“The deserts of the night”

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

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Lester Young speaks

The tenor saxophonist Lester Young was an inventive user of words. From Playback with Lewis Porter!, two television clips of Young speaking, featuring “Ivey-Divey” and “Little Tinky Boom? One stick, you dig?” Listen for the difference the sticks make.

From Whitney Balliett’s New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies (1976), a few more examples of Lester Young’s language, as recalled by the pianist Jimmy Rowles:

“Lester was the coolest man I ever met. He had his own language. He wasn’t Pres to us, but Bubba, after some nephews who called him Uncle Bubba. He’d turn to me on the bandstand and say, ‘Startled doe. Two o’clock,’ which meant if you looked into the audience at where two o’clock was you’d see this pretty chick with big eyes. ‘Bob Crosby’s in the house’ meant a cop had just come in, and ‘Bing and Bob’ meant the fuzz were all over the place. When I first knew him, he said, ‘There’s a gray boy at the bar who is looking for you.’ ‘What’s a gray boy?’ I said. ‘Man, you’re a gray boy,’ he said, smiling with those green teeth he had then, ‘and I’m an Oxford gray.’

“And everything that was good was ‘bulging.’ It was a telescoping of a phrase that had started out ‘I’ve got eyes for that,’ which meant ‘I like that,’ and became ‘I’ve got great big eyes for that,’ and then ‘I’ve got bulging eyes for that.’ But if he didn’t like something or somebody, all he did was puff out his cheeks — no words at all, just balloon cheeks.“

Another sampling, from Balliett’s American Musicians: Fifty-Six Portraits in Jazz (1986):

Much of Young’s language has vanished, but here is a sampling: “Bing and Bob” were the police. A “hat” was a woman, and a “homburg” and a “Mexican hat” were types of women. An attractive young girl was a “poundcake.” A “gray boy” was a white man, and Young himself, who was light-skinned, was an “oxford gray.” “I’ve got bulging eyes” for this or that meant he approved of something, and “Catalina eyes” and “Watts eyes” expressed high admiration. “Left people” were the fingers of a pianist’s left hand. “I feel a draft” meant he sensed a bigot nearby. “Have another helping,” said to a colleague on the bandstand, meant “Take another chorus,” and “one long” or “two long” meant one chorus or two choruses. People “whispering on” or “buzzing on” him were talking behind his back. Getting his “little claps” meant being applauded. A “zoomer” was a sponger, and a “needle dancer” was a heroin addict. “To be bruised” was to fail. A “tribe” was a band, and a “molly trolley” was a rehearsal. “Can Madam burn?” meant “Can your wife cook?” “Those people will be here in December” meant that his second child was due in December.

[Young had two children, Lester Young Jr. and Yvette Young. Lester Young Jr. is the Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents.]

Stephen Sondheim’s dictionary

Stephen Sondheim’s townhouse is on the market. If you look at the thirteenth photograph, you’ll see that Sondheim had a Merriam-Webster’s Second on his dictionary stand. The three thumb-notches at the front of the volume — clear signs of a W2.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts and Sondheim posts (Pinboard)

Pocket notebook sighting

[From L’Innocent (dir. Louis Garrel, 2022). Click for a larger view.]

Look: if there’s a criminal plan afoot, there’s gotta be a notebook.

More notebook sightings
All the King’s Men : Angels with Dirty Faces : The Bad and the Beautiful : Ball of Fire : The Big Clock : Bombshell : The Brasher Doubloon : The Case of the Howling Dog : Cat People : Caught : City Girl : Crossing Delancey : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Dead End : Deep Valley : The Devil and Miss Jones : Dragnet : Extras : Eyes in the Night : The Face Behind the Mask : The Flight That Disappeared : The Fearmakers : A Foreign Affair : Foreign Correspondent : Fury : The Girl in Black Stockings : Homicide : The Honeymooners : The House on 92nd Street : I See a Dark Stranger : If I Had a Million : Journal d’un curé de campagne : Kid Glove Killer : The Last Laugh : Le Million : The Lodger : Lost Horizon : M : Ministry of Fear : Mr. Holmes : Murder at the Vanities : Murder by Contract : Murder, Inc. : The Mystery of the Wax Museum : Naked City : The Naked Edge : Now, Voyager : The Palm Beach Story : Perry Mason : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Pushover : Quai des Orfèvres : The Racket : Railroaded! : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : La roue : Route 66 : The Scarlet Claw : Sleeping Car to Trieste : The Small Back Room : The Sopranos : Spellbound : Stage Fright : State Fair : A Stranger in Town : Stranger Things : Sweet Smell of Success : Time Table : T-Men : To the Ends of the Earth : 20th Century Women : Union Station : Vice Squad : Walk East on Beacon! : What Happened Was . . . : Where the Sidewalk Ends : The Woman in the Window : You Only Live Once : Young and Innocent

"Their own interpretation of happiness”

Lou Sullivan (1951–1991), transman and activist, writing as a teenager:

I wanna look like what I am but don’t know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think — there’s one of those people that reasons, that is a philosopher, that has their own interpretation of happiness. That’s what I am.

“Their own intepretation of happiness”: a way to think about making a life, trans- or cis-. These words are quoted, incompletely, imperfectly, in No Ordinary Man (dir. Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, 2020), a documentary about the jazz musician and transman Billy Tipton. You can find the words quoted accurately in this New Yorker article.

Homer in four translations

In The New York Times, Emily Wilson, who has now translated both the Iliad and the Odyssey, writes about four translations of a speech by Hector from Iliad 6.

When I taught Homer and other ancient writers in translation, I was very fond of bringing in multiple versions of a passage. Reading across translations and exploring the source text via the Perseus Digital Library is a great way to get closer to the poetry. When I was preparing to interview the classicist Stanley Lombardo in 2003, I sat in the library with the Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Fagles, and Lombardo translations of the Iliad and Odyssey and the Loeb texts of the poems, scanning every line in each translation for items of possible interest. As the poet said, you can observe a lot by just watching.

*

One point in Wilson’s commentary that complicates things greatly:

Wilson writes that Hector “is a deeply loving father and husband who makes the choice to leave his family to almost-certain enslavement and death” by fighting on the Trojan plain. “His death,” she writes, “will entail his wife’s rape and enslavement, their baby’s violent death and the sack of their city.”

I have to disagree. These events won’t come about because of Hector’s death in battle. They’ll come about because Troy is doomed. As Hector says earlier in his meeting with his wife Andromache in this episode:

Deep in my heart, I know too well
There will come a day when holy Ilion [Troy] will
    perish,
And Priam and the people under Priam’s ash spear.

Hector imagines the pain he will feel — he’ll be alive — as his wife is taken by the Greeks, and as he goes on to say, he hopes to be dead, “the earth heaped up above me,” before it happens.

Related reading
All OCA Homer posts (Pinboard) : Aeschylus in three translations : Homer in four translations : More Homer : Sappho in two translations : Virgil in three tranlations : More Virgil

[Lines from the Iliad are in Stanley Lombardo’s translation (1997).]

Ten movies, two seasons

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Max, TCM, YouTube.]

The Devil Doll (dir. Tod Browning, 1936). An extraordinarily well-made movie from the director of Dracula and Freaks. The premise is simple and bizarre: Paul Lavond (Lionel Barrymore), a banker wrongfully convicted of murder and robbery, escapes from prison along with a scientist who created a process to shrink human beings (and thus reduce the dangers of overpopulation). When the scientist dies, his widow (Rafaela Ottiano) and Lavond join forces, creating miniature humans to kill the men who framed Lavond. The special effects are spectacularly good, as is Barrymore’s work in his disguise as Madame Mandilip. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

The Corpse Vanishes (dir. Wallace Fox, 1942). A plucky society columnist (Luana Walters) gets to the bottom of the evil machinations of Dr. Lorenz (Bela Lugosi), who knocks out brides and uses their precious bodily fluids to keep his wife from aging. What makes the movie worth watching: Dr. Lorenz’s male assistants, Frank Moran of the Preston Sturges world and Angelo Rossitto of Freaks. Also adding value: an unintentionally hilarious scene of theft. So bad, so good, and fit for SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theatre. ★★ (TCM)

*

Underground (dir. Vincent Sherman, 1941). Even if they say so themselves, Warner Bros. did lead the American movie industry’s opposition to Nazism and fascism. Underground is a Warner Bros. B-movie (no big stars) about German anti-Nazi radio broadcasts, sibling conflict, and the state’s brutalization of its citizens. It’s suspenseful and unflinching, always. This movie makes me wonder how many genuinely great movies from the 1940s are still unknown to me. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Being Mary Tyler Moore (dir. James Adolphus, 2023). A documentary that draws upon interviews, home videos, television and film clips, and recollections of friends and collaborators. If you know Mary Tyler Moore mainly as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, you’ll be surprised (as I was) by how much work preceded and followed each of those roles. The home videos are especially revealing: in one, Moore, at home with friends and inebriated, topples onto a floor; in others, she seems determined to show how happy she was in her final marriage. In 2023, the debate about whether Moore was an enemy of feminism (represented here by Gloria Steinem) seems mistakenly sad: that she calls her boss “Mr. Grant” seems to me a marker of Minnesota nice, not subservience. ★★★★ (M)

*

In Which We Serve (dir. Noël Coward and David Lean, 1942). I’ve had this film on a to-watch list for years, and there it was, on Memorial Day: the story of the HMS Torrin, a WWII British Navy destroyer, its captain (Coward, and he’s convincing), and a handful of crew members, whose stories are told in flashbacks (sans voiceover narration) as the men drift in a life raft after the Torrin is hit by German bombers. The juxtapositions of past and present, peace and war, land and sea, are poignant and harrowing: there’s no looking away from the agony of battle here. And throughout we see men and women meeting the most difficult circumstances with an understated stoic courage. With Joyce Carey, Celia Johnson, Bernard Miles, John Mills, Kay Walsh, and many more. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Succession, fourth season (created by Jesse Armstrong, 2023). Lukas Mattson on the Roys: “”It’s basically just, like, money and gossip.” And Roman Roy: “We’re bullshit.” I agree, and I’m happy to be done with the arch looks, flip zingers, sibling rivalries, and the New York Times articles about the clothing in each episode. But I’ll grant that the election-night episode “America Decides” was enough to elicit something approaching post-traumatic stress. ★★ (M)

*

Somebody Somewhere, second season (created by Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, 2023). The season focuses on the joys and sorrows of friendship: as Fred (Murray Hill) plans his marriage and Joel (Jeff HIller) finds himself in a new relationship, Sam (Bridget Everett) begins to feel awkwardly alone. Happiest moment: “Gloria”; saddest: “Take your windbreaker and go”; most ineffable: the mention of love during the singing lesson. This show, so full of humanity, and so deserving of a much larger audience, has been renewed for a third season. Now there just needs to be fair compensation for those who will write it. ★★★★ (M)

*

L’Innocent (dir. Louis Garrel, 2022). A thriller with comic overtones and some wonderful blurring of the real and the fictive. Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), an acting teacher working with prison inmates, marries one of her students, Michel (Roschdy Zem), and upon his release, they set up a flower shop together. Sylvie’s son Abel (Garrel) doesn’t trust Michel and begins to shadow him with the help of his friend Clémence (Noémie Merlant). Complications ensue, and Abel and Clémence are drawn into a criminal scheme that requires them to do a bit of acting themselves. The spirit of Pedro Almodóvar seems to preside over the action, with strong touches of Diva, Next Stop Wonderland, and Vertigo. ★★★★ (CC)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Masc feature

No Ordinary Man (dir. Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt, 2020). The life of Billy Tipton (1914–1989), jazz musician, transman, husband, father. I remember when Billy Tipton’s story first made the news, as a matter of a musician who went undercover, so to speak, in order to make a living in music. The truth was another matter, as this documentary makes clear. In it transmen and -women speak, eloquently, about identity and categorization, but I wish there more about Billy Tipton’s life and music, and less of interviewees playing him in scripted scenes. ★★★ (CC)

*

Three from the Criterion Channel’s Method Acting feature

The Naked Spur (dir. Anthony Mann, 1953). It’s 1868, and Jimmy Stewart is Howard Kemp, a bounty hunter in the Rocky Mountains. With the help of a prospector (Millard Mitchell) and an ex-cavalryman and rapist (Ralph Meeker, who looks and talks as if he stepped out of, say, Easy Rider ), Kemp finds Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan), who killed a marshal back in Kansas, and Ben’s traveling companion (Janet Leigh), the daughter of Ben’s dead bank-robber friend. Strong overtones of the Odyssey, Moby-Dick, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Vandergroat: “The longer we ride, the more things that can happen.” ★★★★ (CC)

The Goddess (dir. John Cromwell, 1958). Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay is loosely based on — or is it cruelly appropriative of? — the life of Marilyn Monroe. Kim Stanley, who did most of her work on the stage, is the goddess, beginning her life as Emily Ann Faulkner, the child of a mother who gives her away to relatives; two dysfunctional marriages later, Emily becomes the Hollywood star Rita Shawn, drinking, taking pills, and hopelessly dependent on a Nurse Ratched-like assistant who calls Rita “Baby.” The acting is fine (John Power and Lloyd Bridges as Emily’s wildly different husbands are especially good), but the script is overwrought. I’m surprised to see that I know Kim Stanley’s work in film in two ways: she starred in Séance on a Wet Afternoon and was the voice of the adult Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. ★★★

Rachel, Rachel (dir. Paul Newman, 1968). Joanne Woodward is Rachel Cameron, a thirty-something second-grade teacher, painfully self-conscious and socially averse, living with her mother (is that her voice calling in the title?) above the funeral home that the late Mr. Cameron once owned. Into Rachel’s life comes Nick Kazlik (James Olson), a high-school classmate, now a high-school teacher in New York City, visiting his folks for the summer and looking for “some action.” What follows is a complicated meeting of innocence and experience, with all the awkwardness and misunderstanding and exhilaration that such a meeting might yield. And to think that Joanne Woodward didn’t receive the Academy Award for this performance. ★★★★ (CC)

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)

Attics

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

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Revising again

Now that I can get through to ChatGPT and see what it offers, I have added one more don’t to How to e-mail a professor:

Don’t ask AI to write an e-mail for you. At least not if you want your e-mail to sound like the work of a human being.

Here’s how AI asks for an assignment:

Subject: Request for Assignment Details - [Course Name/Code]

Dear Professor [Professor’s Last Name],

I hope this email finds you well. I am writing to request the assignment details for [Course Name/Code]. Unfortunately, due to [mention the reason why you missed the class or did not receive the assignment]. I would greatly appreciate it if you could kindly provide me with the necessary information and any additional materials related to the assignment.

I understand the importance of the assignment in furthering my understanding of the course material and demonstrating my knowledge and skills. Therefore, I am eager to catch up on the work and submit it within the given timeframe. If there are any specific instructions, requirements, or a designated deadline for the assignment, please let me know so that I can begin working on it promptly.

Additionally, if there were any announcements or updates related to the assignment that were discussed in class or shared through the course platform, I would be grateful if you could inform me about them as well. This will ensure that I have access to all the relevant information and can complete the assignment to the best of my abilities.

Thank you for your understanding and support in this matter. I apologize for any inconvenience caused by my absence from the class or any oversight on my part. I truly value the opportunity to learn from your expertise and contribute to the course.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Should you have any questions or require further clarification, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.

Thank you once again for your assistance.

Sincerely,
[Your Full Name]
[Your Student ID/Number]
[Your Email Address]
[Your Contact Number]

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).

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard)