.

23-A, seven letters, “Grist for a mill.” A great clue.

Two clue-and-answer pairs that I find awfully strained:

42-A, four letters, “What a thesaurus ain’t.” Yes, it’s clever. And I suppose the ain’t signals an informal answer. But still.

59-A, three letters, “Private reception.” Private transmission, maybe?

My favorite in this puzzle: 33-A, fifteen letters, “Cambridge unit selling through Amazon.” Just because it’s so surprising to see.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Wind the clock

Here’s a letter from E.B. White to, it would seem, a one-off correspondent in despair — despair over the state of the world, I would guess. I heard Martha Barnette read this letter in an episode of the podcast A Way with Words. Look past the patriarchal language — it was 1973. And if this letter strikes you as sappy, tough bananas. From Letters of E.B. White, ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth (1976):

                                            North Brooklin, Maine
                                            30 March 1973

Dear Mr. Nadeau:

As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time. I shall get up Sunday morning and wind the clock, as a contribution to order and steadfastness.

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly. It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.

Hang on to your hat. Hang on to your hope. And wind the clock, for tomorrow is another day.

                                            Sincerely,

                                            E. B. White

Two details: I notice that White says “all is changed,” not “all is well,” because the weather will undoubtedly change again. And I like the way he turns the blithely reassuring “Tomorrow is another day” into something more literal: another day is coming, so wind the clock and be prepared.

[The Elements of Style, third edition (1979): “The use of he as pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language. He has lost all suggestions of maleness in these circumstances.” Fourth edition (2000): “The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language. Currently, however, many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive.” Both editions suggest that the writer try he or she, or make nouns plural, or use he if that makes sense, or use she if that makes sense. No singular they in The Elements, before or after White’s death.]

Beginning the day

Jimmy is nine going on ten. All week long he’s been looking forward to this family excursion to the park by the river, and now it’s here. He’s standing on the shore. His sister Julia, older, already in the water, is waving him in.

Steven Millhauser, “Getting Closer,” in We Others: New and Selected Stories (2008).

This story is one of the most moving pieces of short fiction I’ve read. You can read it right now at The New Yorker.

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With Clint Eastwood

Elaine and I were in a specialty foods store on the Upper West Side. “She used to live here,” I announced to no one in particular. A glass case holding rare books stood at the front of the store, with two hardcover copies of Steven Millhauser’s Voices in the Night on the bottom shelf, each copy looking four or five times as thick as our paperbacks.

I went to the register to buy three sloes and found the cashier beside himself. “Clint Eastwood is in the store,” he said. And Clint Eastwood was on oxygen. I turned around, and there was Clint Eastwood. He was tall, and he was on oxygen. I asked the cashier to throw in two packs of Pall Malls. He also added a sheet of Forever stamps, and a second partial sheet.

Clint Eastwood was now right behind me, waiting to pay. I thought of turning and saying something like “Much respect,” but I can’t claim to feel much respect for Clint Eastwood. I don’t even know the guy. And I remember that bit with the chair.

I paid in cash and left. The bill was sixty-one-something, so maybe the stamps hadn't been a gift.

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