|k| clippings: 2015-02-11 — no joke?

WORK

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer
—from Religion

WORD(S)

jocoserious /joe-coe-SEAR-ee-us/. adjective. Simultaneously serious and in jest. Partly a joke and partly in earnest. An early portmanteau of jocular and serious, which themselves from Latin jocus (jest) + serius (weighty, important).

“Our proposed removal to Mr. Small’s was, as you suppose, a jest, or rather a joco-serious matter. We never looked upon it as entirely feasible, yet we saw in it something so like practicability, that we did not esteem it altogether unworthy of our attention.” (Goldwyn Smith)

“A silly attempt to anagrammatise the name of our beloved queen; thus:
‘Her most gracious Majesty Alexandrina Victoria,’
‘Ah! my extravagant joco-serious radical Minister!’”
(Notes and Queries, Vol. IV, Number 100, 1851)

His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps’s massproduct, the creature cocoa. (James Joyce)

Incidentally, both Robert Bell and Joyce Carol Oates used the title “Jocoserious Joyce” to write about Ulysses.

WEB

1. The New York Time has a pretty great “interactive” online exhibit of the recent MOMA show “Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs”

2. The fabulous full-color plates from John James Audubon’s Birds of America—435 of them—are available for free on-screen and as high-resolution downloads. Hat-tip: Reader S.

3. “If Taylor Swift Lyrics Were About King Henry VIII”. Via Reader C.

4. Writer Lindsey West has been beset by internet harassment for a long time. But then she decided to ask a particularly cruel troll why he did it. The result is an amazing story.

5. Today in 1963, poet Sylvia Plath—who 10 days earlier wrote the poem “Kindness” that contained the lines “The blood jet is poetry, / There is no stopping it,”—commits suicide. In the curious bifurcation that follows many literary suicides, Plath is both over- and under-estimated as an artist by those who look more to her biography than her poems. And I can add, based on my recent reading, that Plath’s journals comprise a harrowing, beautiful, heartbreaking work that goes a long way toward helping us experience Plath’s humanity.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader F. writes in appreciation: “Thanks for this one [Maxianne Berger’s poem “Snow”]! Maxi can say in so few words what it takes many of us pages. I love this piece. it jolted my heart.”

• Reader S. (and Readers C. and M.) got it right: Squirreled is, if pronounced as one syllable, the (arguably) longest monosyllabic word in English. It’s certainly the longest in common usage. I mean, “schtroumpfed” and “broughammed?” Really?

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