Domestic comedy

[Talking about roads not taken.]

“That program? It would have been like galley slaves, but with grading instead of oars.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)

[I finally got it right, or wrong: I thought I’d said “freshman papers” and “oars,” or “grading” and “rowing.” But no, it was “grading” and “oars,” not parallel, I know.]

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The figure on the left is from Rudolf Modley’s Handbook of Pictorial Symbols (New York: Dover, 1976). I removed the hat, lampshade, and typewriter and added a laptop to make the image on the right. For a faux-industrial coffeehouse look, you could always put the lampshade back in.

[I draw a line at the hat. No hats indoors.]

“Bob & Timmy & Lassie”

Fresca, l’astronave, has made a photo-collage to go with my story “The Poet”: it’s “Bob & Timmy & Lassie.”

[All of this silliness reminds me of something the owner of a corner grocery in Brookline, Massachusetts, said to Elaine and me one night in the mid-1980s: “It’s good to get away from reality once in a while.” Confirming what we already knew.]

“A radiance behind it”

Once a year, Robin travels by train to Stratford, Ontario, to see a Shakespeare play:


Alice Munro, “Tricks,” in Runaway (New York: Vintage, 2005).

Also from this book
One Munro sentence : “That is what happens” : “Henry Ford?” : “A private queer feeling”

Astonishment

The New York Times, from a story about Rex Tillerson:

Although he insisted he had never considered resigning, several people close to Mr. Tillerson said he has had to be talked out of drafting a letter of resignation on more than one occasion by his closest allies, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff. And they said he has regularly expressed astonishment at how little Mr. Trump understands the basics of foreign policy.

I’m astonished that he’s astonished.

Nancy rain

[Nancy, September 26, 1950.]

I’ve been waiting for the chance to identify with Nancy. We had less than a quarter-inch of rain in September. Today, it’s raining, for real.

Rain or no rain, you can read Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy six days a week at GoComics.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Stoner movie

The Hollywood Reporter reports that John Williams’s 1965 novel Stoner is being adapted as a movie, directed by Joe Wright and starring Casey Affleck. A press release from the companies behind the movie describes the novel as the story of

the hardscrabble life of William Stoner, a dirt-poor farmer turned academic, who emerges as an unlikely existential hero while making his way through the first half of the 20th century.

Key elements in that description — “hardscrabble,” “dirt-poor,” “unlikely existential hero” — are lifted from the back cover of the New York Review Books paperback edition. But the press release still manages to get something wrong: Stoner is not “a dirt-poor farmer turned academic”: he’s the son of a farming family.

I’m sure I’ll see this movie, though I’m prepared to be disappointed.

Other Stoner posts
John Williams on Stoner and teaching : On “the true nature of the University” : Stoner and adjunct life : Stoner FTW

[And what’s with the producer’s claim that the novel is “not well-known”? It is. In 2013 NPR reported that the novel was a bestseller through much of Europe.]

“The Poet”

This post contains the text of a second short piece of fan fiction, by me: “The Poet,” a Timmy and Lassie story. Featuring a Major American Poet! This story began as what if and quickly turned into why not. Why not?

“The Poet” assumes a working acquaintance with the Lassie world, “outside Calverton,” and with some poetry. You can click on each image for a larger view. Whistling the opening and closing Lassie themes is optional. In its Martin-farm form, Lassie was a major part of my childhood.







 
 

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)

Four more Lassie stories
“The ’Clipse” : “Bon Appétit!” (with Julia Child) : “On the Road” (with Tod and Buz from Route 66) : “The Case of the Purloined Prairie” (with Perry Mason and friends)

[Sources for the old poet’s words: “The Figure a Poem Makes” (1939), “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (1923). For the leopard, lion, and wolf: the first canto of Dante’s Inferno. Suffice to say that the old poet of this story is a figment of someone’s imagination.]

Proustian music

In 2008, I wished for “a CD or two assembling Proust-related music: likely inspirations for Vinteuil’s sonata, songs by Reynaldo Hahn, all in period recordings, if possible.” And lookit: violinist Maria Milstein and pianist Nathalia Milstein are releasing a CD, The Vinteuil Sonata, with music by Claude Debussy, Reynaldo Hahn, Gabriel Pierné, and Camille Saint-Saëns.

The Milstein sisters suspect that Gabriel Pierné’s Sonata for violin and piano in D minor, op. 36 is a source for the Vinteuil Sonata, the imaginary composition with the “little phrase” that so moves Charles Swann in In Search of Lost Time.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard) : “One phrase rising” : Swann’s little phrase : The “little phrase” again

A Garner quiz

Bryan Garner offers a quiz in minimalist editing: “Eyes for Errors” (ABA Journal). How many errors, glaring and venial, can you spot?

Related reading
All OCA Garner-related posts (Pinboard)