Today marks the one year anniversary (and 216th issue!) of Katexic Clippings… and a good time to decide if it should continue. I have a sense that many are receiving the newsletter but no longer reading. Every project has a lifespan.
I will let you decide: if you are reading this and Clippings remains of interest, please take a second to click YES, recording your vote to keep the newsletter going. Thanks!
WORK
One of the bookstores not mentioned in my essay was the wonderful Phoenix in Lambertville. It was launched in 1987 by four English teachers, Michael, Barry and their wives. I don’t know that I ever met their wives, but I knew Michael and Barry. Although they probably never knew me by name, they knew my face. They had promised themselves to give the bookstore two years to pay off their investment. They succeeded in two weeks. Alas, the article about La Hune made me think of it. In ’87, business for them was fantastic. The Phoenix closed a year or two ago. When I learned it was closing, I snapped a picture.
Phoenix is a good name for a used bookstore. One hopes it will rise again. Just as Reader C. shared the article about La Hune with you, so do I. When a bookstore we are fond of closes, the subject tugs at the heart and we are compelled to share it with the like-minded.
—Bruce Harris Bentzman
WORD(S)
cecity /SEE-si-tə/. noun. Blindness. From Middle French cécité, from Latin caecitas (blindness).
“But who was he, Enderby, to adapt a great tragedy to the limited talents, New World phonemes and intonations and slangy lapses, cecity towards the past, Pyrrhonism and so on of this weak cry of players?” (Anthony Burgess)
“After light’s term, a term of cecity.” (Matthew Arnold)
“Beauty is the safest stimulant, the surest tonic, the most precious inspiration; natural beauty first of all, and the beauty of the arts closely following, twinlike handmaids to Aphrodite. But to perceive this the mentally blind are as incapable as the physically blind; and such, mental cecity is as general in these days as myopy is common in the schoolrooms of this generation.” (Ouida)
“Monocularity at home, cecity abroad.” (Julian Barnes)
WEB
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On one of the roofs of the world: Xinaliq [via Reader B., who notes, “Some great stuff here, starting with the window.”]
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[via Reader S.] → Some funny (and terrible) “Letterspacing” (AKA Kerning) Fails
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Knowing my love of Larkin’s poetry, Reader N. shares a couple of links about his enshrinement in the Westminster Abbey Poets’ Corner → Lecherous. Racist. But my friend Philip Larkin deserves his spot in Poets’ Corner and Larkin has secured his place in Poets’ Corner, and about time too
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Amazon is going to test paying authors by page views. Fractional payments are logical, business-wise, but how might they shape the work writers create? → What If Authors Were Paid Every Time Someone Turned a Page?
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Today in 1868, Christopher Sholes is granted a patent for his “type-writer” machine. It wasn’t the first typewriter but, as this brief history of typewriters shows, it was the most influential design on the myriad machines to come. The Virtual Typewriter Museum is chock-full of fantastic typewriter images and historical notes.
WATCH/WITNESS
Reader J. shares this animated video for Juana Molina’s song “Un dia” with a note that I might “enjoy this and explain it to us.” I have no explanation…but I enjoyed the song and video!
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
None!
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