5 Patchin Place

[5 Patchin Place, West Village, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

Last Sunday I posted the tax photograph of 154 W. 10th Street, home to Three Lives & Company and, in the past, Djuna Books. Which leads me today to 5 Patchin Place, long the home of the writer Djuna Barnes. The street is one with considerable history. No. 5 is to the right of the stone fireplace in the photograph above.

From Phillip Herring’s Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes (1995):

Back in New York, the happiest news of these years in Djuna’s life was that she found an apartment, upstairs at 5 Patchin Place, a private court with iron gate (usually open) near Greenwich Avenue and Tenth Street. Patchin Place, a picturesque reminder of what Greenwich Village once had been, contained fifty flats in two rows, built in 1848 as boardinghouses for the Basque waiters at the old Breevort Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Many famous writers and intellectuals had dwelled in the short cul-de-sac, including John Reed, Theodore Dreiser, Padraic Colum, and Jane Bowles. E.E. Cummings lived across the way from Djuna, downstairs at number 4.

Barnes moved to no. 5 in September 1940. Her rent: $40 a month. Aside from a brief stay in a nursing home, she stayed on Patchin Place, largely a recluse, through numerous and varied adversities, for the rest of her life. Herring tells a well-known story:

In 1952, [Barnes] fell and broke her shoulder. She crawled to her telephone and called on her neighbor E.E. Cummings, who climbed the fire escape, let himself in, and telephoned for the ambulance that took her to the French Hospital. Thereafter he would occasionally raise his window and shout, “Are you still alive, Djuna?” She outlasted Cummings by twenty years.

From Andew Field’s Djuna: The Life and Times of Djuna Barnes (1983):

In 1963 a developer purchased Patchin Place for $630,000 and said that, if the tenants would not permit him a reasonable return on his investment, then he would be forced to rip down the old buildings and erect a multi-storey on the site. There was a tenants’ protest meeting (reported in The New York Times, September 30, 1963: “Patchin and Milligan Tenants Unite to Preserve Quiet Corner”). Miss Barnes spoke at the meeting and said that she would die if she was forced to move uptown. More than that, the neighbourhood needed to be preserved as it was so that the young people had a suitable place to practice their mugging. The landlord backed away, and life continued on for her as before in small, difficult days.

Barnes’s rent in 1963: $49.50 a month.

[From the Times article, for which Barnes consented to an interview. The article does not mention a Barnes appearance at a protest meeting. Click for a larger view.]

Djuna Barnes died in her apartment on June 18, 1982, days after her ninetieth birthday.

Here’s more about 5 Patchin Place, from Ephemeral New York and the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Here’s a famous photograph of Barnes standing inside the Patchin Place gate. And here are Trulia’s real-estate photographs of the apartment’s interior, all 500 square feet of it. The apartment is off the market.

I’m no Barnes expert, but I can highly recommend the novel Nightwood (1936), which I dared to teach several times. It’s a great modernist novel, a great modern novel, and a great novel.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard) : “Smith going backward” (A phrase from Djuna Barnes)

“But” speaks

Alexandra Petri, writing in The Washington Post (gift link): “The word ‘But’ asks that it not appear in these sentences.” The words “Nevertheless,” “Still,” and “However” concur.

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by Lars G. Doubleday, aka Doug Peterson and Brad Wilber. Their last Stumper was in January of this year. Today’s puzzle is another solid Stumper. The cross that began to reveal the puzzle to me: 24-D, letters, “It’s covered for strollers” and 32-A, six letters, “Bardic king.” I’m surprised that I got 24-D first. I just thought has to be.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

4-D, seven letters, “Always-open merchant.” A better clue might be “An answer that needs to be banned from crosswords.” I can’t stand the word.

8-A, seven letters, “Clogs, for example.” An example of this puzzle’s ambiguities.

17-A, seven letters, “Less likely to split.” C’mon, man. The answer appears nowhere in the OED and it barely registers in the Google Ngram Viewer.

20-D, nine letters, “Literally, ‘Children of the Covenant.’” I learned something.

27-A, four letters, “About ninety-one yards of a football field.” A novel way to clue a familiar word.

43-D, seven letters, “Genre of graphic novels.” Oh! Cool.

44-A, nine letters, “Quartet in Mississippi.” As much as I like the answer, I think the clue is fiendishly arbitrary.

47-D, six letters, “Local.” Unexpected.

55-A, twelve letters, “Resumption after an interruption.” Nicely colloquial.

68-A, seven letters, “Back down?” Oof.

My favorite in this puzzle: 10-D, four letters, “‘Congratulations!’ message source, maybe.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Zippy, re: Nancy

[“Over the Counter.” Zippy, October 13, 2023. Click for a larger view.]

This diner diner, who still reads the newspaper and still reads the comics first, is channeling Bill Griffith. In his talk about Ernie Bushmiller and Nancy at The New School this past Tuesday, Griffith made that point about newspaper-reading (with the front page added), and he offered this diner’s observation about Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy — that it treats Nancy and Sluggo as if they are teenagers. He also mentioned the new strip’s emphasis on computers and social media. He’s not a fan.

In the final panel of today’s strip, this diner might be speaking only for himself: “Today’s Marmaduke is pretty funny.” (Marmaduke is now in re-runs.)

Me, I love Bushmiller’s Nancy, and I think Olivia Jaimes’s version is often wonderful. I tire though of robotics, the magnet school, and dialogues and monologues that end in self-contradiction. But when Jaimes is deploying visual humor, as in today’s strip, her Nancy is a delight.

*

Later that same morning: Bill Griffith’s talk is available on YouTube. He comments on Olivia Jaimes’s Nancy at 1:34 (“I’m not happy with it”) and on newspaper reading at 1:56:23.

Venn reading
All OCA Nancy posts : Nancy and Zippy posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Frasier again

Our household signed on for a free month of Paramount+ to sample the new Frasier. We watched the two available episodes last night and deleted our account.

There are many things to say about the new Frasier. I’ll offer just one: Paramount+ has made a series that might appeal to fans of Cheers. I’m not sure how it’s supposed to appeal to fans of Frasier.

“Tortoiseshell cats and champagne”

Katherine Mansfield, “The Little Governess” (1915).

[If the syntax puzzles you for a moment: rested parallels watched and watched.]

A “Day of Resistance” toolkit

Nihilism on campuses: The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a collegiate “Day of Resistance” movement, whose “toolkit” (since removed from Google Docs) includes a poster featuring an cartooned image of a paraglider.

The Chronicle quotes a law professor: “Let that sink in.”

From the future

[John Garfield and Frances Farmer in Flowing Gold (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1940). Click for a larger view.]

Frances Farmer really does look like “someone from at least fifty years in the future.” (I’m quoting myself.)

Twelve movies

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

Don’t Look Back (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967). A documentary made from footage of Bob Dylan’s 1965 English tour. I watched out of a sense of responsibility to cultural history and was deeply underwhelmed. The robotic strumming, the wheezing harmonica, the typing while Joan Baez sings, the snarkitude at everyone’s expense, especially Donovan’s: Dylan strikes me as an emperor in need of a good haberdashery. Strange: the first words he says on camera are “Did you see my cane?” — and this is before his motorcycle accident. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Clouded Yellow (dir. Ralph Thomas, 1950). British intelligence agent David Somers (Trevor Howard) gets the boot after one mistake and takes a short-term job cataloging butterflies at a country house. Thus the title, suggesting, perhaps, migratory movement and, certainly, nets and fragile beauty. When Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons), the allegedly disturbed niece of the house, is accused of murder, David takes her on the lam, and through a grand tour of English landscapes. A movie made of wonderful Hitchcockian episodes, à la The 39 Steps, but there’s little chemistry between Howard — who seems himself an avuncular figure — and Simmons. ★★★ (YT)

*

Footsteps in the Night (dir. Jean Yarborough, 1957). A man is found dead in a Los Angeles motel room, and suspicion falls on a neighbor with a gambling problem whom the dead man inveigled into long nights of cards. The movie plays like an hour-long episode of Dragnet, with two detectives cracking occasional jokes and plodding along from place to place until there’s a bit of high drama at the final minutes. Worth watching for brief appearances by James Flavin (veteran of hundreds of movies) and Harry Tyler (Bert the short-order cook in The Grapes of Wrath). Both men must have understood that there are no small roles, only small actors. ★★ (YT)

*

I Confess (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1953). Wearing a priest’s cassock, a church caretaker in Quebec City (O.E. Hasse) commits murder and confesses to the very priest whose cassock he wore, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift), who’s required by church law to keep the confession secret. Logan of course soon becomes a suspect, and his relationship with an old sweetheart (Anne Baxter), suggests he had good reason to kill. With Clift as a man with a secret to hide, there’s a strange meta quality to the story. Difficult to see much chemistry between him and the hammy Baxter; Hasse and Dolly Haas are more genuinely desperate partners. ★★★ (TCM)

[In the Small World department: Dolly Haas was married to Al Hirschfeld. Our friends Seymour Barab and Margie King were their friends.]

*

The Secret Fury (dir. Mel Ferrer, 1950). Someone’s turned up the gaslight — but who? Deeply strange, with Claudette Colbert as Ellen Ewing, a classical pianist who’s about to marry some guy (Robert Ryan), and as the ceremony gets underway, a stranger stands up to say that Ellen is already married. Three movies in one: a melodrama, a courtroom drama, and a very dark noir. Paul Kelly is great as a district attorney; and look for VIvian Vance as a hotel maid. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Hell Is a City (dir. Val Guest, 1960). When an escaped criminal (John Crawford) heads home to Manchester and pulls off a robbery and murder, it’s up to Inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker) to track him down — or to climb up after him. Location filming and a strong cast (Donald Pleasance, Vanda Godsell, Billie Whitelaw) make for a terrific movie. I suspect the strong influence of The Naked City (the movie) and Naked City (the television series). What clinches it for me: several scenes of domestic tension between Martineau and his wife Julia (Maxine Audley) — in keeping with the Naked practice of showing cops in their private lives. ★★★★ (YT)

*

This Is the Bowery (dir. Gunther von Fritsch, 1941). A short film from the series The Passing Parade, with John Nesbitt’s narration. It’s a ludicrously or poignantly optimistic look at life on the Bowery, with one man (Charles St. John) resolving to give the straight life one more try. Hearty soup and strong coffee served at the Bowery Mission help him on his way. Filmed on location — the real street and its semi-residents, many of them looking remarkably well kempt. ★★★ (TCM)

*

How Do You Like the Bowery? (dir. Dan Halas and Alan Raymond, 1960). A short documentary by NYU students Halas and Raymond. Here the men of the Bowery speak, and the urgency with which some of them address their interviewer makes me think of the souls in Dante’s hell. It’s one memorable face after another. My Bowery triptych would have these two short films flanking Lionel Rogosin’s full-length 1956 movie On the Bowery. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Suddenly (dir. Lewis Allen, 1954). A damaged war vet (Frank Sinatra) has contracted to assassinate the president of the United States, traveling to the town of Suddenly and taking over an isolated house from which to shoot a rifle. It’s up to the people held captive in the house to stop him: a grandfather (James Gleason), his war-widow daughter (Nancy Gates), her young son (Kim Charney), the town sheriff (Sterling Hayden), and a TV repairman (James Lilburn). The movie is almost all plot, with a brief touch of romance and a few hints of the vet’s feral war record. So strange to watch and think about Sinatra’s fleeting friendship with John F. Kennedy; so strange to watch and think about one the names Donald Trump used when making phony calls to the press: the vet’s name, John Barron. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Flowing Gold (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1940). Bromance, romance, and fossil fuels: a wanted man (John Garfield) shows up at an oil field, saves the foreman’s life (Pat O’Brien), and falls in love with an oilman’s daughter (Frances Farmer). Aside from a spectacular explosion, everything here is predictable. The reason to watch is Frances Farmer, who looks like someone from at least fifty years in the future. A bonus: Cliff Edwards, “Ukulele Ike,” the voice of Jiminy Cricket. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Fyre (dir. Chris Smith, 2019). My daughter made a joke about a cheese sandwich, and suddenly I was looking up the details of the notorious Fyre music festival, a scam perpetrated by Billy McFarland, an entrepreneur who promised festivalgoers exclusive lodgings and fine food on a private island. Instead, the marks got surplus tents, rainsoaked mattresses, and cheese sandwiches in foam containers. And now McFarland is out of prison and planning Fyre Festival II. A con man, exposed as such, and trying a second time: I wonder if McFarland has met a leading Republican contender. ★★★★ (N)

*

Two O’Clock Courage (dir. Anthony Mann, 1945). A pick for TCM’s Noir Alley, and an Anthony Mann movie we’d never heard of — and it starts off so well, with fog and foghorns, and a shadow (Tom Conway) staggering away from the camera. A perky cabdriver (Ann Rutherford) drives onto the screen, and the story turns into something like a radio whodunit with touches of comedy, as the cabbie helps the amnesiac shadow sort out clues to his identity and prove he’s no murderer. A fun element: the story takes place in a city that never sleeps, with clothing stores open all night, and landladies awake and fully dressed at all hours. A bonus: Jane Greer in her first speaking role, as a drunken actress. ★★★ (TCM)

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

Timothy Snyder on terrorism

I have been in flight from watching the news. But I want to share these observations, from the historian Timothy Snyder:

For the victim, terror is about what it is. For the terrorist, it is about what happens next.

Terror can be a weapon of the weak, designed to get the strong to use their strength against themselves. Terrorists know what they are going to do, and have an idea what will follow. They mean to create an emotional situation where self-destructive action seems like the urgent and only choice.

When you have been terrorized, the argument that I am making seems absurd; the terrorists can seem to you to be raving beasts who just need punishment. Yet however horrible the crime, it usually does not bespeak a lack of planning. Usually part of the plan is to enrage.

Americans have fallen for this. 9/11 was a successful terrorist attack because we made it so. Regardless of whether or not its planners and perpetrators lived to see this, it achieved its main goal: to weaken the United States. Without 9/11, the United States presumably would not have invaded Iraq, a decision which led to the death of tens of thousands of people, helped fund the rise of China, weakened international law, and undid American credibility. 9/11 was a contributing cause to American decisions that caused far more death than 9/11 itself did. But the point here is that 9/11 facilitated American decisions that hurt America far more than 9/11 itself did. . . .

Classically, a terrorist provokes a state in order to generate so much suffering among his own people that they will take the terrorist’s side indefinitely.

I won’t claim to know what Hamas expects from Israel, nor what Israel should do. That would be a matter for people with the languages and expertise to read and analyze the documents and the data. My point is that it is always worth asking, in such situations, whether you are following the terrorist’s script. If what you want to do is what your enemy wants you to do, someone is mistaken. It might be your enemy. But it also might be you.

PS. I am conscious that the cool tone of this thread might seem jarring in the context of human suffering. I regret this.

PPS. I anticipate the objection that Israeli state policy has been designed to provoke Palestinians. I agree that the strong can also terrorize the weak.