"Orlovius was displeased”

Hermann begins a new chapter:

Vladimir Nabokov, Despair (1966).

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[If you happen to watch the Fassbinder adaptation of the novel, in which Hermann is a character among characters, not a protagonist writing his story, you’ll discover that this kind of meta comedy is nowhere to be found.]

How to improve writing (no. 116)

On the main page of The New York Times now:

The Sikh activist at the center of an alleged assassination plot said there was no question that India wanted him dead.

No. He wasn’t at the center of the alleged plot; he was its target. So:

The Sikh activist targeted in an alleged assassination plot said there was no question that India wanted him dead.

Everyone makes mistakes, but when you’re The New York Times, the mistakes should not be so glaring.

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[This post is no. 116 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Costa, Guerriero, and Sued

[Yamandu Costa, Brazilian guitar; Luís Guerreiro, Portuguese guitar; Martín Sued, bandoneon. July 3, 2021.]

“Viva música, bendita música,” says Yamandu Costa, in this Instagram reel and elsewhere. Long live music, blessed music. The music begins at 3:05.

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Cogito

I overthink, or at least I think I do; therefore, I am.

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How to improve writing (no. 115) Now with “with Joe and me.”

Evaluations

I drove my friend Aldo to the bus station and drove back to a large room filled with pews — not a church but a meeting room of some sort. I walked to the row in which I had been seated and found the evaluation packet for a newbie professor’s Intro to Film Studies class. The evaluation questions were meant for someone in the class: what percentage of the final grade was allotted to writing, what percentage to participation, and so on. Having no idea what to write, I just wrote OK in the margin next to each question. I also wrote the words retired prof somewhere on one of the pages.

A question about movies asked me to rate two: the Larry David movie Spite and a comedy about three nurses. I gave LD a 10, the other a 4. There were also questions about yogurt and juice, with samples. I skipped the yogurt but tried one juice, which was bland and mealy.

One of the authority figures presiding over the evaluations came and stood over me and asked why I was holding everyone else up. I replied that I had taken a friend to the bus station and was working as quickly as I could. I also pointed out that all the hectoring was just making my work take longer. I said “Yes, I took my friend to the bus station, and now I am planning a great train robbery. Just watch.” I started to write exactly that on my evaluation before realizing that doing so would identify the evaluation as mine. So I started erasing.

Possible waking-life sources: thinking of my friend Aldo Carrasco; watching some of Rosalynn Carter’s memorial service; watching a bit of Hanukkah on Rye, a Hallmark movie about rival delis that made me think of the spite store from Curb Your Enthusiasm; buying a variety of Greek yogurts; admiring a four-year-old’s erasing skills; giving out evaluation forms at the end of every semester but my last.

This is the twenty-seventh teaching dream I’ve had since retiring in 2015. In all but one, something has gone wrong. But at least in this dream I got to see a friend.

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[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]

At another rest stop

CAUTION WET FLOOR.

They weren’t kidding. But there wasn’t a mop in sight.

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Pence, comma

ABC News reports on what Mike Pence told special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators:

Sources said that investigators’ questioning became so granular at times that they pressed Pence over the placement of a comma in his book: When recounting a phone call with Trump on Christmas Day 2020, Pence wrote in his book that he told Trump, “You know, I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome” of the election on Jan. 6.

But Pence allegedly told Smith’s investigators that the comma should have never been placed there. According to sources, Pence told Smith’s investigators that he actually meant to write in his book that he admonished Trump, “You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome,” suggesting Trump was well aware of the limitations of Pence’s authority days before Jan. 6 — a line Smith includes in his indictment.

“You know I don’t think I have the authority to change the outcome”: and the absence of a comma has the authority to change everything.

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