Swing, swing, swing

On MSNBC just now: “He left his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.” Which made me think of him carrying one as a weapon, ready to swing at someone or something.

A Steven Millhauser interview

It’s from NPR. When Sacha Pfeiffer says that several of Millhauser’s stories make her feel “slightly unsettled, a little viscerally uneasy,” he replies: “If you have to go to your medicine cabinet, I would feel guilty. And I will pay for that medication.” And he adds:

“But unsettled in a way that is not just irritation is fine with me. A story that just makes you feel soothed and satisfied, you might as well watch a rom-com on TV. But if a story makes you question certain things that you’ve taken for granted, I think that’s ideal. It shows you that the world is not necessarily more disturbing, but more complex than you had assumed. And that, I would argue, is a good thing.”

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Hat trick

[Nancy, July 26, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

In today’s yesterday’s Nancy, a window is open, as Nancy windows so often are. Apartment dwellers talk to pedestrian Nancy from their open windows; objects fly through open windows with impunity. As did this bird.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

One family’s dictionary

From the Indiana University Libraries blog, the story of one family’s “lexical bible,” an 1823 copy of John Walker’s A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, a dictionary first published in 1791.

Related reading
All OCA dictionary posts (Pinboard)

Happy birthday, Steven Millhauser

He turns eighty today.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

Mystery actor

[Click for a larger view.]

If you’ve spent sufficient time in front of screens large and small, his face will likely be recognizable, even with the sunglasses, and even if you have to look up his name.

Leave a guess in the comments. I’ll drop a hint if one is needed.

*

No hints needed. The answer is now in the comments.

More mystery actors (Collect them all!)
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Criterion’s August

The Criterion Channel’s August offerings are a wow. For instance: Diabolique, Turn Every Page, The Vanishing, Wild Style. And Kay Francis. And Rowland Brown. (I know — who?) Too many movies!

Another indictment

Of you-know-who, on four counts related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Announced just now on MSNBC.

There are six unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators: four attorneys, a former DOJ official, and a political consultant. The attorneys are Kenneth Chesebro, John Eastman, Rudolph Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. The former DOJ official is Jeffrey Clark. The identity of the political consultant is more difficult to figure out.

Here is the indictment. The New York Times has it with commentary (gift link). Paragraph 2:

Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.

One detail, from paragraph 90:

On January 1, the Defendant called the Vice President and berated him because he had learned that the Vice President had opposed a lawsuit seeking a judicial decision that, at the certification, the Vice President had the authority to reject or return votes to the states under the Constitution. The Vice President responded that he thought there was no constitutional basis for such authority and that it was improper. In response, the Defendant told the Vice President, “You’re too honest.”

I’d add: But not honest enough.

“Books, always books”

Television comes to the family of “the Author.” But it’s still a bookish household.

Steven Millhauser, “A Voice in the Night,” in Voices in the Night (2015).

Elaine and I have now read all of Steven Millhauser’s fiction to date. His new book of stories, Disruptions, arrives today.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)

[Farmer Al Falfa: a cartoon character. The Merry Mailman: A New York-area children’s show. Tootle: a story about a baby locomotive.]

Sold a Story updates

I gave up waiting for follow-up episode(s) to the podcast series Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong. And now I find out that two follow-up episodes appeared in May, “Your Words” and “The Impact.” You can find them via the link above.

Sold a Story might be the most important podcast series I’ve listened to. It explains so much.

Thanks, Rachel.

Related reading
A handful of Sold a Story posts