Cataract and cataracts

John Berger begins his short essay on cataracts with a definition: “Cataract from Greek kataraktes, meaning waterfall or portcullis, an obstruction that descends from above.” And later:

When you open a dictionary and consult it, you refind, or discover for the first time, the precision of a word. Not only the precision of what it denotes, but also the word’s precise place in the diversity of the language.

With both cataracts removed, what I see with my eyes is now like a dictionary which I can consult about the precision of things. The thing in itself, and also its place amongst other things.

John Berger, Cataract. With drawings by Selçuk Demirel (London: Notting Hill Editions, 2011).

I had cataracts removed a week apart earlier this month, and for the first time since elementary school I am looking at the everyday world without glasses. Waiting for the second surgery, I checked my vision one eye at a time to see the difference a cataract can make. The world my right eye showed me looked like someone’s dingy laundry — stains and blurs everywhere. Walking on a sunny morning a couple of weeks ago, with both eyes cataract-free, I began to tear up because everything looked so brilliantly beautiful: the sky, some trees, the pavement. Yes, the pavement.

But it’s hard work: the eyes and brain are intense collaborators, and by the end of the day, my eyes (now 20/20 in tandem) are fried. In the morning everything is sharp and vivid again. And with new eyes and a new Mac, fewer typos!

[My opthalmologist is an ace. As he was doing the surgery, he told me, “I’m being really finicky getting your astigmatism.” Finicky is exactly what you want in a surgeon, isn’t it? Or in any kind of work.]

Almost 58 Pike Street

[66 Pike Street, Manhattan, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

This photograph is as close as I’m going to get to 58 Pike Street, in a neighborhood called Two Bridges (the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge). That’s the Manhattan Bridge behind the laundry. The Pike Street address is a crucial one in the noir Where the Sidewalk Ends (dir. Otto Preminger, 1950). And in the movie it looks so real. But it’s a set.

[Detective Sergeant Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) is about to call on a suspect. Click for a larger view.]

The set even includes a basement apartment, where Dixon sees Mrs. Tribaum (Grace Mills), whose radio plays as she sleeps in a chair. She will later explain that she’s taken to sleeping there since her husband died.

[Click for a larger view.]

Though the IMDb entry for Where the Sidewalk Ends lists 58 Pike Street as a filming location, there was no such address. As an extraordinary post about the movie at NYC in Film establishes, there was no 58: the Pike Street numbers jumped from 56 to 60, and no building stood that matched the building we see in the movie. And no building today matches the one in the WPA tax photographs.

Where the Sidewalk Ends is streaming at the Criterion Channel as part of the 1950: Peak Noir series. The movie is, indeed, peak.

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

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper is a “Lester Ruff” (Stan Newman) puzzle that truly is less rough. I started with 26-A, four letters, “Lobster Telephone artist (1936)” and sailed smoothly. When I hit 14-D, eight letters, “Bridge builders,” I knew that I would have this puzzle licked.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

12-D, eight letters, “Labor leader Oscar role.” The layout of the online print version of the puzzle pushed role to the next column of text, and thus I was struggling to think of a labor leader named Oscar.

13-D, eight letters, “Net income recipients.” A clever clue, but this answer needs to be retired.

15-A, eight letters, “Churchill wore one at Yalta (2/45).” This clue feels both strangely arbitrary and strangely specific. 2/45: as opposed to some other Yalta Conference?

16-A, six letters, “Hoffman title role.” Sneaky.

17-A, eight letters, “Euphoric state.“ Me, I think of the answer as disparaging euphoria.

23-A, four letters, “Mixed, in a way.” Good grief — the 1950s want their answer back.

26-D, seven letters, “It’s signed, sealed and delivered.” Very nice.

28-D, five letters, “Type of transfer.” I was thinking of buses and subways.

35-A, seven letters, “‘Who put the ape in ____?’ (Cowardly Lion line).” Wonderful.

51-A, five letters, “Model from the Latin for ‘first.’” Represent!

51-D, five letters, “Whom Nietzsche called ‘boring.’” C’mon, he was doing his best.

59-D, three letters, “Daily deliverer of light.” The Across answers filled it in, but I imagine this clue will stymie at least some solvers who drop in a three-letter word.

My favorite in this puzzle: 63-A, eight letters, “Historic High Court decision (7/24/74).” Because no one is above the law.

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

FART

Meet FART. An Infinite Jest-worthy acronym.

Belching in public, or, too much Curb

The narrator is recounting his various courtships. One night at the opera with Zoya and her family, he begins hiccuping. Zoya’s father, Colonel Pepsinov, is irate. The narrator flees the box. The next night, when he shows up at the Pepsinov house for dinner, Zoya refuses to come to the table. And her father is still furious.

Anton Chekhov, “A Confession, or, Olya, Zhenya, Zoya,” in The Prank: The Best of Young Chekhov, trans. Maria Bloshteyn (New York: New York Review Books, 2015).

It turns out that when Elaine and I read “‘I would,’” we both heard it in the voice of Larry David. Too much Curb.

Lambini & Sons

I am happy to see Lambini & Sons in today’s Far Side selection.

Related reading
All OCA tile posts (Pinboard)

A joke in a non-traditional manner

“Knock, knock, who’s there?” And I was at a loss for words.

It’s wonderful to see the very young beginning to get the hang of jokes.

[Why did the milk cross the road? It melted.]

Zippy and Trixie

Today’s Zippy remembers Joyce Randolph. What other comic strip would go there?

And I have to add: more than three months after publication, the New York Times obituary for Joyce Randolph still has a factual error still in need of correction. I’ve written four times.

*

July 19, 2024: The Times will not be correcting the error. Details here.

Related reading
All OCA Honeymooners posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Norman, knocking

I posted this story in April 2020 as a great moment in pedagogy. I remembered it this morning and am reposting it in memory of Norman Spencer:

Out for a walk this morning [April 28, 2020], listening to an episode of the BBC’s Great Lives about Harold Pinter, I remembered a moment from teaching Modern British Literature twenty years ago this spring. We were reading Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter aloud and had hit — I swear it — this bit of dialogue: “If there’s a knock at the door you don’t answer it.” And there was a knock at the door. I thought I’d better answer it.

It was my friend and colleague Norman, with (I think) something I’d left behind at lunch. I don’t remember what. But I’ve never forgotten the knock. It came the one and only time I taught a Pinter play.

I added in a comment:

We were all a bit freaked out. Especially me, since I had to answer. If I know myself, I might have jokingly asked if anyone wanted to get it.

Norman Spencer (1958–2024)

Our dear friend Norman Spencer died today in Oslo. Too soon, too soon.

I met Norman many years ago when we served on a university committee together. He was on the tenure track in foreign languages, teaching Latin and what he called “baby German.” I remember that at first glance he reminded me of my friend Aldo Carrasco — argyle sweaters, ties, a proper academic look. Norman and I began having lunch together before each week’s committee meeting, a perfect opportunity to talk about the absurdities of university life and those who oversee it. The records of those conversations remain sealed.

In the late 1990s, Norman followed his heart and moved to Oslo, where he began a new career as a translator. And no one was better suited for such work. Norman was a master of languages, most recently studying Georgian and Yiddish. When I was trying to figure out some years ago what the word pikakirjoitusvihko meant, all I had to do was ask Norman, who — no surprise — recognized the word as Finnish, knew a little Finnish, and checked his hunch about the meaning with another translator.

Every few summers, we would get to see Norman, or Norman and Frode, on their trips back to the States. Norman would make a circuit to visit family and friends all across the country. And though the fourth Thursday in November is just an ordinary day in Norway, Norman always wrote (and e-mailed) “I remembers” on that day, a fambly tradition that he became part of after a Thanksgiving dinner in our house many years ago.

Elaine and I had expected to see Norman here last year, but family matters made his trip to downstate Illinois not possible. We had bought a bottle of Redbreast Irish whiskey, one of his favorites, in anticipation of that visit. We’ll toast him with it tonight.