WORK

Is letter writing, in the artistic sense, a lost accomplishment? There are plenty of people who would not linger long over a reply. It is often asserted that Rowland Hill and the penny post killed the old-fashioned style of letter. That is not true, however, for it survived in old-fashioned hands into the mid-Victorian era, when it received its coup de grâce by the invention of what our fathers, when in a superior mood, called that “modern abomination,” the ubiquitous post-card. Correspondence has since its advent grown pithy, brisk, prosaic. The majority of men have not the time in this cast-iron, express-paced age, with its telegraphs and telephones, and constant business and social demands, for the old elaborate letter of genial gossip and kindly compliment. Sentiment, some would even say, is at a discount, and whatever may be the cause, imagination and fancy, to say nothing of wit and humor, have grown curiously rare under a penny stamp. The world is too much with us now. Our interests are too many, our work too insistent, our mental indolence perhaps too great, for that expansive style of correspondence which has vanished for the most part with quill pens and sealing wax.

—Stuart J. Reid, (1909)
—from the introduction to Horace Walpole’s Letters 

WORD(S)

scissile /SI-səl/. adjective. Readily or easily cut or split. In chemistry, a bond or group that is easily split.

“If the Castings into Bars prove so difficult as to make above one-half of the Bars become Scissile, the Charge of Coinage must be proportionably augmented.” (Isaac Newton)

“The gills are also scissile, that is, they can be split, and are linear and swollen in the middle.” (Ellen Dallas)

“Their society had a catalytic effect on the innately scissile personalities of Melville and Hawthorne.” (D.E.S. Maxwell)

“And time is split like a gem: neatly scissile.” (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, #62)

WEB

1. ▶ Inherent Vice (Official Trailer). I didn’t even know Pynchon’s novel was being adapted. Joaquin Phoenix looks into it, but I pictured Doc more like The Big Lebowski-era Jeff Bridges…

2. These geometrical images of sword-Fighting are beautiful.

3. “800-Year-Old Doodles in Some of the World’s Oldest Books”. As mentioned in the article: Eric Kwakkel’s Medieval books tumblr, blog and interview.

4. “How Politics Breaks Our Brains”

5. Given the comment below, let’s note that today in 1927, The Jazz Singer—the first full-length “talkie”—debuted. Sadly now most famous for the debate it has inspired about racism, it was a real technical feat. And while the film’s star, Al Jolson, often performed in blackface on stage, in the film it’s a bit more complicated: his character is a Jewish man unable to perform the modern music he loves without adopting the disguise…for him it’s a matter of desire not insult. ►Watch Al Jolson perform in the famous “Mammy” scene.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G. objects: “In reference to the Thug Kitchen comment on cultural appropriation, I find this term and the whole concept ridiculous on every level. So, no Asians can do any art other than scroll painting and woodblock prints, all White musicians should throw away their slide guitars and banjos (African origin), no Blacks can play Bach or Beethoven, Latin Americans can do nothing but carve jade and make earth paintings…..get the point? The whole point of art and music is to expand their use and participation as widely as possible, anything else is cultural fascism.”

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