A pallet on the floor

Jean Stafford, Boston Adventure (1944).

The opening sentence of Boston Adventure announces the key signatures, so to speak, of the novel: D and P. The novel is Dickensian, beginning as the story of a girlhood spent in poverty, and Proustian, beginning with sleep. Proust: “Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.” Or in Lydia Davis’s translation, “For a long time, I went to bed early.”

The moments of involuntary memory in the novel, the miniature essays that universalize the narrator’s experience into a “we” — so Proustian. But Proust’s narrator, unlike Sonie Marburg, never had to sleep on the floor.

Boston Adventure has been reissued by New York Review Books. My only relation to the link is that of a happy reader.

“Too many things”

Ted Berrigan, in a 1962 journal:

Got rid of all my books (about 400) except for about 75. Sold them to pay Joe’s rent or gave them to Dick & Carol. Also gave up stealing entirely. We have money and it’s a joy to buy something, to save for it, then read it! Too many things make everything less.

From Get the Money! Collected Prose (1961–1983) (San Francisco: City Lights, 2022).

Joe: Joe Brainard. Dick & Carol: Dick Gallup and Carol Clifford (later Carol Gallup).

Related reading
All OCA Ted Berrigan posts : Joe Brainard posts : A poem by Dick Gallup

Meta detectives

From I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes (dir. William Nigh, 1948). A police detective (Rory Mallinson) has just told Tom Quinn (Don Castle) that he’s under arrest for murder:

“Now wait a minute, you guys aren’t serious. What are you, a couple of actors out of work? You don’t even look like detectives.”

I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes is still streaming at the Criterion Channel.

Also from this movie
A Mongol pencil sighting

Capitulation or compromise

From a New York Times article about budget negotiations between House majority leader Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer:

It is not clear whether disgruntled right-wing Republicans will try to depose Mr. Johnson as they did his predecessor. But they have already signaled that the latitude some of them afforded him during his first weeks in the job is vanishing, and that their patience is wearing thin with his capitulations to Democrats.

But capitulations makes sense only if the sentence is recast to reflect the view of the hard right: “their patience is wearing thin with what they see as his capitulations to Democrats.”

I’d choose compromises with. To compromise, to come to an agreement, is not to capitulate. And as the article makes clear, the agreement is a matter of compromise, with each side giving up something. If the repeated with — “with his compromises with” — grates, the sentence can be rewritten:

But they have already signaled that the latitude some of them afforded him during his first weeks in the job is vanishing, and that they disapprove of his compromises with Democrats.

The article goes on to say that “Some Republicans suggested that Mr. Johnson was merely bowing to the reality of divided government.”

Which just might involve the possibility of compromise.

Fliqlo lives!

A new version of the Mac flip-clock screensaver Fliqlo (for Sonoma and beyond) is now available. It’s a free download, with donations accepted.

As I wrote in a previous recommendation: For those who teach and have conferences with students, Fliqlo can be a handy way to keep track of time without awkward glances at a phone or watch.

*

Alas, Sonoma still identifies Fliqlo as a legacy item, and for whatever reason, it uses an enormous amount of memory, at least on my Mac — more than 500 MB this morning.

On Tyranny, summarized

In his newsletter Thinking about... , Timothy Snyder offers a summary of his 2017 book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

A handful of passages from On Tyranny
“Believe in truth” : Distinguishing truth from falsehood : “Do not obey in advance” : Nationalism, patriotism, and possible futures : “Nay, come, let’s go together”

Plagiarism in high places

Two articles from Business Insider — 1, 2 — document plagiarism in the MIT dissertation of Neri Oxman, identified as “Bill Ackman’s celebrity academic wife.” Ackman is of course the Harvard alumnus who pushed for Claudine Gay’s resignation as Harvard’s president. Oxman’s sources include Wikipedia artices.

Here’s one example:

Wikipedia: “By spacing the warp more closely, it can completely cover the weft that binds it, giving a warpfaced textile.”

Oxman: “By spacing the warp more closely, it can completely cover the weft that binds it, giving a warp faced textile.”

Notice that as she plagiazed, Oxman left the dangling particple uncorrected. And she clumsily miscorrected warpfaced by splitting it into two unhyphenated words. Gotta wonder sometimes who bothers to read the dissertations and theses they’re signing off on.

For her part Oxman has acknowledged mistakes and will ask MIT to make “any necessary corrections.” And Acknan says that “Part of what makes [Oxman] human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate.”

Related reading
All OCA plagiarism posts (Pinboard)

A prisoner of Gowanus

[58 2nd Avenue, Gowanus, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I thought of the old KENTILE FLOORS sign and found myself once again in Gowanus. It’s a Brooklyn neighborhood that I’ve visited many times in these pages. I am a prisoner not of 2nd Avenue but of Gowanus.

In Brooklynite memory, the KENTILE FLOORS sign that stood atop the Kentile, Inc. building is a beloved landmark, though the Kentile name is now associated with mesothelioma. There’s no trace of the sign in the WPA tax photographs, but I did find this coffee shop, whose address for some reason is listed as that of the now-defunct manufacturer.

Life, September 1, 1952. Click for a larger view.]

If you click the tax photograph for the larger view and look closely, you’ll see the name Gowanus Coffee Shop on the window. Notice too the Schaefer Beer sign in the window: this (former?) coffee shop must have had a liquor license. And notice not just one but two Bell Telephone signs: signs of civilization. It’s not easy to ignore the figure standing in the doorway. Whoever she is, she is not amused. I imagine her speaking in comic-strip Brooklynese: “Whaddaya gonna do, just stan’ there all day takin’ my pitcher?”

[Click for a larger view.]

Today 58 2nd Avenue is home to the Achim Importing Co. and is unrecognizable as its former self.

Related reading
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Comics synchronicity

Bonk! Bonk!

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Stella Zawisktowski, is sometimes easy. Try 1-A, five letters, “Muchacha.” It’s sometimes obscure. Try 44-A, four letters, “Branta sandivicensis.” It’s sometimes even more obscure. Try 52-A, ten letters, “Bit of cosmic rays.” I made it almost to the finish line without looking up an answer — 50-D, four letters, “Ford part, familiarly.” OLDS? No.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

2-D, four letters, “Decoration candidate.” My first thought was DOOR.

6-D, eleven letters, “Shout-out.” HIMOM doesn’t work.

11-D, four letters, “Service period.” A nifty clue.

14-D, five letters, “Lead role of two recent Netflix films.” That’s a stretch.

16-A, ten letters, “Ersatz ice pack.” Yes, more than once.

23-D, eleven letters, “Bryant-Denny stadium team.” Ought to be obvious to most solvers, but there is no I in team, or in sports.

24-A, fifteen letters, “French lobster partner (despite the name).” Never heard of it, but easy enough to see with a few crosses.

32-A, three letters, “Water tower.” Clever.

34-D, eight letters, “Odysseus and family.” They rule.

39-A, fifteen letters, “They’re ready for their closeups.” The other fifteener in the puzzle. NORMADESMONDS doesn’t fit.

41-D, five letters, “Breaks into a vault.” I was sure this had to be LOOTS.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.