Two doctors talking

From American Fiction (dir. Cord Jefferson, 2023), the Ellison brothers in conversation. Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), a plastic surgeon, says he’s keeping an eye on their mother. Thelonious, known as “Monk,” a novelist and professor, has something to say.

Cliff: “I’m a doctor.”

Monk: “So am I.”

Cliff: “Right. Maybe if we need to revive a sentence.”

As a member of an English department, Monk is the odd man out in his family of doctors and lawyers. I love this exchange, which reminds me that when I asked students to please not call me “Doctor,” I would quote Elaine: “A doctor is someone who can fix your knee.”

I have to take back what I wrote about The Holdovers: I think American Fiction might be the best new movie I see all year.

Confused

“You must have me confused with a normal person”: Larry David (Larry David) in “The Dream Scheme,” this past Sunday’s episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

To my surprise and delight, the series seems to be ending on a high note. I suspect that the final episode will be something of a meta variation on the final episode of Seinfeld, with Larry going to jail — maybe in Atlanta, maybe in Los Angeles. Who else might be in the cell?

“Happy Reunion,” four times

One of my favorite Duke Ellington pieces is “Happy Reunion,” a feature for the tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves. Here is what I believe is the earliest version, from 1958 — a fairly straightforward mid-tempo ballad. As the years went by, the tempo slowed and the melody faded as Gonsalves‘s refashioning and embellishing of the tune became the tune, with his solos becoming variations on his variations. (Consider Coleman Hawkins’s 1939 “Body and Soul” and later versions.)

My favorite performance of “Happy Reunion” came online not long ago, a live recording from a 1971 London concert. I’ve probably listened to it on LP at least a hundred times.

Then there’s a “Happy Reunion” from the 1972 Ellington residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There’s considerable drama underlying this Ellington–Gonsalves duet, something I wrote about in a post some years back. A videotape was long available on YouTube but has disappeared. Get it while you can, at Facebook, or at Vimeo, where you can also see Ellington talking (with unusual frankness) and playing, beginning at 32:54. Gonsalves arrives, apparently unannounced, at 58:58.

And now there’s a third “Happy Reunion” I can share, from a 1973 London concert. It‘s one of Gonsalves’s final performances with the Ellington orchestra, recorded by someone in the audience.

Many thanks to Ian Bradley for making this last “Happy Reunion” available.

*

MAy 23: Another “Happy Reunion” recently came online, from a 1971 performance in Norway, with bass and drums as in the London performance.

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[1958: Jimmy Woode, bass; Sam Woodyard, drums. 1971: Joe Benjamin, bass; Rufus Jones, drums. 1973: Joe Benjamin, bass; Quentin “Rocky” White, drums.]

Postal abbreviations

Not new, but new to me: Gary Gulman explains how the states got their two-letter abbreviations.

Thanks, Lu.

[I’ve watched his 2019 and 2023 Max specials. Highly recommended.]

Review: Carol Beggy, Pencil

Carol Beggy. Pencil. New York: Bloomsbury, 2024. xiv + 136 pages. $14.95 paper.

This small book is a big disappointment. It’s a volume in the series Object Lessons, short books devoted to the contemplation of everyday things: barcodes, hyphens, rust. Other volumes in this series might be terrific. But Pencil is not.

The first sentence to bring me up short, on page three, was about Henry Petroski’s The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance:

He not only details the history of pencil-making but breaks down the process of its manufacture.

I noticed that the word its has no referent. A possible revision:

He not only details the history of pencil-making but breaks down the process of the pencil’s manufacture.

But don’t they amount to the same thing? Better:

He details both the history of pencil-making and the modern manufacturing process.

Am I being picky? Let’s see.

On page six:

A pencil used to be the go-to tool for when a cassette tape needed to be rewound.

A possible revision:

The pencil was once the go–to tool for rewinding a cassette tape.

On page nineteen:

The Musgrave Pencil Company is family-owned and operates out of Shelbyville, TN, which was dubbed “Pencil City, USA,” because a half dozen manufacturers once had factories in the Middle Tennessee town.

A possible revision:

The family-owned Musgrave Pencil Company is based in “Pencil City, USA,” the Middle Tennessee town of Shelbyville, once home to a half dozen pencil manufacturers.

Many sentences are, well, unnecessarily cluttered. On page eighty-three:

When writing his book on the pencil, Petroski devotes the opening of his first chapter to Thoreau and how he made lists of everything he used each day, what was in his cabin in the woods, and the animals, trees, and weather he spotted along the way.

A possible revision:

Petroski begins The Pencil with Thoreau and his lists: of the things he used each day, the contents of his cabin, the animals, trees, and weather conditions he observed.

Often the parts of a sentence can be rearranged to the writer’s (and reader’s) advantage. On page eighty-one:

Tucked into a back corner of the historic cemetery are the graves of some of the best-known US writers and thinkers in the mid– to late-nineteenth century along Authors Ridge.

A possible revision, putting all the details of location in one place:

Tucked into a back corner of the historic cemetery is Authors Ridge, which houses the graves of some of the best-known nineteenth-century American writers and thinkers.

And often the writing is marred by plain carelessness. Many sentences lack necessary punctuation. Here’s one, from page fifty-three:

The problem is that when you spot these claims there never appears to be any attribution and thousands of these references show up in searches.

Elsewhere, words are missing. On page fifty-eight:

I learned a lot from the other members then and still [continue to learn?].

On page sixty-seven:

I know that there are some out [there?] confused by the thought that there are members of a pencil collecting group who travel great distances to meet with their fellow collectors.

That sentence could benefit from rewriting to eliminate the repeated “that there are”:

I’m sure some people are amused by the idea of pencil collectors traveling great distances to meet.

And back on page twenty-two, there’s just a mess:

the Blackwing 602, which it’s distinctive, flattened ferrule

I don’t know what accounts for such writing. In an afterword Beggy mentions a missed deadline and “life, health, and the world such as it is in 2023” getting in the way of her finishing the book. What I do know is that Bloomsbury, a reputable publisher, put this book out, as it is, and is charging $14.95 for it. Bloomsbury, that’s unconscionable.

I suspect that Mary Norris’s Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (2015) strongly influenced Pencil. Like Norris, Beggy has worked as an editor (at The Boston Globe ) and has written a chatty, digressive book. But Norris’s book has a premise — her life as a copyeditor at The New Yorker — that admits of manifold personal asides and digressions. Beggy’s subject is the pencil. Many of the asides and digressions in Pencil have little to do with that subject (or object).

My favorite bit in Pencil : Beggy’s explanation of why reporters take three writing instruments with them on assignment: ballpoint pen, felt-tip pen, and pencil. In those paragraphs the pencil and the personal mesh nicely.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

[An excerpt from a Stephen Sondheim interview that I posted in these pages appears in this book, properly credited. But credit should really have gone to the site with the interview itself.]

Thinking about November

For anyone thinking about voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., or Jill Stein, or Cornel West, or not voting at all:

Consider this allegory.

Consider what David Foster Wallace said about not voting.

Consider these clips from Trump’s Saturday rant in Dayton, Ohio.

[Comments off. I’m not interested in arguing.]

631–639 5th Avenue

Better known as St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

[St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger cathedral.]

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

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

[Leddy is an Irish name.]

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is by “Lester Ruff,” the puzzle’s editor, Stan Newman, and it’s once again supposed to be easier. Les Ruff? O’Reilly? says I. Shaw, Shaw, whatever you say. This puzzle took me thirty-three minutes. Some novelty and lots of misdirection, especially going Across.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

1-A, eight letters, “Athletic field.” And the misdirection begins. My first thought was GRIDIRON.

1-D, six letters, “Low-hanging fruit, for example.” Nice.

2-D, letters, six letters, “Beat with your feet.” A little tricky.

5-D, three letters, “Protective layer.” Did not fool me.

7-D, five letters, “What M and N are called.” A touch of linguistics.

16-A, six letters, “Deck supervisor.” And the misdirection continues.

17-A, eight letters, “Hardly ‘Definitely.’” My first guess was YESANDNO.

35-D, five letters, “Bogart cross-examinee character.” This clue made me start wondering if I’d call this Bogart’s greatest role. Then I thought aboutHigh Sierra. Then I thought about In a Lonely Place. Then I thought about Casablanca (obviously). Then I thought about The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Then I got back to writing this post.

38-A, eight letters, “Clearance sales.” Having once worked in it, I am fond of the language of retail. Where’s my gondola?

40-A, seven letters, “They’re often served in bars.” Funny. And there is a comedy connection.

46-A, six letters, “‘Help wanted’ letters.” Clever.

51-A, four letters, “All of it was in the Louisiana Purchase.” I knew it couldn’t be OKRA.

57-D, four letters, “What P and V are called.” See 7-D.

63-A, eight letters, “They’re often served in bars.” Not quite as funny as 40-A.

67-A, six letters, “Word from the Latin for ‘crush.’” A fun fact.

My favorite in this puzzle: 12-D, eight letters, “Actress name + actress name = airline.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

ə

[xkcd. “Schwa.” March 14, 2024.]

A related post
My proof that I never knew phonics

Recently updated

T. MONK’S ADVICE (1960) Is it a forgery?