Mencken on professor

Professor , like doctor , is worked much less hard in England that in the United States. In all save a few of our larger cities every male pedagogue is a professor, and so is every band leader, dancing master, and medical consultant. Two or three generations ago the title was given to horse-trainers, barbers, bartenders, phrenologists, caterers, patent-medicine vendors, acrobats, ventriloquists, and pedagogues and champions of all sorts. Of late its excessive misuse has brought it into disrepute, and more often than not it is applied satirically. The real professors try hard to get rid of it.

H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936).

Also from The American Language
The American v. the Englishman : “Are you a speed-cop?” : B.V.D. : English American English : “[N]o faculty so weak as the English faculty” : Playing policy : “There are words enough already” : The -thon , dancing and walking : The verb to contact

Nabokov’s orthodontia

In Berlin, orthodontia for Vladimir and Sergey:


Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966).

The wonders of today: here is Dr. Lowell or Lowen — real name, William Law — at one’s fingertips:


[The Dental Register 60, no. 6 (1906).]

There are other traces of William G. Law in Google Books. Maxillofacial Orthopedics: A Clinical Approach for the Growing Child (2004) notes that Dr. Law was a founding member and first president of the European Orthodontic Society (1907–1909). In the January 1909 issue of The Dental Cosmos, Dr. Law reported that in October 1908 he had been elected secretary-treasurer of the European Orthodontia Society.

If a descendant happens to be hunting, I hope he or she finds this post. To spell it out: William G. Law , dentist , orthodonist , In den Zelten 18a , Berlin . It would be easy to find evidence of this ancestor online by searching for his name. Not nearly as easy, though, to learn that Vladimir and Sergey Nabokov were his patients.

Wikipedia tells us that In den Zelten (“in the tents”) became an official street name in 1832 and disappeared in 2002.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)

Elsie de Nord

Elaine and I have begun reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor (1969), making cautious, limited use of annotations from the (invaluable) website ADAonline. We traveled there today to check on a name in chapter ten, that of Elsie de Nord. Young Ada Durmanov, “[a]rch and grandiloquent,” is described as speaking of “some ludicrous blunder in the current column of Elsie de Nord, a vulgar literary demimondaine.”

Here is what ADAonline says about “Elsie de Nord”:

In part a reference to Elsinore, the site of Hamlet (as suggested by the Kyoto Reading Circle, Krug 3:2, 29), especially in view of the reference to another person from the literary demimonde, the reviewer of Van’s first book, as “the First Clown in Elsinore ” (343.29). Nevertheless the name invites or tantalizes us with the promise of a particular identification, even if there is no specific reference intended. Perhaps a reference to American poet and translator Babette Deutsch (1895-1982), married to Avrahm Yarmolinsky, with whom she translated Pushkin and other Russians (see 64.16n.), perhaps with a dash of the Russian-born French novelist Elsa Triolet (née Ella Kagan, 1896-1970), who in 1965 edited an Anthologie de la poésie russe ?

There is, I believe, another reference suggested, given the resonance that the name Elsie would likely have for an American reader. Elsie de Nord suggests Elsie the Cow, Elsie the Borden Cow, spokescow for Borden dairy products. Elsie de Nord’s last name nearly anagrams Borden . This hapless critic is, as it were, a cow, or at least cow-like. Two chapters later in Ada, orchestra becomes horsecart. One chapter more and Borges becomes Osberg. Caution: VN at Work.


[Elsie at home. From an advertisement in Life, May 22, 1950.]

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)
Elsie’s Cook Book (A book-sale find)

[Full title: Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle . Cow-like , by the way, appears in Lolita: “in specious chat with her cow-like mother.”]

Sushi sardines

Sardines play a part in the 2014 film St. Vincent (dir. Theodore Melfi). Taking on some impromptu work in afterschool childcare, grouchy old Vincent (Bill Murray) prepares a meal of canned fish and crackers for the kid next door, Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher). “You’re gettin’ sushi,” Vincent says. But Oliver knows better. Click any image for a larger view.


[One: Locate sardines and crackers. The rectangle top right said to me sardines, maybe . I was hoping.]


[Two: Arrange into festive platter. Add hot sauce.]


[Three: Pour fishy liquid from can into glass. For what? Dipping the crackers? Who in their right mind — filmmakers, that was so tacky.]


[Four: All gone, or nearly so.]

The food is all for Oliver. Vincent sticks to whiskey. As we later learn, he buys sardines for himself and “gourmet cat food” for his, uh, cat. And that’s just one example of his saintliness.

With Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, and Naomi Watts on board, St. Vincent could have been a much more engaging film. As it is, the story is painfully predictable. (For crying out loud: the title gives it away.) The moment when I knew the film was beyond redemption: a wheelchair race through hospital hallways. Unforgivable.

But there are sardines.

Related reading
All OCA sardine posts (Pinboard)

Afterthought

The moon came out from behind the clouds last night, and we were there, or here, on earth, to see it.

How great that every so often — for no reason at all — the moon should turn from green cheese into a tasty port wine variety.

A Nabokov pencil sharpener

How do you know that your father is about to have yet another committee meeting?


Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966).

That “tawny-brown shag”: I think back to roll-my-own days, and yes, shag is just right.

Related reading
All OCA Nabokov posts (Pinboard)
Pnin’s pencil sharpener (“ticonderoga-ticonderoga”)

Sherry Turkle on our phones and our selves

Sherry Turkle, writing in The New York Times about technology, solitude, and conversation:

In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is easier to do without your phone in hand.

A related post
Sherry Turkle on the flight from conversation

Calling Henry

[Henry, September 27, 2015.]

In the Henry-world, all telephones are landlines. Henrietta must be calling on a conveniently located pay phone. You can’t see it from this panel, but rain is threatening. So hurry up, kids, and get off the line before it storms.

Related reading
All OCA Henry posts (Pinboard)

[Blue? À la the (non-existent) red telephone? A private line on which Henrietta can reach Henry? But in the Henry-world, telephones should be black.]

Domestic comedy

“He’s the real thing — a total phony.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

Literature and choreography

From The Allusionist episode Architecting about Dance: the choreographer and movement director Steven Hoggett is talking with Helen Zaltzman about what studying literature has meant to his work.

Hoggett: It’s absolutely the bedrock for my choreographic career. I thank my lucky stars I spent many years poring over books rather than being in a studio, because I would have been a terrible pure dancer.

Zaltzamn: That’s really extraordinary. How do you think the poring over books created the modern you?

Hoggett: Because your imagination — I was encouraged to use my imagination way into my twenties, when I was still studying. Somebody was saying, “Don’t just read the book, think about it.” That’s what’s also helped me in every instance of being able to try to communicate and use language and words and reinvent my kind of language every time you do a new piece, because that company is different, that task is different, the show is different. And it does require a choreographer to be responsive to a room, and to find expressions and terms and words, literal phrases, that make sense for each project.

A New York Times article says of Hoggett in his twenties: “[he] studied literature at Swansea University in Wales and had little training in theater or dance.”

I’ve been following The Allusionist since June and recommend it with enthusiasm.

[I’ve made several corrections in this excerpt from the show’s transcript.]