WORK

“I’m beginning to think that the proper definition of ‘Man’ is an animal who writes letters.”

—Lewis Carroll
—from The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll

WORD(S)

aphetic /ə-FED-ik/. adjective. Pertaining to, or the result of aphesis (coined by OED editor Sir James A.H. Murray), the loss of an unaccented vowel at the beginning of w a word forming a new word. For example, tender—as in the coal-car on a train—is aphetic for attender, and cute is aphetic for (seriously) acute. From Greek aphienai (to let go, dismiss).

“Words with lost prefixes (socalled aphetic forms—a term coined by James A. H. Murray) may coexist with full forms, and their affinity is then felt. For example, lone and squire are aphetic doublets of alone and esquire.”

“The scarcity of Groser, grocer, is not surprising, for the word, aphetic for engrosser, originally meaning a wholesale dealer, one who sold en gros, is of comparatively late occurrence.” (Ernest Weekley)

“Space is ‘an area, extent, expanse, lapse of time,’ the aphetic of Old French espace dating to 1300…” (World Heritage Encyclopedia)

WEB

1. One of the best pieces I’ve seen about the (lack of) nutritional science, the problem of the scientific establishment and the entanglement of industry and food. Amazing. → The sugar conspiracy

2. Perhaps you can replace all that sugar with a single cube or two… → LSD could make you smarter, happier and healthier. Should we all try it?

3. I must have the book; until then, this illustrated article will have to do. → A Visual History of Typewriter Art from 1893 to Today.

4. If you can figure out how to make it work, radiooooo is an interesting way to explore and discover music from around the world.

5. Today in 1865, United States President Abraham Lincoln is shot by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln would die early the next morning. Booth would be cornered and killed (possibly by a self-inflictec gunshot wound) nearly two weeks later. Read Whitman’s elegy, “O Captain! My Captain!” Read Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address.

WATCH/WITNESS

Trailer for Godfrey Reggio’s Koyannisqatsi reconstructed shot-by-shot with modern, watermarked stock footage.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S. drops some knowledge on the Clamor: “Dretch is also, curiously, a type of demon in D&D. Knowing Gygax’s love for words like dweomer etc., I’m assuming he got it from Chaucer or Malory.” — Dweomer, or the variations popularized by Tolkien—dwimmer and dwimor—are great words!

• Reader L. muses: “Enjoyed the Dorothea Tanning list–she was also a poet and this reads like a list poem. ¶ Wonder if drech is related to dreck? But the latter has a Yiddish derivation.” — Though the ultimate origin of both dreck and dretch remain unknown, it doesn’t appear they are related. Dreck’s origins seem to be in the Old English þreax (rubbish) and Greek σκατός (dung)…"

• Reader A. is near Tanning’s old haunts: “Sedona Journal? ‘forum for those who wish to speak to us from other dimensions and realities.’ ¶ That’s just an hour up the road. Crystals and red rocks and hippies turned capitalists.” — Yeah, I probably should have specified ‘Tanning’s journals while in Sedona!’ But that description isn’t too far off the mark from some of Tanning’s art…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

Perils

1. Peril of Being awake
2. Peril of white
3. Peril of Personal Daintiness
4. Peril of the abstract
5. Peril of the wind and the sea
6. Peril of remaining
7. Peril of the Party
8. Peril of Reply
9. Peril of [erased]
10. Peril of longing
11.  
12.  
13.  
14.  

—Dorothea Tanning
—from Sedona journals, 1947–1949

WORD(S)

dretch /DRECH/. verb or noun. To loiter, dawdle, or linger; one who does any of these. Also to vex or torment, particularly through dreams. A word ripe for rehabilitation! For some readers, the dretch are “seven-foot spider-like creatures” in Garth Nix’s Seventh Tower fantasy series. From Old English dreċċan (to vex, torment, torture).

“…What sholde I drecche, or telle of his aray?” (Geoffrey Chaucer)

“We all … were so dretched that some of us leapt out of our beds naked.” (Sir Thomas Malory)

WEB

1. A fascinating Kickstarter with some photos worth perusing even if you don’t want to contribute → The Last Resort: The Strange Beauty of Soviet Sanatoriums

2. In the land of unintended technological consequences… → How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell

3. The Creative Writing of the Internet’s Premier White Supremacist Forum

4. “we compiled the number of words spoken by male and female characters across roughly 2,000 films, arguably the largest undertaking of script analysis, ever.” Result: interesting but not at all unsurprising. → Film Dialogue from 2,000 screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age

5. Today in 2007, the first United States Postal Service “Forever stamp,” AKA the Liberty Bell stamp, goes on sale. Forever stamps are sold at the current first-class rate but guaranteed as full postage regardless of subsequent rate increases. Known in philatelic circles as non-value indicator (NVI) postage, the Forever stamp has expanded to all other types of stamps, including postcards, international, etc. In 2015, more than 9 billion forever stamps were sold. However, given that the value of a Forever stamp is purposefully tied to inflation—yesterday the value of the standard first-class stamp decreased by two cents—they are an unwise choice for significant monetary investment.

WATCH/WITNESS

“YOU will say this looks like a book. But you will find it is a lot more besides. It is a Puppet-show in which you move the little hero and heroine where you want to go. It is a Treasure Hunt where you have to seek the chest of gold and jewels. It is a Maze through which you and the children will find your way—and perhaps lose it…”

Is Treasure Hunt, a 1948 book by Alan George described as a “maze in volume form,” the first Choose Your Own Adventure book?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “I don’t think it is clear from the definitions provided that the cantle is also a feature of the sporran, being the decorative metal opening to the fuzzy creature.”

• Reader K.: “I can’t tell if the Émile Zola snippet was for me or if I’m just hopelessly self-centered…”

• Reader B.: “Sulphurata Hyper-Oxygenata Frict is the best name in the entire universe. ¶ I think I shall apply it to a kitten.”

• Reader M.: “I love ‘Bless your heart’ with the heat of a thousand connotative suns. Very few phrases are as contextual or as flexible. It’s a many faceted socio-linguistic gem.”

• Reader J.: "Love the South. ¶ ‘Thanks hon. …’ ‘Thank you!’ … ‘Bless your heart.’ ¶ Want to see more of this in action? ►The Meanings of Thank You.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit… And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can’t ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery—oh yes! as much of that as you like—and bullets into the bargain!”

—Émile Zola
—from Germinal

WORD(S)

cantle /KAN-təl/. noun. A corner, edge or slice. Also, the raised rear of a saddle, opposite the pommel. In Scots dialect, the crown of the head. Also, in verb form, to cut into quarters or otherwise divide. From Old French, diminutive of cant (edge, corner).

“Limbs like so many whip lengths, and then he’s settled between cantle and horn.” (Alyssa York)

“‘If I shot that Brodell toad may this saddle mold up and rot and stink and get maggots, so help me God.’ She turned to pat the cantle and back to me. ‘Is that good enough?’” (Rex Stout)

“Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.”
(William Shakespeare)

“My cantle will stand a clour wad bring a stot down.” (Scott F. Nigel)

WEB

1. “It’s precisely the vagueness of ‘they’ that makes it a not-so-ideal pronoun replacement.” → Who’s ‘They’? (consciously couple with this long list of nonbinary identities)

2. “Musical experiences are inherently social, scientists tell us, even when they happen in private.” → When You Listen to Music, You’re Never Alone

3. Books cooked – literally – in punning recipes based on writers’ names

4. 17 images of famous writers and/or their workspaces

5. Today in 1827, John Walker documents the first recorded sale of his newly invented “Sulphurata Hyper-Oxygenata Frict” (AKA friction) matches, replacing the extremely combustible—even explosive—chemical combinations used in matches until then. Those early matches were responsible for so many fires that they were banned in many cities and even some entire countries. Walker, who was already wealthy, refused to patent his invention thus receiving no real profit from it. In fact, he wasn’t even given significant credit for his soon ubiquitous invention until after his death. Incidentally, matchbook (and related paraphernalia) collectors—all Walker’s children in some way—are called phillumenists and have an interesting vocabulary of their own to describe their obsessions, including innerboxes, outerboxes and the ultra-collectible skillets.

WATCH/WITNESS

This made me think of Reader M., but all of us non-Southerners can benefit: ► “Bless your Heart” (decoded). So maybe I wasn’t being complimented as often as I thought when I was last in Georgia?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D.: “Patrick Kindig’s prose poem [last issue’s WORK] was sinuous & slithery, creepy & comforting. So good.”

• Reader L.: “Loved the chart of Supernatural Collective Nouns and shared them with my online SFF writer friends, who also did. Also shared that publisher’s Genre Fiction Generator—even better!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Self Portrait”

In the dream, I am holding my grandmother’s leg like a tube sock filled with batteries. I am trying to fit the bones back together but neither the bones nor I have learned how to do this. We wobble. The leg rolls between us like an egg and we are praying nothing will tear. My grandmother is there too. She is watching me fumble with her body and smiling. Leave it, Patrick, she says. Let me tell you that story about the priest and the pianist again. I keep guiding her bones into each other, edge against fractured edge, listening for something to click.

—Patrick Kindig
—from Willow Springs #77

WORD(S)

hanko /HONG-koh/. noun. A stamp, most often made of stone, wood or bone, traditionally used in Japan and China in place of a signature on official documents. Hanko come in three types: one for casual use—usually self-inking and thus portable and easily available for signing for mail deliveries and such, one for banking and an official, registered, version. Hanko are also known as chops in colloquial British English. See detailed information about hanko. From Japanese han (seal, stamp) + ko (literally child, but also a suffix used to form nouns).

“I met Miyoshi-sensei’s father once, at my welcome banquet at a Chinese restaurant. The mayor presented me with my hanko, a narrow bamboo cylinder carved with the characters for my name.” (Melanie Watrous)

“Originally the use of these circular or square ink stamps was limited to the aristocratic classes, but in the Edo period the use of hanko to prove identity became more common. By the Meiji period (1867–1912) laws requiring people to use hanko to mark official documents made them ubiquitous.” (John Walker)

“This time, however, rather than having a large brush in his hand, he had replaced it with a very small, one-inch square hanko…” (Peggy Keener)

WEB

1. Remarkable! → Microsoft and the Rembrandthuis museum have collaborated on a project that analyzed Rembrandt’s entire catalog and then used “deep learning algorithms” on the data to produce the “Next Rembrandt” painting. It reminds me of a radically sophisticated version of Gene Kogan’s neural-network based Style Transfers series.

2. Dimly Lit Meals for One, sharing “heartbreaking tales of sad food and even sadder lives.”

3. Sad and fascinating and full of feels → The ballad of Fred and Yoko: How one of the world’s foremost Beatles collectors died homeless on the streets of Little Rock

4. Network visualization: mapping Shakespeare’s tragedies Fun graphics and a free downloadable poster.

5. Today in 1614, Pocohantas—born Matoaka, known as Amonute—marries John Rolfe, becoming “Rebecca Wolfe” and solving Rolfe’s vexing conundrum of marrying a “heathen.” Pocohantas (sometimes translated as “playful one”) was the daughter of Wahunsonacock, known as Powhatan to the English, the supreme chief of a network of tribes whose relationship with the English colonists was, at best, tense. In 1613, the English abducted Pocohantas, hoping to negotiate a peace settlement with her father that included freeing some English captives. Powhatan eventually agreed, but by then she had converted to Christianity and reportedly fallen in love with John Rolfe. Though the captives were not released, nearly 8 years of cooperation between the English and the Powhatan followed—a time now called “The Peace of Pocohantas.” In a letter requesting permission to marry Pocohantas, John Rolfe wrote:

“[I am] motivated not by the unbridled desire of carnal affection, but for the good of this plantation, for the honor of our country, for the Glory of God, for my own salvation … namely Pocahontas, to whom my hearty and best thoughts are, and have been a long time so entangled, and enthralled in so intricate a labyrinth that I was even a-wearied to unwind myself thereout…”

WATCH/WITNESS

Andy Woodruff’s Beyond the Sea series of maps shows what’s really across from you when you stare out over the sea. Hint, it’s not necessarily what you think. The article contains many larger images and fascinating details about Woodruff’s map-making process.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. comments and queries: “Thank you for another wunderkammer. ¶ The Stout quote: do you know who’s speaking? The rest of the sentence sounds like Archie.” — You got it…it’s Archie in conversation with Fritz. And those passages always make me hungry, gulosity or no…

• Reader C. on Trollope, reading and memory: “Trollope is so right about the generally feeble nature of human memory. I wonder if the real distinction between most great writers and scientists and the rest of us isn’t simply better memories. Not necessarily in the most traditional sense of exact recall, but in a more generalized and significant capacity?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“That I can read and by happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left, – something dim and inaccurate, – but still something to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.”

—Anthony Trollope
—from An Autobiography

WORD(S)

gulosity /gyoo-LOS-i-tee/. noun. Gluttony, voracity, greed. From Latin gulosus (gluttonous). See also: esurience and gulous.

“Yet I have heard him, upon other occasions, talk with great contempt of people who were anxious to gratify their palates; and the 206th number of his Rambler is a masterly essay against gulosity.” (James Boswell)

“‘Gulosity’ is a fine neologism, and the character is an amusing moral invention. But it is clear that when the great lexicographer looked into his mirror he [Samuel Johnson] did not see Dr Samuel Gulosulus.” (John Sutherland)

“Sure he’s in danger. Gulosity. Forget it. What the dickens is that thing?” (Rex Stout)

“And what about the writing on the villa wall? The word ‘pig’—is that some comment on Purdy’s gulosity?”

WEB

1. What do you call a group of pixies, trolls, incubi or griffins? All these and more in The Stoakes-Whitley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns.

2. Lead ink from scrolls may unlock library destroyed by Vesuvius

3. “The linguist discusses how technology shapes culture and culture shapes words.” → Language Leakage: An Interview with Sarah Thomason

4. Fascinating to watch a bunch of smart folks at MetaFilter answer a simple question. → What is the critical book for your hobby/passion? [and what is yours?]

5. Today in 1917, the United States takes possession of the “Danish West Indies,” since renamed the Virgin Islands. The US bought the islands—the prominent Saint Croix, Saint John and Saint Thomas along with 50 smaller islets—for $25 million in gold, primarily for the strategic value of their location near the Panama Canal. Though two other groups inhabited the islands historically, by the mid–15th century the Carib people, who originated from the Orinoco River in South America, had decimated the earlier populations. The Caribbean Islands derive their name from these people from whom we also get the word cannibal, derived from Caribal, the name given to them by the Spanish. Though it must be noted that despite being known as fierce warriors, there’s little evidence that the Carib warriors ever ate their victims.

WATCH/WITNESS

An intriguing, sometimes disturbing, photoset of nearly 100 vintage postcards (the apostrophe catastrophe in the title notwithstanding) of historical “beauties.” Some of the shots are glamour, some boudoir, some probably considered erotica. Warning: a few are somewhat NSFW.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader F. advises the Clamor: “I bet many of your readers will skip today’s poem [James Reidel’s “Miley Cyrus or Manatee?”] because of the title. They really shouldn’t. What a great poem!”

• Reader D. writes in: “Thank you for the global version of Stand by Me. I did not know of the site or the movement, but I do now. I’ve been listening to the other songs, too.”

• Reader S. has misgivings: “Jeremy May’s book jewelry is, as you say, stunning. But am I the only one that has a hard time getting past the destruction of old books in service of their new decorative purpose?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Miley Cyrus or Manatee?”

What is flat and nothing but skin,
What lolls in a shallow world,
What is watched for its surface,
Between long episodes of water the color of a dead screen’s sea-green glass,
What had a but a few hairs in the snapshot?
A bit of a muzzle,
No more than a pug’s worth for a rented red kayak,
For this sailor swallowed by enormous wax lips,
What is gray and aporial,
Once mistaken for half girl,
Half monster,
Disappointingly naked and slipping under the hull.

—James Reidel
—from Poetry (March 2016)

WORD(S)

aporia /ə-POR-ee-ə/. noun. The expression of doubt. Talking about not being able to talk about (or decide) something. A perplexing, difficult matter. From Greek aporos (impassable). The first quote is an example of aporia:

“A virginal air, large blue eyes very soulful and appealing, a dazzling fair skin, a supple and resilient body, a touching voice, teeth of ivory and the loveliest blond hair, there you have a sketch of this charming creature whose naive graces and delicate traits are beyond our power to describe.” (Marquis De Sade)

“Friends would diagnose me with a really bad, likely terminal case of aporia, but I suspect that my condition isn’t so uncommon, that a little tribe of others feels, each in their own way, just as mystified and baffled as to direction as I do.” (Charles D’Ambrosio)

“Compression to five minutes’ duration would create some serious information loss, and perhaps some lacunae and aporia, but this was unavoidable given the situation.” (Kim Stanley Robinson)

WEB

1. For 26 more days you can stream Samuel Beckett’s “All That Fall” from BBC Radio 4.

2. “Stunning” isn’t hyperbole. → Artist Excavates Discarded Books to Transform Their Pages into Stunning Jewelry

3. An AI-Written Novella Almost Won a Literary Prize

4. Not the Bernie bird, but… → Little bird uses a linguistic rule thought to be unique to humans

5. Today in 1973, months after the release of their hit song ►“The Cover of ‘Rolling Stone’” is released, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show do make the prominent magazine’s cover, albeit in caricature form with the caption “What’s-Their-Names Make the Cover.”

WATCH/WITNESS

A global musical collaboration. Beautiful. → Stand By Me | Playing For Change | Song Around the World

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. caught me out: “Juxtapose! Psychobiotics and musical neurons. The more we know about our brains the less we know about ourselves and our selfs. And yet yet yet I find myself in these links and poems and bites. ‘What is found there’ indeed. I see you. And what you did. Thanks for all of that.”

• Reader W. asks: “Does caducity come from the same source as ‘caduceus’, the symbol of physicians?” — I’ll note first that the Caduceus isn’t the symbol you are looking for…that would the Rod of Asclepius. As to your question, Nick Humez answered this better than I ever could: “No relation. ‘Caduceus’ comes from kerukeion (note the shift of R to D: easy with a single-tongueflap [as distinct from trilled] R) A kerux was a herald or messenger and the kerukeion (‘thing-pertaining-to -heralds’), usually painted white, was the emblem by which he would be instantly recognizable as such. The persons of heralds were sacrosanct (they were under the protection of no less than Zeus himself, as part of the whole hospitality rule system) and you weren’t supposed to harm them even when they came from the enemy’s lines. (I believe this is the origin of our present-day convention of the white flag of truce.) ¶ Caducity is from Latin cadere, ‘to fall.’ Nothing to do with the caduceus unless you drop yours and then trip over it.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

I think your friend who is against books and reading is quite right.

Lao-Tzu says: true words are not pleasant, pleasant words are not true. The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise.

The Brahmanes say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the greatest precepts the smallest good deed.

—Leo Tolstoy
—from a letter to Percy Redfern, February 23, 1903

WORD(S)

caducity /kə-DYOO-si-tee/. noun. Senility, infirmity. Being perishable or transitory. Also, frailty or a tendency to fall. In legal vocabulary, the “lapsing of a testamentary gift.” From Latin caducus (liable to fall, perishable), from cadere (to fall).

“Winter: Temple of caducity. ¶ Eroded by lichen, the low branches have fallen. And no encumbrance midway up. No snaking of vines or ropes. You can roam about at leisure between the senile masts (all crinkled and lichen-cloaked like old Creole men), their locks entangled in the heights.” (Francis Ponge)

“…the flesh and the stone – the erect and the super-incumbent – the upraised sickle and the sickle brought down – the pooling shadows and the puddling blood – the Heavensent and the Hell-bound – the caducity of flesh and the endurance of stone…” (Nick Cave)

“Indeed, ‘descent’ is an apt word, for he is descended now, through a combination of caducity and destitution, to a very low condition.” (Geraldine Brooks)

WEB

1. Freedom APA, an “alternative amateur press association” with quarterly mailings for members, is “intended to be fun & embrace the spirit of amateur journalism, zine making, letter writing, graphic arts, mail art, DIY printing, poetry, homemade music, creative projects, podcasting & more.” I’ve seen a few comments that their first few mailings were delightful. → Announcing FREEDOM APA

2. “Why do our brains contain music-selective neurons?” → Your Brain’s Music Circuit Has Been Discovered

3. Debilitating illnesses in literature, ranked

4. On “psychobiotics” and the question, “can we soothe our brains by cultivating our bacteria?” → Microbes can play games with the mind

5. Today in 1976, the Argentinian military’s right-wing executes a coup d’état, overthrowing President Isabel Perón (who had inherited the position not even two years before), and extending and intensifying the Argentinean “Dirty War”. The military junta, which was installed with the United States’ complicity would murder (“disappear”) up to 30,000 people during its rule. Not coincidentally, US President Barack Obama has just announced he will be declassifying secret files related to US involvement in the Dirty War.

WATCH/WITNESS

80 seconds of an ostrich chasing two cyclists on an Australian coastal road. Because…ostrich of amazing size and speed! Related: How Johnny Cash was nearly killed by an ostrich in 1981, How to Survive an Encounter with an Ostrich and Meanwhile, in a Chinese Zoo, a Man Bit an Ostrich to Death.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B.: “I love the tight drastic turns between lines in [Peggy Shumaker’s poem] ‘Turnstone’.”

• Reader M. on Peggy Shumaker: “I’ll never forget hearing Peggy Shumaker read at a reading you dragged me to in the early 90s. Hearing her and Lucille Clifton read changed my life. I became a poetry fan then and there.”

• A different Reader M. on last issue’s WORD: “I really didn’t need to see the word ‘meatus’ while in a meeting. But I’ll just run with it…”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Black Turnstone”

Far away you twist,
turn, count all the reasons not
to love. By the lake
a bird I have no name for
splits the air before my face.

—Peggy Shumaker
—from Salt River Review (Vol. I, No. 1, Winter 1997–98)

WORD(S)

meatus /mee-AYT-əs/. noun. A natural bodily passageway or its opening, such as the external auditory meatus (the ear). From Latin meātus (passage), from meāre (to go, pass).

“He has an arrival routine where he skips the front entrances and comes in through the south side’s acoustic meatus and gets a Millennial Fizzy® out of the vending machine…” (David Foster Wallace)

“…in the meantime, come to Paris and you will find me, headphones plugged tight in my external audio meatus, walking the quays…” (David Sedaris)

“He had produced a razor from some abyssal pocket and was lovingly whittling a live match. This when pointed according to his God he used to pierce a deep meatus in a fresh cigar…” (Samuel Beckett)

WEB

1. “…we asked people in prison to paint or draw people we felt should be in prison … Here are the results. Click on the images to see the crimes committed by both the companies and the artists.” → The CAPTURED Project

2. @LitCritTrump reviews literature in Trump’s signature, staccato style. My favorites: The Great Gatsby and The Odyssey. Pair with Donald Trump’s Gettysburg Infomercial.

3. These experiments with prose, poetry and prose poetry are exciting…and scary. I routinely wonder, while reading concīs submissions, if I’m being subtly trolled with work composed this way. → Adventures in Narrated Reality: New forms & interfaces for written language, enabled by machine intelligence

4. Extremely Shortened Versions of Classic Books For Lazy People

5. Today in 1952 (or so the Interwebs tell me), poet Peggy Shumaker is born in La Mesa, California. Peggy is known for her many achievements as an artist and promoter of poetry—in addition to publishing seven books (so far), she was an Alaska Writer Laureate, founded Boreal Books, received an NEA fellowship and did time as the President of the AWP Board of Directors—as well as the intensely high regard felt by legions of students who became significantly better writers and readers (and her other students, like myself, impervious to the labors of even the best teachers) thanks to her long tenure as professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Further reading: in Poetry, more in Salt River Review, in Verse Daily and two pieces in Northern Review. Listening: ► Peggy Shumaker in the University of Arizona Poetry Center Audio Archives (a splendid resource!). And I highly recommend getting your hands on some of Peggy’s books, particularly BLAZE, her collaboration with the equally fab Kes Woodward.

WATCH/WITNESS

Oscar Oiwa inside his installation “Oiwa Island 2,” a “massive, 360-degree drawing made with black permanent marker on a 40-ft diameter inflatable vinyl dome.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. isn’t from Limerick, but…: "I think it was in an old Art Linkletter book of Kids say the darnest Things that some kid told him:

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to get her daughter a dress
And when she got there her cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter I guess

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

Old Mother Hubbard went to her cupboard but there was nothing in it. She kept looking, in all the corners, but nothing. Her dog looked at her balefully. He was used to this. She didn’t mind so much for herself but she felt bad for the dog. The dog was depending on her. She knew she had to leave the house to get food, but she didn’t want to. She stood in the doorway with her coat on for a long time.

—Jessy Randall
—from There Was an Old Woman

WORD(S)

battledore /BA-təl-door/. noun. A wooden paddle for beating clothes or inserting objects into an oven. A hornbook; an ABC book; a children’s primer. A light bat used with a shuttlecock in “battledore and shuttlecock,” a forerunner to badminton. Possibly from Provençal batedor (beating instrument), from batre (to beat), from Latin batter (to beat).

“Materialism and spiritualism are a fine pair of battledores with which charlatans in long gowns keep a shuttlecock a-going.” (Honoré de Balzac)

“Battledore and shuttlecock’s a wery good game, vhen you ain’t the shuttlecock and two lawyers the battledores, in which case it gets too excitin’ to be pleasant.” (Charles Dickens)

“An alternative form of the horn-book was the ‘criss-cross row’ which was shaped more or less like a crucifix. This strand of teaching reading developed into the battledore.” (Michael Rosen)

“I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffin, and calling Papa…” (William Makepeace Thackeray)

WEB

1. “A visualization of global weather conditions forecast by supercomputers” that is super fun to play with → EarthWindMap

2. I’m looking forward to having this technology available on my computer (and phone, tablet, etc.) → Man Combines Random People’s Photos Using Neural Networks And The Results Are Amazing

3. Origin Unknown: Anatoly Liberman’s quest for the history of lost words

4. The Academy of Book Cover Designers ABCD16 Award Short Lists and Winners

5. Today in 1950, a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, announce they’ve discovered/created Californium, then the world’s heaviest element. Besides being bombarded with Calcium ions to create the excellently (and temporarily) named Ununoctium, the only heavier element, Californium is used to start nuclear reactors, prospect for gold and silver, search for flaws in weapons and even to treat some kinds of brain and cervical cancers. But not cheaply: in addition to the usual dangers of radioactive materials, it costs at least thirty-million dollars to create 1g of Californium.

WATCH/WITNESS

Guy Laramee creates incredible, intricate landscape sculptures using old books.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader K.: “Love it [Cid Corman on Leonardo]. Muscular description of a muscular mind.”

• An interesting link from Reader B.: "The Slate Money podcast had an interesting linguistic turn just now. They wanted to know where the word ‘transmogrify’ came from, and what ‘mogrify’ means. ¶ Very end of: Slate Money on citizenship, women on boards, and workaholics. — I should email the answer…though it’s not particularly interesting!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

All of Leonardo’s “science” is touched with magic. We cannot help feeling within the intensity of his anatomies—his renderings of atmosphere—of chiaroscuro—his water curls—his fascination with turbulent interfaces—horses and men embattled—trees torn by winds—earth ravaged by flood—something always of body. Something that is irreducible and alive—even at its most lifeless core.

This can only mean mortality.

This is what grabs us finally in his obsessive concern with the pubic hair of life. The indomitable thrust of weed and flower out of dead rock. This reads deeper than Wasteland. There is a grace in his gracefulness—his compulsion yields intelligence. He will see—he will know—he will share with us. All lives and all dies.

—Cid Corman
—from “The Sense of Art”
—found in Where Were We Now: Essays & Postscriptum

WORD(S)

dehiscent /də-HISS-ənt/. adjective. Gaping. Rupturing. Ripe to bursting. From Latin dēhiscĕre (gape, yawn).

“…I cannot begin to tell you how strange the sentences with their riders and enclosures of information were to me, how blank they seemed, and then as if blankness were dehiscent in some mind garden, the blankness split open and was vague with not quite credible scenes…” (Harold Brodkey)

“I think of his earlier compositions where into the body of the musical statement he incorporates a punctuation of dehiscence, flottements, the coherence gone to pieces…” (Samuel Beckett)

“…I stitched the dehiscent wound as he yelped in pain, telling myself he’d had it coming. ¶ Nobody has it coming.” (Paul Kalanithi)

“That plain casket gone deep in earth, while the other stood a man’s height above the earth, anticipating dehiscence, ready to shell in falling…” (William Gaddis)

WEB

1. The brain can be a punny thing… → The curse of the people who can’t stop making puns

2. How to Write a Letter (Your User’s Manual)

3. What’s the deal with the…vertical ellipsis? And the comments are enlightening (imagine that)! → Miscellany № 70 — ‘⋮’, ‘⌨’ & ‘¶’

4. The secret Nazi history of porcelain

5. Today is the Ides of March, March 15th on the Roman calendar, and 2060th anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Portico of Pompey, famously predicted by the haruspex Spurinna. Romans numbered days of the month by counting backward from three fixed points of the month: the Nones, the Ides and the Kalends. The Ides were associated with the Roman’s greatest god, Jupiter, and the Ides of March marked the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year (Latin annus, from which we derive words like annal and annual), concluding the festivities welcoming in the new year. Nowadays the date is most strongly associated with Caesar’s death, though much of the popular knowledge about the dates—and the killing of Caesar—is inaccurate or outright wrong [Thanks for the link, Reader C.].

WATCH/WITNESS

Wow. The first poem made me weep. Ross Gay reads two poems from Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• In a comment that could refer to aperçu or the solar eclipse—or both—Reader T. writes: “Omigod! Totality! ¶ (That’s what she said!)”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Admire as much as you can, most people don’t admire enough.”

—Vincent van Gogh
—from The Letters of Vincent van Gogh (translated by Arnold Pomerans)

WORD(S)

aperçu /a-per-SYOO/. noun. A summary. A revelatory glimpse. An intuitive, immediate insight. A borrowing from French; past participle of apercevoir (to perceive).

“Although the letters are full of shrewd observations and crisply formulated images, Van Gogh was no coiner of the aperçu. The expressive force of his prose lies more in the accumulation of arguments…” (Ronald de Leeww)

“Inside the front cover, above his name and the date inscribed in blue ink, was a single penciled notation in his 1949 script, a freshman aperçu that read, ‘Metaphysical poets pass easily from trivial to sublime.’” (Philip Roth)

“If you go to a classic definition you know what a true classic is, and similarly a ‘true romantic.’ But if you go to both, you have an algebraic formula, x = x, a cancellation, an aperçu, and hence satisfying…” (Charles Ives)

“I had not the heart to tell her that my Big Book on Bonnard—it sounds like something one might shy coconuts at—has got no farther than half of a putative first chapter and a notebook filled with derivative and half-baked would-be aperçus.” (John Banville)

WEB

1. Rare Walt Whitman letter, written for a dying soldier, found in National Archives

2. “The artistically eclectic author talks about his fiction, the importance of a visual imagination, and how hard it is to get decent artwork on a book jacket” → Sci-Fi Hero Samuel Delany’s Outsider Art [Thanks, Reader B.!]

3. Death apps promise to help people curate their afterlives

4. An animated chart of 42 North American butterflies [Thanks, Reader D.!]

5. Today in 1926, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman, the first “Book-of-the-Month Club” volume, is published. While the Club would grow from 4,000 to more than 500,000 members in just 20 years—and remains in operation, if not a literary force, today—the more interesting part of the story is the author of that first release. Warner, openly gay and a member of the “Bright young things”, would go on to author a half-dozen more novels, many books of poetry and nearly 150 stories and biographical sketches for The New Yorker. See also: a review of I’ll Stand By You: Selected Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland.

WATCH/WITNESS

The still image might not look like much, but watching the solar eclipse from 35,000 feet with excited, geeky commentary approaching “double rainbow” territory is awesome! Not only was this flight and deviation from the flight path planned for a year…but the passengers were on the way to Hawaii, not Anchorage.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M. says we might have been had: “BoingBoing is reporting the covert scan of museum’s Nefertiti bust appears to be hoax. But a hoax of a sort where the hoax is actually the real thing.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

/ the ache / toská: No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom, skuka.

—Vladimir Nabokov
—from Eugene Onegin: Commentary and Index

WORD(S)

dysthymia /dis-THIY-me-ə/. noun. Morbid anxiety. Despondency. Chronic depression. AKA “blunted affect.” See also: the adjective form dysthymic. From Greek dys- (hard, bad, unlucky) + thymos (spirit, mind, courage).

“The shrink they sent her to diagnosed her more specifically with dysthymia, which he defined as an inability to enjoy things that she should be enjoying. Which she recognized the justice of, since she enjoyed nothing, though there was a world of space inside that ‘should’ that a dysthymic semiotician could have argued with, if she had had the energy.” (Lev Grossman)

“We’re social animals, basically, but the group is more versatile if you have maybe a couple of hyperthymic types for cheerleaders, some dysthymics to sit home and mumble, and the one guy—let’s say, you—who edges away from the crowd, who sits up when everybody else is asleep, who basically keeps the watches of the night. The one who sees the lions coming.” (Robert Charles Wilson)

“But Jules couldn’t do much for Dennis except eat meals with him, rent movies from Blockbuster with him, lie in bed with him, and listen to him talk about the intractability of his dysthymic state.” (Meg Wolitzer)

WEB

1. Look upon me/we/it/us and despair… → 15+ Funniest Face Swaps From The Most Terrifying Snapchat Update Ever

2. “We wrote a program to analyze hundreds of works by authors with and without creative-writing degrees. The results were disappointing.” → How Has the MFA Changed the Contemporary Novel? [Thanks, Reader K.!]

3. “English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language.” → English is not normal

4. The Hemingwrite (mentioned here last year) is now the Freewrite, the “world’s first smart typewriter.” I’m intrigued by the device, skeptical of the price.

5. Today is International Women’s Day. Established in 1911 in Copenhagen, IWD is “a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women.” This year’s campaign theme is “Planet 50–50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality” or, as a hashtag, #PledgeForParity. Linkage: 15 Books To Read This International Women’s Day and VIDA’s 33 Life-Changing Books.

WATCH/WITNESS

Mark Powell uses old maps, used envelopes and magazine covers, among other found materials, as a base for his incredible drawings.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G.: “Thank you for [the Raymond Carver poem] ‘Interview’ – it rang true.”

• Reader C.: “That Carver poem was a punch in the gut. I forgot how much I loved, now make that ‘love’, his poetry.”

• Reader B.: “Sitkin is very Cronenbergian. Nice.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Interview”

Talking about myself all day
brought back
something I thought over and
done with. What I’d felt
for Maryann—Anna, she calls
herself now—all those years.

I went to draw a glass of water.
Stood at the window for a time.
When I came back
we passed easily to the next thing.
Went on with my life. But
that memory entering like a spike.

—Raymond Carver
—from The Maverick Poets: An Anthology

WORD(S)

asteism /ASTEE-izm/. noun. A backhanded compliment. Pleasant mockery; genteel, refined or polite irony or insult. Asteisms of the first sort include statements like “that dress makes you look so thin.” The second includes the work of many wits, such as Winston Churchill’s comment about Stafford Cripps that “he has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.” From Greek asteismos (wit or witticism), from asteios (of a city, rather than the country).

“The garrulous brother of the taciturn Holy Roman Emperor Charles V once tried to cajole Charles into dinner conversation. Charles used asteism when he replied, ‘What need that brother, since you have words enough for us both.’” (Bryan Garner)

“‘Asteism?’ Love questioned. ¶ ‘A more delicate form of sarcasm—sarcasm sharpened to its most exquisite and impalpable point.’” (Inez Hayes Irwin)

WEB

1. These Squiggly Signatures Are Actually Shakespeare’s Sonnets [Thanks, Reader C.!]

2. More than 6000 handwritten, sketched and typed objects revealed… → Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive

3. Sarah Sitkin’s organic body-based art weirds me out. I can’t get her hyperrealistic human ear iPhone case out of my head.

4. One artist has exclusive rights (for use in “the field of art”) to the vaunted Vantablack. → Anish Kapoor Gets Exclusive Rights to the World’s Darkest Material

5. Today in 1873, the United States Congress passes an “Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use” A.K.A. the “Comstock Law,” criminalizing the sending of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” material using the United States Postal Service. The law was informally named after crusader Anthony Comstock (from whom were derived the related terms comstockery and comstockism) who’d waged an intense war against, essentially, the burgeoning Free Love movement, and what he considered indecent, including not just erotica and sex toys but also, crucially, contraceptives and any materials referring to them. Parts of the law stood until as late as the 1960s, though the parts of the law regarding birth control had been struck down through the actions of Margaret Sanger, whose legacy also includes founding the organizations that would become Planned Parenthood.

WATCH/WITNESS

3000 parts, 2000 marbles, all kinds of music: meet the Wintergatan Marble Machine

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. explored further: “So I clicked on the URL [for The Diagram Prize] and read, among other things, ‘and a photography book showcasing the beautiful architecture of bus stops in the former Soviet Union’. I couldn’t let this go. A quick search and voila! You should take a peek at this: http://herwigphoto.com/project/soviet-bus-stops/” — I’m intrigued!

• A different Reader B. on slower writing: “Typing with one hand sounds as bad as severing it from my blood-spouting wrist.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“The problem with the alphabet is that it bears no relation to anything at all, and when words are arranged alphabetically they are uselessly separated. In the OED, for example, aardvarks are 19 volumes away from the zoo, yachts are 18 volumes from the beach, and wine is 17 volumes from the nearest corkscrew.”

—Mark Forsyth
—from The Horologicon: A Day’s Jaunt Through the Lost Words of the English Language

WORD(S)

sough /SOW/. noun or verb. The sighing sound of wind or water; a murmuring or humming. To make such a sound, to draw a deep breath. Also, to preach or pray in a hypocritical manner. Or to whine. Or even a drain or sewer. From Old English onomatopoeic verb swōgan (to resound; to rustle), related to swēgnjan (sigh).

“We laughed happily, and for a moment all the harbour noises stopped at once, so that we heard the sough and lap of the green water against the quay steps.” (Malcolm Lowry)

“As winds pass through leaves, deep and visible undulations of felicity passed through those who lay in the grass. We could hear the sough of dreamers who did not sleep.” (Nick Tosches)

“I have heard nothing but the sough of the sea
And wide upon the open sea my friend
The sea-wind crying, out of its cave to roam
No more, no more … until my memory
Swung you back like a lock…”
(John Berryman)

“When the racket was lost a moment, only a cosmic sigh; they heard the sough of time and space, the wave poised over everything.” (Nadine Gordimer)

WEB

1. “Participants in the study who typed with only one hand produced higher quality essays…” — perhaps we need Harrison Bergeron style creative constraints (people certainly seem to be happier and happier when I write less and less)? → People Who Write Well Do This One Simple Thing, Psych Study Finds

2. Reading From Behind: A Cultural History of the Anus is a book title I will never be able to unsee. → The Diagram Prize: Oddest Book Titles of the Year battle it out [Thanks, Reader B.]

3. “Technology-inspired technology gives us incremental improvements. Art-inspired technology gives us brand new ideas.” → Art and Math and Science, Oh My!

4. “On a more general level, however, the OED’s new frequency data confronts us with an interesting question. Namely, its disclosure that around 82% of English words are not commonly used or known asks us to reconsider what defines a natural language.” → If I May Use Some of It

5. Today in 1884, the first fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published, more than 20 years after the project’s inauguration. That first 352-page installment covered A to Ant. The full dictionary wouldn’t be complete until 1928…but it is neither the longest in form nor the longest in the making; that honor belongs to the Dutch dictionary Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, which took twice as long to complete. What would become the OED was a project begun by a London philological society that wasn’t connected to Oxford University or its press. It would take four editors and thousands of volunteers (early crowdsourcing) to complete the first volume…and the first complete set would arrive 60 years past the initial projection of a decade (incidentally, the word ‘set’ has the lengthiest entry with 430 senses explained in just under 60,000 words). Among the most diligent and prolific finders of illustrative quotations was W.C. Minor, the eponymous madman in Simon Garfield’s entertaining history of the OED, The Professor and the Madman.

WATCH/WITNESS

What is ~A E S T H E T I C~ Experience? — “‘Aesthetics’ is defined as a set of principles concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty, especially in art. However, A E S T H E T I C has recently taken on a meaning of its own within internet culture.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

A few members of the Clamor were moved to find their birthday words:

• Reader B.: “1967? I can live with Mockney. But I was so close to computernik!”

• Another Reader B.: “‘Blast-off’ Boy, does that feel good. I’m very happy with my birthday word. Thanks!”

And on other topics:

• Reader M: “I love the grammar club article. Totes cray-cray for lingo jingo, yo.”

• Reader P.: “Reader T. [who eloquently told the haters they could ‘bite his Clamorite butt’] took the words right out of my mouth! Rude folks deserve all that and more!”

• Reader L. on 29 Lit Mags You Should be Reading: “I agree with you, most of these are well known. How about featuring some newer ones, like yours?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

Joseph Hutchison let me know that the title of his poem featured in my last issue should have been “Belief” (not “Belife”). I duplicated the typo—what I took at the time to be an intentional play on words—from his site. It’s a good excuse to go and read more of Hutchison’s wonderful poems.

WORK

“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.”

—Flannery O’Connor
—from Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

WORD(S)

frammis /FRAM-əs/. noun. A generic term for a thing that someone can’t name, similar to thingamabob or gizmo. A common invented surname in comics and invented company name in technical writing. More generally, nonsense or jargon, commotion or confusion. Origin unknown, perhaps derived from a family name.

“It [the comic strip ‘Silly Milly’] has its pet vocabulary—all names are Frammis, laughter is Yuk Yuk, and the language of animals is Coo.” (M. Farber)

“I could not write most science-fiction films, especially the kind where there is all that lunatic ‘Captain, the frammis on the right engine is flummaging’–type dialogue.” (William Goldman)

“We didn’t have a flangella voltometer with us. Very important during electrical work, otherwise you can fry the frammistat.” (Tom Piccirilli)

“The kook really meant it. He wanted to go find that uppity creepy cemetery where Ginny’s blue-blood parents had stuck her body, and blow trumpet for the dead. It was all at once laughable and pitiable and creepy. Like a double-talker giving you the business with the frammis on the fortestan, and you standing there wondering what the hell is happening.” (Harlan Ellison)

WEB

1. Some good entries…but I think the Clamor could come up with a much better list. → 29 Amazing Literary Magazines You Need To Be Reading.

2. The first rule of grammar club: there are and aren’t rules. → The totes amazesh way millennials are changing the English language

3. Another great entry in the “Every Frame a Painting” series. → Joel & Ethan Coen - Shot | Reverse Shot

4. I have 17 birth month words including control freak, mind-blow, pigging and two more that are destined to be future WORD entries. How about you? → How to find your birthday word

5. Today in 1981, a 9-year-old later (inevitably) dubbed “Billy the Kid” robs a Rockefeller Center bank with a cap gun. Three days later, having spent most of his $118 haul on “hamburgers, a movie, and a wrist watch that plays music,” the 4’–5" surrendered himself to police. I can find no record of the verdict in his case or what the young entrepreneur did in his later life. Presumably he ended up working on Wall Street.

WATCH/WITNESS

Another entry in my growing tardigrade (AKA water bear) obsession: a 3D printed model “in Full Color Sandstone: Fully colored material with a coarse finish and a delicate feel.” Also available as a wireframe, a stainless steel bottle opener and more. Thanks, Reader J.!

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Regardless of the title, Reader T. enjoyed Hutchison’s poem: “Great poem! Found many more on his site, all leading to a slightly lighter wallet. Thanks. I think.”

• Reader B. on ‘Ten Great Writers Nobody Reads Anymore’ and the earlier ‘Ten Great Writers Nobody Reads’: “Those two Lithub pieces are heartbreaking: because of undeserved obscurity, and my sense of seeing the amount of books I can read before death or brain collapse dwindling each year. ¶ I did, and do, love reading Olaf Stapledon, though.”

• Reader T. responds to the unhappy unsubscribers: “I get that Katexic might be too much, too erudite, too time-consuming, too whatever. But to flame you on the way out the door? They can bite my Clamorite Butt.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Belife”

–for James Wright

The lake is a dark
wound in the earth: you
lean forward, kneeling,
to bathe your hand.

—Joseph Hutchison
—from The Undersides of Leaves

WORD(S)

gobbledygook (gobbledegook) /GOB-əl-di-gook or GOB-əl-di-guuk/. noun. “The overinvolved, pompous talk of officialdom.” Pretentious verbiage. Unintelligible jargon. The first recorded use was in 1944 by U.S. Representative Maury Maverick who banned “gobbledygook language” — in a government memo. Maverick later noted he’d coined the word because it was onomatopoeic…it sounded like a turkey. See also: bafflegab.

“If a Super-Power wanted to contact man, it seems unlikely to me that it’d be all wrapped up in a lot of complicated gobbledegook. It would all be very clear indeed.” (Dallas McCord Reynolds)

“‘I am not at liberty to tell you what is wrong.’ It can’t be much fun having to parrot such gobbledygook. But who would want to work for a service where you earn promotion not for the number of people you let through but for the number you turn back?” (J.M. Coetzee)

“A spider, a spiral, a one-eyed man”? What is that? A shopping list? A dance track? A line from a sodding haiku?”
“Crispin, if I knew, I’d tell you, I swear.”
“Then it may just be random gobbledegook.” (David Mitchell)

WEB

1. At Lithub, 10 More Writers Nobody Reads. Pair with the earlier Ten Great Writers Nobody Reads.

2. Cancer cons, phoney accidents and fake deaths: meet the internet hoax buster [Fascinating. Thanks, Reader B.!]

3. Our very own Reader G. testified before the House Committee on Natural Resources. He still has to compete with my mom for position of #1 Katexic fan.

4. An unexpectedly fine essay → On Shit: Profanity as Weltanschauung

5. Today is the Church of Scientology’s “Celebrity Day,” a celebration of the church’s “Celebrity Centers” around the globe. The first and primary center is the Château Élysée in Hollywood (naturally), known as the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre International, which boasts 39 hotel rooms for visitors that have included many of the most famous film and music stars, and (based on the Yelp and Google reviews) a coffee shop that serves a mean cappuccino and a $12 Sunday Brunch. Now that is a miracle.

WATCH/WITNESS

A 3D printed bust of Nefertiti created using clandestine scans from the Neues Museum in Berlin. Read more and see other images in the full story.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G. sends kudos (not the candy kind): “…another issue of Katexic stuffed with mind-stimulating links and information. Keep up the good work.”

• Reader S. sends…something else: “A friend recommended your newsletter. It’s a bunch of pretentious gobbldygook [sic]. Thanks for wasting my time.”

• Reader C. might be related: “I’m done with your email cluttering my up my inbox. Its [sic] not the 90’s [sic]. Get a site.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

—Gabriel Garcia Marquez
—from Love in the Time of Cholera

WORD(S)

fleer /fleer/. verb or noun. To grin or grimace; to sneer or jeer; to jibe…or the look of one doing so. A mocking speech. Unknown origin, possibly related to Norwegian and Swedish flira, Danish flire (to grin, to laugh inappropriately).

“What, dares the slave
Come hither, cover’d with an antic face,
To fleer and scorn at our solemnity?”
(William Shakespeare)

“The gas-lights hissed with a faint, malicious susurration, and except for their infinitesimal mechanical vivacity, that jetted fleeringly from obscenely open small slits, all life was extinguished.” (Hermann Broch)

“Nat wore the look he got when he was listening to something amazing that was new to him. A fleer of analysis, like he was startled to learn that he could have missed this before, given that he knew everything about anything worth knowing.” (Michael Chabon)

“I have always seen her critical, scornful and fleering; but now it is with genuine ill nature that she tears those she calls her friends to pieces.” (Simone De Beauvoir)

WEB

1. Useless Press is “a publishing collective that creates eclectic Internet things.” For example, the forthcoming PCKWCK, a real-time, serialized, re-imagining of Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.

2. “On the evolution of a word that feels eminently like itself…” → A History of Horny

3. Reader C. shares a link to some visualizations of punctuation in novels inspired by some punctuation posters shared here earlier.

4. A Short History of the Index Card

5. Today in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovers the (now) dwarf planet Pluto. Using a ►blink comparator, Tombaugh was systematically searching for the unknown Planet X that had been predicted by famed astronomer Percival Percival Lowell. Pluto got its name from the suggestion of then 11-year old Venetia Burney (who lived ong enough to see Pluto’s demotion from planet to dwarf planet), a suggestion Tombaugh liked because it started with the Lowell’s initials.

WATCH/WITNESS

Watch Grandmaster Maurice Ashley play trash talking chess hustler in Washington Square Park. Related: Magnus Carlsen (and Liv Tyler!?) do the same.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. makes two notes: “‘dilemma telegraph’ [from Peter Conners’ prose poem ‘The Babies of Winter’] is a phrase I will now try out wherever possible. ¶ [E.M. Forster’s] ‘The Machine Stops’ is indeed amazing.” — For the Clamor: the full story online.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“The Babies of Winter”

It’s not just the chill, but the sounds. Information spent on thin wires of air. Upstairs, the window has been blown open; a dilemma telegraph beating itself against walls that will need to be painted before the baby arrives. Not a figurative baby, a literal one: minuscule mitten and woolen hats with chin straps. The cobwebs will need to be dusted from Whitman’s old toys. The seasons hold us tight: the storms have betrayed our trust but they must be forgiven. Dusted, put to use. They did the best they could. They are one hundred years old, and the babies of winter must always be forgiven.

—Peter Conners
—from of Whiskey and Winter

WORD(S)

humstrum /HUM-STRUM/. noun. A musical instrument of crude or primitive construction. A hurdy-gurdy. Sometimes, music played equally badly. Obviously a portmanteau of hum + strum, favored for the pleasing repetition of sound even describing something displeasing.

“Bonnell Thornton had just published a burlesque Ode on St. Cecilia’s day, adapted to the ancient British musick, viz. the salt-box, the Jew’s-harp, the marrow-bones and cleaver, the humstrum or hurdy-gurdy, &c. Johnson praised its humour, and seemed much diverted with it.” (James Boswell)

“A musical instrument made of a mopstick, a bladder, and some packthread, thence also called a bladder and string, and hurdy gurdy; it is played on like a violin, which is sometimes ludicrously called a humstrum…” (Francis Grose)

“I went the other evening to the concert, and spent the time there much to my heart’s content in cursing Mr. Hague, who played on the violin most piggishly, and a Miss (I forget her name)—Miss Humstrum, who sung most sowishly.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

WEB

1. “The goal of Editions At Play is to allow writers to create ‘books that cannot be printed’. Books that are written to change dynamically on your phone or tablet using the internet.” → See the story in pictures. Distinctly related: pBooks, eBooks, & dBooks: why we are hooked on books and bookness.

2. It wasn’t just that one Sears catalog… → A Crudely Drawn Penis Almost Derailed Huckleberry Finn

3. The secret “anti-languages” you’re not supposed to know [Thanks Reader B.!]

4. Copy, paste and play with the N+7 Machine.

5. Today in 1923, British Egyptologist Howard Carter opens King Tutankhamun’s tomb, aka KV62, leading to the discovery of some of the world’s most famous Egyptian artifacts, such as Tutankhamun’s funerary mask, gold sarcophagus and mummy. There has been much speculation about King Tutankhman’s early death (at approximately 19, after ruling for 10 years), but the consensus is that he died of an infection of a broken leg and that the relatively small size of his burial chamber is due to hurriedly adapting a tomb intended for someone of lesser status rather than political intrigue.

WATCH/WITNESS

Oh. My. The Folio Society’s collector’s edition of Lolita looks incredible. See the link for the details of this fine press edition and a peek at a few more of the illustrations by Federico Infante.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

Reader A. on a book that scares her: “The Machine Stops E.M. Forester. ¶ Because it’s a post apocalyptic vision of a world controlled by electronic devices. ¶ Written in 1909 ¶ If I could use a size thousand font for ‘1909’ I would.”

Reader B. asks: “What’s the source of that nearly Lovecraftian McCarthy quote?” — Blood Meridian, from which I could cull 100 WORKs!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Clown Baby’s Loneliness”

Clown Baby has no troupe of toddler clowns to call his own—such a company awaits him in the future. Still, there is much to practice. See how he sets up his stuffed animals: the top-hatted Teddy Bear prepped to dance, a frowning lion ready for smile lessons. When friends come over, he tries desperately to make them laugh; if this fails, he calls them all together, pointing with spitty fingers, to see how many of them he can fit in a pram.

—Gerry LaFemina
—from The Book of Clown Baby

WORD(S)

scurf /skərf/. noun. Scaly dry flakes of skin. Any encrustation or flaky, scaly deposit on a surface. The “foul” remains when something adhesive is removed. Rarely: a contemptible person. Also: a sea trout. Probably derived from Old English sceorfan (to gnaw) and scearfian (to cut into shreds).

“Guy offered up his delicate and increasingly emotional nostrils to a familiar experience: the scurfy smell of old money.” (Martin Amis)

“Here I sit, naked under my prison garb, wads of pallid flesh trussed and bagged like badly packaged meat. I get up and walk around on my hind legs, a belted animal, shedding an invisible snow of scurf everywhere I move.” (John Banville)

“I have no heart to be left behind, not even
if Zeus himself would swear to scrape away
the scurf of age and make me young again…”
(Homer, translated by Robert Fagles)

“They were young men, subalterns, well set-up, their metal ashine and their black unmaculated by hairs, scurf or food-droppings.” (Anthony Burgess)

“In the distance before him a fire burned on the prairie, a solitary flame frayed by the wind that freshened and faded and shed scattered sparks down the storm like hot scurf blown from some unreckonable forge howling in the waste.” (Cormac McCarthy)

WEB

1. I mentioned Jana Dambragio’s Letter Locking site before. Now I’ve discovered her Letter Locking YouTube channel and it’s chock full o’ goodness including how to fold and lock letters in all kinds of ways (including one used by John Donne), but also how to create and use invisible ink, message eggs and more.

2. “It’s not just your imagination. Horror films are much more scary than they were in the past. Here’s how they do it.” → Neurothriller

3. Alyson Provax - Time Wasting Experiment [Thanks, Reader M.]

4. A fantastic article about Beverly “Guitar” Watkins…76 years old and going strong. As the article says, she’s probably the best blues guitarist you’ve never heard of. Don’t believe me? Listen to Watkins play “Back in Business” or “Right String, Wrong Yo-Yo”…or jam at the Avignon Blues Festival.

5. Today in 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Accords by Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI, and Benito Mussolini, Vatican City—covering an area of just .17 square miles (.44 square kilometers) with well under 1000 citizens—officially becomes the world’s smallest independent state. This is small…you can walk around the entire city under 45 minutes. Central Park in New York City is eight times larger. Vatican City has its own postal system and stamps, radio and unique Euro design. St. Peter’s Basilica, inside Vatican City, can hold 60,000 people; the Vatican City museums’ nine miles of exhibits receive an average of 25,000 visitors every day. Because crime statistics don’t take the tourist population into account, Vatican City is home to the highest crime rate in the world, more than 1.5 per person. Interesting viewing: National Geographic’s ►Inside the Vatican.

WATCH/WITNESS

After seeing it recommended approximately 1,623 times, I finally gave in and watched ►Bill Wurtz’s “History of Japan” video. And you know what? It’s fun! Warning, some NSFW language.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader G.: “The Pale King scares me. I’m afraid of it as a novel. I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed. I’m afraid of how I’ll feel having finished the last new sentence of David Foster Wallace I’ll ever encounter.”

• Reader C.: “Every other book of contemporary poetry fills me with fear, for poetry and for myself.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: concīs » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“…you had a point about language. When you get right down to it, it’s a workaround. Like trying to describe dreams with smoke signals. It’s noble, it’s maybe the most noble thing a body can do, but you can’t turn a sunset into a string of grunts without losing something.”

—Peter Watts
—from Blindsight

WORD(S)

shivaree (charivari) /SHIV-ə-ree/. noun. Originally, a mock serenade using pots, pans and whatever was at hand to disapprove of a marriage or wedding. More generally, a cacophany of sound, a din, a discordant medley. Shivaree is a corruption of the French charivari, from Greek karebaria (headache), derived from kare (head) + barys (heavy).

“She turned on all the horrors of the ‘Battle of Prague’, that venerable shivaree, and waded chin deep in the blood of the slain.” (Mark Twain)

“The staple figure in novels is the man of aplomb, who sits, among the young aspirants and desperates, quite sure and compact, and, never sharing their affections or debilities, hurls his word like a bullet when occasion requires, knows his way and carries his points. […] But we for the most part are all drawn into the charivari; we chide, lament, cavil and recriminate.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“So it went: the succession of film fragments on the tube, the progressive removal of clothing that seemed to bring her no nearer nudity, the boozing, the tireless shivaree of voices and guitars from out by the pool.” (Thomas Pynchon)

“How can a body be made from the word?–language, a
shivaree of transparence-jigsaw-glass immensity”
(Robin Blaser)

WEB

1. SEEING THINGS: On what, and why, we visualize when we read

2. The Museum of Broken Relationships

3. “I think there’s a lot to clear up regarding the overwhelmingly negative feedback I received for my short story ‘Creative-Writing Beatdown,’ about a guy who beats up the other students in his creative-writing class after they are overly critical of his work.” → A Letter to my Creative Writing Class

4. The strange tale of the man who was shot point-blank for mispronouncing ‘Newfoundland’—in the Old West

5. Today is the Christian Feast Day of Saint Apollonia. Because Apollonia’s torture included having her teeth ripped out and shattered, she is now considered the patron saint of dentistry and toothaches. In ancient art she is commonly depicted with pincers holding a tooth. While browsing I found this description of ancient “dentistry” that shows how far we’ve come: “…wealthy people saved up their toothaches till the day came round for one of the great annual fairs or markets, and then had their decayed stumps harvested, amid a blare of trumpets, by artists in gorgeous costumes. On such occasions the victim would be further enheartened by a large and interested concourse of spectators.” Actually, I’m not sure that wouldn’t be better than my visits to some dentists. Not to be confused with the other Apollonia.

WATCH/WITNESS

►The New Sound of Music is “a fascinating BBC historical documentary from the year 1979. It charts the development of recorded music from the first barrel organs, pianolas, the phonograph, the magnetic tape recorder and onto the concepts of musique concrete and electronic music development.” And it really is! It doesn’t hurt that the narrator has a little bit of an Alan Partridge thing going on.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. on my question, “what book scares you?”: “House of Leaves wasn’t really scary, but it was definitely haunting…”

• Reader B. adds: “What scares me to read…embarrassingly, the Mahabharata. It’s so long, and I feel inadequate to its referential world.”

• And Reader T.: “Not meant flippantly at all: the Bible.”

• Reader K. follows up on Infinite Jest at 20: “Fans in the Clamor might enjoy the readers’ responses to the Infinite Jest anniversary article. My own feelings are—mixed.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

One of my personal reading challenge goals this year is to read “a book that scares me.” Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy might be it…except I’m not sure it’s a book that can be read in the general sense of the term. What book scares you?

WORK

“The last and greatest cause of this malady, is our own conscience, sense of our sins, and God’s anger justly deserved, a guilty conscience for some foul offence formerly committed […] ‘A good conscience is a continual feast,’ but a galled conscience is as great a torment as can possibly happen, a still baking oven, (so Pierius in his Hieroglyph, compares it) another hell. Our conscience, which is a great ledger book, wherein are written all our offences, a register to lay them up, (which those Egyptians in their hieroglyphics expressed by a mill, as well for the continuance, as for the torture of it) grinds our souls with the remembrance of some precedent sins, makes us reflect upon, accuse and condemn our own selves.”

—Robert Burton
—from The Anatomy of Melancholy

WORD(S)

cullion /KUL-yən/. noun. A vile fellow; a despicable rascal. Also, a testicle. Derived from Latin cōleus, culleus (bag, testicle). See also (if you must): colho, cojon and coglione.

“Away, base cullions!” (William Shakespeare)

“That’s a fine thing that cullion of a son of yours is after doing now.” (Benjamin Black)

“If you think me a whore, where are the gifts I have received from my lovers? All the gifts I have are given me by my husband, the whoreson foul-mouthed cullion who tries to buy my goodwill for his own lusts because the priests have made him half a eunuch!” (Marion Zimmer Bradley)

“Do you see nothing? clodpatel Huguenot! varlet! cullion! What brought you here into my studio?” (Honoré de Balzac)

“Their wives and loveliest daughters constuprated by every base cullion, as Sejanus’ daughter was by the hangman in public, before their fathers and husbands’ faces.” (Robert Burton)

"But by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond,
I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond
In stide of relikes or of seintuarie.
(Chaucer)

WEB

1. Letter of Recommendation is a great NYT feature with “celebrations of objects and experiences that have been overlooked or underappreciated.” Related: Here’s How To Get Around the Paywalls of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and More.

2. Gorilla Youngsters Seen Dismantling Poachers’ Traps—A First

3. Shakespeare Documented is “the largest and most authoritative collection of primary-source materials documenting the life of William Shakespeare, bringing together all known manuscript and print references to Shakespeare, his works, and additional references to his family, in his lifetime and shortly thereafter.” All online!

4. Not really political, just interesting: @TrumpRetweeps simply tweets the bios of everyone retweeted by Donald Trump.

5. Today in 1600, Johannes Kepler meets Tycho Brahe for the first time. Following this meeting in Prague, Brahe would hire the younger Kepler, who would work as his assistant until Brahe’s untimely death not much more than a year later. Both were fascinating characters. Brahe was a lynchpin in the scientific revolution who modified and built new instruments and applied himself assiduously to astronomical observations. He was also a strong believer in astrology and possessed, among other models, an artificial nose made of solid gold, replacing the real one he lost in a duel wit a fellow student over who was the better mathematician. After his death, Kepler made no secret that he used Brahe’s measurements to, among other things, develop the famous Three Laws of Planetary Motion. There has been much speculation as to whether Kepler, in fact, murdered Brahe, who (upon only recent examinations revealed) died of mercury poisoning. While plausible—perhaps for personal gain (Kepler would ascend to the coveted seat of Royal Astronomer that Brahe sought), perhaps at the behest of the King, with whom Brahe was rumored to have had an affair—there’s no solid evidence to support or disprove the theory.

WATCH/WITNESS

“CRAIGLIST” by Briana Forney. One of many great pieces in Found Poetry Review #8.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. makes my day: “More riches! ¶ How do you do it, man?” — I don’t know what I’m doing or how I do it!

• Reader M. makes a great point: “The best part about the Byrne article is completely overlooked in the article itself: the animated gifs that reveal the meaning of the textual proofs, without needing to know how to read a mathematical proof at all. A beautiful addition to an already beautiful book!”

• Reader C. has a WORD sighting for the Clamor: “Don’t forget Eliot’s use of haruspicate in The Dry Salvages, V…” — In fact, I didn’t! See it in the expanded references accompanying the Logocopia entry."

• Reader D. has a request: “I wonder if you could also give us the names of the texts the quotations come from for the word of the day. (I’m often curious, but I forget to ask.) I would like to know what kind of book today’s word appears in. :) (I really like the word and never knew there was a special word for those seers.)” — I used to do this, then stopped after multiple requests that I do so in order that people could have the fun of looking them up themselves. That’s not too hard with Google Books and the like. I’m now leaning toward incorporating the references on the Logocopia site but leaving them out of the email. But I often fall behind in maintaining the site!

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Then at three or four in the morning my eyelids snap open like faulty window blinds and I find myself in a state of lucid alertness the equal of which I never seem to achieve in daytime. The darkness at that hour is of a special variety too, more than merely the absence of light but a medium to itself, a kind of motionless black glair in which I am held fast, a felled beast prowled about by the jackals of doubt and worry and mortal dread. Above me there is no ceiling, only a yielding, depthless void into which at any moment I might be pitched headlong. I listen to the muffled labourings of my heart and try in vain not to think of death, of failure, of the loss of all that is dear, the world with its things and creatures.”

—John Banville
—from The Blue Guitar

WORD(S)

(h)aruspex /(h)ə-RU-speks/. noun. Ancient Roman soothsayers who made predictions based on an inspection of the entrails of sacrificial animals. Plural: haruspices. See also haruspical/haruspicate (belonging to, or having the function of, a haruspex). From Sanskrit hirâ (entrails) + Latin spic (beholding, inspecting).

“‘Am I to be frightened’, he said, in answer to some report of the haruspices, ‘because a sheep is without a heart?’” (J.A. Froude)

“He sat with his stricken gaze still turned to the window and the day’s bright tumult outside. I looked at our plates, haruspicating the leavings of our lunch. They did not bode well, as how should they?” (John Banville)

“Never forget that you can put your clothes back on and leave the institution before the doctor arrives to read your future in your organs, the modern haruspicy that exorbitant insurance barely covers.” (Ben Lerner)

“I part you like a crossroads and fear the god of eloquence and thieves. When you kissed me, my heart was in my mouth, you tore it out to read it, haruspex you.” (Jeanette Winterson)

WEB

1. A very well written, compact essay → Everything About Everything: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest at 20

2. Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars

3. “Early on I decided to punctuate my own aphoristic ars poetica with quotes from books I happened to be reading at the time or quotes I’d collected here and there. In that way, my blog also became my commonplace book.” → ursprache turns 10 [and it’s a regular stop for myself and many others who occasionally get word drunk]

4. Math becomes art in Byrne’s 1847 colourful Euclid

5. Today in 1887, the first Groundhog Day is celebrated at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to folklore, this is the day in which the sacred groundhog peeks from his burrow and, if it’s cloudy, spring will arrive early, but if it’s sunny and the groundhog sees its own shadow, winter will last for six more weeks. According to the US National Climatic Data Center, the groundhog is “on average, inaccurate” and, adding insult to injury, goes on to say, “[t]he groundhog has shown no talent for predicting the arrival of spring, especially in recent years.” I’m sure of one thing: we have significantly more than 6 weeks of winter left up here!

WATCH/WITNESS

Just one of a passel of fantastic videos and video essays about film ranging from broad topics like this and the French New Wave to specific films and directors.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader L. is disappointed: “I really hoped the ‘Diet of Worms’ would be—something else.”

• As was Reader F., in their own way: “The origin of ‘dicker’ [last issue’s WORD] was much more prosaic than I imagined.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Don’t talk to me about the stars, about how cold and indifferent they are, about the unimaginable distances. There are millions of stars within us that are just as far, and people like me sometimes burn up a whole life trying to reach them.”

—Ted Kooser
—from The Wheeling Year

WORD(S)

dicker /DIK-ər/. verb or noun. To bargain or haggle. More generally to vacillate. As a noun, in an obsolete usage: a quantity of 10, usually furs or hides. Occasionally: many or a lot. From Latin decuria (a bundle of 10) and Middle English dyker and Middle Low German dēker (quantity of 10).

“Behold, said Pas, a whole dicker of wit…” (Sir Philip Sidney)

“He did not believe in giving the dealer a large profit. In the midst of a dicker he would turn his terrific eyes full upon his visitor and exclaim: I have heard enough. I’ll take this at the price you paid plus fifteen per cent.” (Virginia Woolf)

“Do you really think you can go down there and dicker with some greaser pimp that buys and sells people outright like you was goin down to the courthouse lawn to trade knives?” (Cormac McCarthy)

“My word on’t, Bertrand, I struck no bargain with Lord Baltimore, nor dickered and haggled any quid pro quos, I’m no more Papist this morning than I was last week…” (John Barth)

WEB

1. The Dora Lee Club of Chicago was a snail mail based social network and dating service in the 50s with a funny and fascinating “List of Women” looking for suitors.

2. Epistolary film fame could be yours. Or something… → The Eduardo Munez Letter Project

3. Some very clever little creations here → If Great Scientists Had Logos. This is just a portion of Kapil Bhagat’s “mostly minimalist” work. Thanks, Reader S.!

4. The Martin Luther Insult Generator Thanks, Reader G.!

5. Today in 1521, an imperial council—a diet—is convened in Worms, Germany to decide the fate of Martin Luther. Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms to respond to charges of heresy. When asked to repudiate his works, Luther refused, stating that he would only do so if convinced by scripture or reason and saying to the assembled, “Here I stand; I can do no other.” A turning-point in the growing Reformation, Luther would later go into hiding and the diet would issue the Edict of Worms, declaring Luther an outlaw who was to be captured and punished as a heretic…an act that would hound Luther for the rest of his life.

WATCH/WITNESS

An ►awe-inspiring video about the most detailed map of our universe yet made. More than 500 million light-years across, containing more than 100,000 galaxies.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. asks: “Surely you meant your subject line to read ‘DEFiant buRSTs’, right?”

• Reader F. calls me out: “a whole segment for we ‘amperfans’” ???? Who committed this egregious error? Not “us,” surely! — Busted.

• Reader B. finds a 5-letter literordinym: “There is a street in Oslo: HeieRSTUVeien.” — I suspect other languages, or our representation of them, might allow for even longer examples…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

There are just five days left in Eclectica Magazine’s 20th Anniversary Anthology Editions Kickstarter campaign and they are two-thirds of the way there. If you invest a few dollars in just one literary venture this year, consider this one. Tom and his team have been publishing great work on the web for 20 years…that’s at least a century in internet years! I really want to see those anthologies and I hope you do too.

Now, back to our regular programming.

WORK

I just came to the realization, to the sudden, illuminating, simple realization, upon receipt of a letter from my true friend, Fr. W., a man most inclined to friendship (he writes with unbelievable verve on one of the finest typewriters) that to write a good letter can only mean to write it such that the recipient be able, while reading it, to hear the letter writer speaking loudly and most emphatically to him, as though seated right there at his side! To be able to completely reconcile in a letter this difference between the one who silently writes and the one who speaks out loud, that’s true letter writing skill! Everything else is literary rubbish crowned with laurels à la pig’s head. Temperament, incivilities, peculiarities, impertinences, tomfooleries, everything must come roaring out, roaring, roaring; or else it’s a contrived, mendacious and, therefore, boring, business! Letter-instant-photography!

—Peter Altenberg (translated by Peter Wortsman)
—from Telegrams of the Soul

WORD(S)

literordinym /lit-ər-OR-də-nim/. noun. A word that contains consecutive alphabetical letters, such as HIJack and aFGHan. Some sequences are quite common in English, such as DEF. I can find only two sequences of four or more: RSTU, as in undeRSTUdy and MNOP, as in the very uncommon gyMNOPhobia (fear of nudity). Can you find others?

WEB

1. Short fictions composed entirely of example sentences from various dictionaries » Dictionary Stories

2. Stickin’ it to the man » UK film censors forced to watch a 2-day long movie of paint drying

3. Shady Characters Miscellanea #68 (just subscribe to the blog already!) has good stuff, including a whole segment for we “amperfans” with links including one to Sophie Elinor’s ongoing series The Amperclan & a fantastic little piece from Jonathan Hoefler about ampersands and why one is his company’s Middle Name.

4. Charles Dickens (Channeling Jorge Luis Borges) Created a Fake Library, with 37 Witty Invented Book Titles

5. Today in 1945, Jacqueline Mary du Pré is born in Oxford, England. Though multiple sclerosis would force her to stop performing at just 26—and take her life at just 43—du Pré is considered one of the most talented cellists of the 20th century. The performance that cemented her reputation was her interpretation of ►Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85. If you prefer to hear du Pré solo, enjoy her performance of the cello standards, ►Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello No. 1 & 2.

WATCH/WITNESS

From Valerie Hugo’s ALPHABET series, combining typography, illustration and nature. See the rest of the series.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader P. takes the bad with the good: “Thank you so much for ‘Paper is Not Dead’! I have shared it with everyone I can think of—we are not luddites, but I still write with a fountain pen (so does my DH). We prefer paper books and what’s left of our local newspaper (3 days a week—pretty slim pickings), and we still go through lots of paper sticky notes. Needless to say, I enjoyed the Watch/Witness segment on making the book from scratch. ¶ I have to vehemently disagree about ‘Ask Me Another’. I cannot stand the host Ephira (?) and her screechy voice, but even more so, the stuff of the show is juvenile and dumb. I don’t get what people like about it. […] ¶ Thanks for keeping me entertained—I love Clippings!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“So You Say”

It is all in the mind, you say, and has
nothing to do with happiness. The coming of cold,
the coming of heat, the mind has all the time in the world.
You take my arm and say something will happen,
something unusual for which we were always prepared,
like the sun arriving after a day in Asia,
like the moon departing after a night with us.

—Mark Strand
—from New Selected Poems

WORD(S)

nipperkin /NIP-ər-kin/. noun. A small cup or other vessel for alcoholic spirits or a measure using the same. Now commonly abbreviated as nip. From Low Dutch nippen (sip).

“…for you must know, I have set a nipperkin of toddy by me, just by way of spell, to keep away the meikle horned deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may be on their nightly rounds.” (Robert Burns)

“Here’s a health to the barley-mow! The ocean, the river, the well, the pipe, the hogshead, the half-hogshead, the anker, the half-anker, the gallon, the half-gallon, the pottle, the quart, the pint, the half a pint, the quarter-pint, the nipperkin, and the jolly brown bowl!” (Traditional Cornish drinking song)

WEB

1. Books without words (but not the kind you think).

2. The Ask Me Another podcast/audio show [Thanks, maybe-a-reader R.] is a hoot. Past guests include Patrick Stewart, Peter Sarsgaard, David Cross, John Darnelle, and the cast of Wet Hot American Summer.

3. Good for a little laugh → ►Paper is not dead

4. A Grandfather’s Postcards

5. Today in 1968, the Battle of Khe Sanh begins. One of the longest sieges in the Vietnam War, the battle would end 77 days (and more than 12,000 casualties) later. Also on this day, in 1977, on his first day in office, President Jimmy Carter grants unconditional pardons to more than 100,000 “draft dodgers”.

WATCH/WITNESS

Andy George examines 5000 years of writing history and attempts to follow ancient methods and new practices to ►make a book entirely from scratch. [And they mean entirely: vellum, paper, glue, ink, brush, etc.]

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M.: “Reader S. ‘drops their mic’? I see what you did there.”

• Reader B.: “Guy Davenport! Please, sir, may I have some more?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“The whole world, he [Charles Fourier] said, is a correspondence. And everything comes in a chord. The chord contains eight items. The center of the chord is the pivot. At one end of the chord is the avant-garde, and at the other end is the arrière-garde. In a fruit chord, let’s say, you have at one end the ripest golden pear, and at the other end is the quince, which never ripens. It remains as hard as a rock. And all of these corresponded with personalities (I’ve known plenty of quinces).”

—Guy Davenport
—from Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction No. 174”

WORD(S)

doublure /Də-bloor/. noun. An ornamental lining inside a book’s cover, usually of leather, vellum or brocade. From Middle French doubler (to line, double).

“When the doublure is finished, the covers of the books should be closed, and the book should be put away for about half an hour to dry.” (Edith Diehl)

“The intricate blind-tooling of the doublure shadowed forth the blind fate which left us in ignorance of our future and our past, or even what the day itself might bring forth.” (Charles Waddell Chesnutt)

“The book was bound in ruby red Levant morocco with gilt frames containing the hair of Mary and Percy Shelley inserted in the front doublure. In the end doublure was an urn-shaped frame containing a fragment of Shelley’s skull.” (Judith Pascoe)

WEB

1. Lighting…and its survivors. → The Body Electric

2. A site I know will be handy this election year…and any year in which Facebook is still a thing. → Snopes’ Field Guide to Fake News Sites and Hoax Purveyors

3. Finally, an App for Transcribing Medieval Manuscripts

4. “…while procrastination is a vice for productivity, I’ve learned—against my natural inclinations—that it’s a virtue for creativity.” → Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate

5. Today in 1903, Guglielmo Marconi sends and receives the first two-way, transatlantic wireless message. Theodore Roosevelt took “advantage of the wonderful triumph of scientific research and ingenuity” to send his greetings to King Edward VII, who replied in kind. Less than a decade later, wireless messages from the ill-fated Titanic would save more than 700 lives. And a decade after that, the first commercial transatlantic radio services would debut. And then, well...the world.

WATCH/WITNESS

►Semantron Trance in Syria. See also Michael Gordon’s Timber and Mantra: Post-Minimalist Percussion In Aisle 12.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• The fabulous Reader M. makes me smile: “you send us the best stuff.”

• Reader A. will take her answer online: "Coincidentally just got Wind-up Bird Chronicle via Amazon used books when your letter arrives with the quote. I read Patti Smith’s M Train, Patti talks about Murakami. ¶ I love reading a book with references to other books and then I read those books. ¶ Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, thoughts? — I haven’t read it yet! You? Anyone else in the Clamor?

• Reader S. drops their own mic: “’Bout damn time. ‘Mike’ never made sense to me.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

In today’s WORK, C. D. Wright isn’t talking about (just) poetry or even (just) words, but our presence in—and our part as maker of—the world. RIP.

WORK

“I believe in a hardheaded art, an unremitting, unrepentant practice of one’s own faith in the word in one’s own obstinate terms. I believe the word was made good from the start; it remains so to this second. I believe words are golden as goodness is golden. Even the humble word brush gives off a scratch of light. There is not much poetry from which I feel barred, whether it is arcane or open in the extreme. I attempt to run the gamut because I am pulled by the extremes. I believe the word used wrongly distorts the world. I hold to hard distinctions of right and wrong. Also I think that antithetical poetries can and should coexist without crippling one another. They not only serve to define their other to a much more exacting degree than would be possible in the absence of the one or the other; they insure the persistence of heterogeneous (albeit discouragingly small) constituencies.”

—C. D. Wright
—from Cooling Time

WORD(S)

imbrue (embrue) /im-BROO/. verb. To stain or drench, particularly with blood. When speaking of a weapon, to thrust or plunge. From Old French embreuver (moisten, soak [in], dye, imbue).

“These barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood.” (Oliver Cromwell)

“A highly popular murder had been committed, and Mr. Wopsle was imbrued in blood to the eyebrows.” (Charles Dickens)

“I used to stand on the balcony and watch the setting sun imbrue the sky with its puce and blue-indigo stains and then fall down” (Mark Leyner)

“…it has been a sort of balm to my spirit to sit up with the King, night after night, imbrued in the royal gore, breathing it into my lungs, sopping it up with my flesh…” (Neal Stephenson)

“What! shall we have incision? shall we imbrue?
Then death rock me asleep, abridge my doleful days!”
(William Shakespeare)

WEB

1. A fascinating article that brings into focus—in a compelling way—the eternal debate about sociology, subjectivity and the problems of being a writer both inside and outside of a community → The Trials of Alice Goffman

2. Shakespeare’s Plays 4-Part Venn. Combine vigorously with: all the Shakespearean deaths in a pie chart and A Visual Crash Course in All the Deaths in Shakespeare’s Tragedies.

3. More big (for some nerds anyway) grammar and style news following on the heels of the singular “they.” Admitted curmudgeon Bill Walsh’s sadness is delightful. → The Post drops the ‘mike’ — and the hyphen in ‘e-mail’

4. How Disney manifests its evilness through Mickey’s copyright. Not news to some readers, but the story and visuals are very good.

5. Today in 1956 (according to some sources; hey, it’s a slow day), Little Richard releases his influential—even rock-and-roll-revolutionary—hit single “Tutti Frutti”. In addition to dropping at just the right moment to shock the new, mostly white rock-and-roll scene, Little Richard’s unabashed flamboyance and suggestive dancing were a perfect match for the song…whose original lyrics were: “A wop bop a loo mop a good goddam, Tutti Frutti, good booty, if it don’t fit, don’t force it, you can grease it, make it easy.”

WATCH/WITNESS

RIP Alan Rickman. Listen to Rickman read “Sonnet 130” (My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun…). And, at the other end of the gamut, Rickman and helium combine for a good laugh.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on Murakami and Sterne: “That Murakami quote reminds me of Sterne’s hobby-horse bit from Tristram Shandy. ¶ ‘When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his Hobby-Horse grows headstrong,—farewell cool reason and fair discretion!’”

• Reader G. keeps it simple: “best katexic [1/12/16 issue] ever!”

• Another Reader B.: “Have just read this: ‘One woman mentions in a memoir that her grandmother carried calling cards into the 1940s.’ I wanted you to know that I still use calling cards.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

RIP, David Bowie. Whatever one thinks of his music (I was a fan but not a fanatic), he set an amazing example of tireless creativity and productivity until the very end. See also: A 20-year-old David Bowie responds to his first fan letter.

WORK

“Here’s what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said May Kasahara. “Everybody’s born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I’d really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can’t seem to do it. They just don’t get it. Of course, the problem could be that I’m not explaining it very well, but I think it’s because they’re not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they’re not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things.”

—Haruki Murakami
—from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

WORD(S)

adversaria /ad-vər-SAIR-ee-ə/. noun. Commentaries or notes on a text or document. A miscellaneous collection of notes and quotes. AKA: a commonplace book. Borrowed from Latin adversāria (notes, observations, things written on one side of a page).

“Collect all your Adversaria and give them to the World in some shape or other.” (Thomas Percy)

“A correspondent, who in a number of Adversaria ingeniously traced ‘bombast’ to the inflated Doctor Paracelsus Bombast, considers that ‘humbug’ may, in like manner, be derived from Homberg, the distinguished chemist of the court of the Duke of Orleans…” (John Camden Hotten)

“It is compiled out of an Adversaria, or commonplace book, in which he had jotted down everything of unusual interest that he heard in conversation or read in books…” (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

WEB

1. Before Facebook there were risqué Victorian calling cards.

2. Electric Literature reprints David Bowie’s 100 Favorite Books. Also, via Reader K., Bowie demonstrates his “cut-up” technique for writing lyrics.

3. Some roundups of 2015’s best book covers from The New York Times Book Review, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Book Page and The Casual Optimist.

4. A Harvard Poetry Professor Reviewed Haiku I Got Sent on Tinder. H/T Reader C.

5. Today in 1949, writer and translator Haruki Murakami is born in Kyoto, Japan (incidentally, he is not—nor is he related to—fellow surrealish novelist Ryū Murakami; save yourself some confusing grief there). At once mournful, surreal and deeply informed by the classical Western canon, Murakami has to be reckoned as one of the greatest contemporary authors in any language. His work is experimental but not at the expense of its (sometimes dark) heart. I recommend starting with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Linkage: Paris Review “Art of Fiction” interview; The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami; Haruki Murakami’s Advertorial Short Stories: Rare Short-Short Fiction from the 1980s; ► Haruki MURAKAMI: In SEARCH of this elusive WRITER (DOCUMENTARY); A pie chart of Murkami’s themes (obsessions).

WATCH/WITNESS

► David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” performed by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D. on the pulp librarian book cover series: “I showed my husband (a public librarian) the book cover series on Professional Literature for Librarians, and he thought they were hilarious (and quite pertinent to his experience). The only problem I find with them is that they are notably sexist, which I hope is due only to the source material and not due to outmoded notions about the gender of librarians. (In other words, I would have liked to have seen more covers that represented ”hot“ male librarians (after all, there are a few–I married one).”

• Reader B. isn’t buying the used bookstore comeback: "That WaPo story about used bookshops is too much puffery. ¶ In mentioning the (relatively) high profit margin for individual book sales, the piece ignores that volume is usually low, which is one reason 99% of used bookshops have barely survived, before Amazon. ¶ Note, too, buried down in the piece how some (no mention of #s?) stores use Amazon to boost sales. ¶ Moreover, that detail about opening shops in the right neighborhoods…such locations are very, very rare. Rarer still as American society increasingly sorts itself out by economic class.

• A different Reader B. answers a question: "I am reading the 2015–08–07 issue […] ‘Charming Bookstores in Unexpected Places → What are some of your favorites?’ Okay, I will answer that. In the May 2014 issue of Snakeskin, I wrote about the charms of used bookstores.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

Happy holidays and a happy new year to the Clamor. I appreciate your continued attention.

Katexic Clippings will resume a regular publication schedule on January 12. Until then, you get what you get (or don’t)!

WORK

“If it is not beautiful for someone, it does not exist…”

—William Gaddis
—from The Recognitions

WORD(S)

pizzle /PI-zəl/. noun. An animal penis, most often a bull’s, or a whip made from the same. Likely from German pesel or Flemish pezel (sinew, bowstring).

“…as he entered and walked over toward the bull’s stall. —There! he said, swinging round, and the lantern with him, —There’s a masterful pizzle for you!” (William Gaddis)

“Oh you are an angel! You may sit, Dick. (Pause.) In a word, REDUCE the pressure instead of increasing it. (Lyrical.) Caress, fount of resipescence! (Calmer.) Dick, if you would. (Swish and thud of pizzle on flesh. Faint cry from FOX.) Careful, Miss.” (Samuel Beckett)

“The Vandiemenlander stood in the street opposite with his pizzle in one hand and the revolver in the other.” (Cormac McCarthy)

“You gutless popinjay! My dog has more valor in its pizzle than you possess in your entire body!” (Jasper Fforde)

WEB

1. Addicted to Distraction. Complete the set with: Should the net be regulated like drugs or casinos?.

2. Another twofer: Google Tour of the American Bookbinders Museum and the classic A manual of the art of bookbinding. Even if you’re not into bookbinding or book art, all readers and collectors (or accumulators) of books should enjoy some of the “Hints to Book Collectors” (p. 292).

3. This story left me gobsmacked: The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield

4. Don’t call it a comeback? In the age of Amazon, used bookstores are making an unlikely comeback

5. Today in 1922, novelist William Gaddis is born. A two-time National Book Award winner, Gaddis’s work—particularly The Recognitions—are important as early postmodern novels and on their own dark, sardonic, erudite merits. Like Pynchon and DeLillo (Gaddis’s writing enough like the former that there was some speculation he and Pynchon were in fact the same person), Gaddis is an author whose success depends on significant attention and his readers’ willingness to swim—and sometimes sink—in a multi-layered ocean of allusion. Clamorites might further enjoy ► Gaddis in Conversation with Malcolm Bradbury.

WATCH/WITNESS

The rest of Cindy Chinn’s pencil carving includes more cars and a trestle bridge. Amazing..

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

Rebecca Solnit’s two pieces—Men Explain Lolita to Me and 80 Books No Woman Should Read—inspired and provoked reactions across the gamut, with people I greatly admire popping up from one end to the other. Personally, I think both ends of the spectrum protest too much. A sampling:

• “That ‘80 Books’ piece was fun, and harsh… I keep running into women who really, really hate Henry Miller. I’d like to research this and find out why, but am so deeply sick of the gender wars now, and I like Miller’s writing so much, that I resist the desire. Ah, I like Solnit very much, but these two pieces rankled.”

• “I can already hear the outpouring of offended men trying to explain Solnit’s articles to me and how they are wrong despite my living the experiences she describes. Please don’t.”

• “Rebecca Solnit femsplains every negative male stereotype ever posited with a venom indicative of a fully closed and cynical mind. Pullleeez, no more.”

• “I’m tired of articles like this [Solnit’s Lolita article]. I’m even more weary that the experiences she describes remain true and make such articles necessary. I’m exhausted in advance by those who complain that such opinions are unfair and one-sided and don’t take into account their support of women. Sure. And #alllivesmatter.”

• “Oh, yay. Oh, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.”

• “Solnit’s right. I doubt many will read closely enough to understand why or even that she’s making a nuanced argument. Whether from ignorance or weariness, I won’t hazard to guess.”

• “Why do so many men get so upset when someone describes the behaviors of some men to them? If they aren’t part of the group being described, why do they feel so personally attacked? Solnit takes pains to show she isn’t talking about all men and that there has been progress in the world she lives in and observes.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORK? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

RIP, Wendy Battin. A fine poet. A fine soul. A scientist in mind and poet of the heart who understood something about the quantum lattice of both. Wendy asked, not too long ago, why we called death “peace.” I have no idea, but I hope for Wendy that beyond this now comes that knowing.

WORK

“Geometry 1”

Courage: the heart times time.

Silence:

Reason: a program

Spring: a recoil, a coil, a

Helix: one body climbing a staircase

Matter: is dark, or light, or

Weightless: the thing that escapes when the earth lets go

Frogs shrill as April high in the trees.

Soon the sky will fall and I will be here to catch it.

—Wendy Battin
—from On Barcelona

WORD(S)

vernissage /vər-nə-SAZH/. noun. A private viewing of art or paintings before a public exhibition. From French vernir (varnish), and originally meaning the day before an opening, during which exhibitors could retouch and varnish their work.

“For the artists of Paris, the most important date in the social calendar always fell a day or two before the Salon opened to the public. Le jour du Vernissage, or Varnishing Day, saw hundreds of painters descend on the Palais des Champs-Élysées to put the finishing touches on their works, filling the exhibition hall with the scraping of ladders and the penetrating stink of varnishes, turpentine and drying oils.” (Ross King)

“He handed the girl a jar of ointment, happy to be present at a vernissage no larger than the skin area of a typist.” (J. G. Ballard)

“It matters very much that he chose her at his vernissage, that his work was what was being held up to where the light could get at it that night. ” (Andrew Hood)

WEB

1. Men Explain Lolita to Me. A fine pairing: 80 Books No Woman Should Read

2. NPR’s “Songs We Love” — 2015 edition. Nice interactive features and some good music.

3. For a Shakespeare Anniversary, an Online Re-Creation of a 1796 Show

4. 51 of the Most Beautiful Sentences in Literature. What are some of yours?

5. Today is winter solstice—the shortest day and, obviously, the longest night—in the northern hemisphere. The word solstice is from the Latin for “the sun stands still” because of the way in which it appears to both rise (barely) and set (too quickly) in the same place for many days. Winter solstice is the occasion of natural celebration here in the Northern latitudes, but it has been the basis of festivities since ancient times when the myth was that if people didn’t celebrate the sun might not decide to return. At this time of year, I understand the fear. Just as Stonehenge was created to commemorate the summer solstice, Ireland’s Newgrange commemorates the winter solstice, the one time of year that the light shines through and illuminates the underground “triple spiral.”

WATCH/WITNESS

The History of Typography, in Stop-Motion Animation

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on Peter Watts, author of last issue’s WORD(S): “Peter Watts is one fiercely fine writer.”

• Reader J. expands on Peter Watts WORD(S) on free will: “…about the illusion of free will. Perception and motor control are actually more complex than that. Postdiction is the psychological term that addresses the illusion of backward causation. Benjamin Libet’s experiments tell us less about free will than they do about the difference between objective time and neural time.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger. Too late! The electricity’s already halfway down your arm. Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self ‘chose’ to, for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion, sent an executive summary—almost an afterthought—to the homunculus behind your eyes. That little man, that arrogant subroutine that thinks of itself as the person, mistakes correlation for causality: it reads the summary and it sees the hand move, and it thinks that one drove the other. But it’s not in charge. You’re not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn’t share living space with the likes of you.”

—Peter Watts
—from Firefall

WORD(S)

apophenia /a-pə-FEE-nee-ə/. noun. The human tendency to find patterns in random data. Last week’s pareidolia is a specific form of apophenia. For example, gamblers often see illusory patterns in rolls of dice and spins of roulette wheels. Numerology and fortune-telling use (and prey upon) this tendency. From German Apophänie (a coinage used to refer to delusional thinking).

“The same hardwired apophenia that made human beings see the hand of God in the empirical universe also made us hear Him in the electronic shrieking of our tribe.” (Jay Lake)

“Either games are considered to be games—how does chess reveal a narrative?—or else video games are seen as too primitive, perhaps too childish, to be capable of creating the space required for a convincing tale. Looking for storytelling in gaming makes too much of too little, an exercise in apophenia.” (Bryan Alexander)

“A few years ago a message from God was found in a tomato in Yorkshire. […] At least two explanations come to mind. One is that the Supreme Being sees fit to make Himself visible in produce no less than He does in whirlwind and quasar. Another is that those who saw the message experienced apophenia—the tendency to see meaningful patterns and connections where they are not in fact present. ¶ Whatever the truth of that tomato, it is certainly the case that human beings regularly see things which are not there.” (Caspar Henderson)

WEB

1. Classic pulp/smut fiction meets librarians, books and readers in this inspired book cover series.

2. “When tech culture only celebrates creation, it risks ignoring those who teach, criticize, and take care of others.” Hmmm. There are many problems with this article but it touches on something important I’ve yet to figure out how to articulate. » Why I Am Not a Maker

3. The last list like this [The 12 Weirdest, Funniest, Smartest Twitter Bots] was one of the most popular links of the year. So I think you’ll enjoy The Best Twitter Bots of 2015…some ingenious minds at work.

4. A Point of View: Is there still any point in collecting books?. Bonus: The author reads his essay. [Via Reader B.]

5. Today in 1929, popular journalist, presidential speechwriter, and etymological columnist William Safire is born in New York City. Among many other accomplishments, Safire wrote the “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine for nearly 30 years, evolving (some would say progressing) over that time from a confirmed prescriptivist and language purist to one more sympathetic to descriptivism and language changes. Whatever his position—and however much one has to hold one’s nose when it comes to his politics—Safire was a good writer who had a fine ear and a keen wit [seriously, “it’s not the teat, it’s the tumidity?”]. Another favorite: “The Yip Harburg rule of agreement: if you’re not near the antecedent you love, you use the antecedent you’re near.”

WATCH/WITNESS

Out of this world, quite literally: The beautiful and mysterious Fukang meteorite

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader S. is in the club: “*makes the secret hand gesture of readers of Peter Watts’ fiction* ¶ Leslie Stevens also directed the wonderfully mad Fanfare for a Death Scene, which had Telly Savalas as the leader of the Golden Horde, Tina Louise as (IIRC) a Circassian princess, Burgess Meredith as an insane trumpet-playing scientist, and Al Hirt because why not?”

• Reader G. remains grateful: “Gratitude might not make us live longer, but it will help us live better. I was also glad for the permission to be my regular grumpy self without fear it might shave a few years off the top…”

• Reader T. finds a comment-section gem: “So, the Offerman video is great, but the comments, particularly the one that provides highlights by time, are truly sublime. I can’t wait to get home tonight and sip the hell out of a wee dram of Ardbeg (it doesn’t flaunt the peat!).”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

LISTER: Rimmer, you’ve been doing Esperanto for eight years. How come you’re so utterly useless?

RIMMER: Oh, speaks! And how many books have you read in your entire life? The same number as champion the wonder horse: zero!

LISTER: I’ve read books.

RIMMER: Uh, Lister, we’re not talking about books where the main character is a dog called “Ben.”

LISTER: I went to Art College!

RIMMER: You?

LISTER: Yeah!

RIMMER: How did you get into Art College?

LISTER: The normal way you get into Art College. The same old, usual, normal, boring you get in. Failed me exams and applied. The snatched me up.

RIMMER: Ah, but you didn’t get a degree, did you?

LISTER: No, I dropped out. I wasn’t in long.

RIMMER: How long?

LISTER: 97 minutes. I thought it was going to be a good skive and all that, you know? But I took one look at the time table and just checked out, man. I mean, it was ridiculous. They had, they had lectures at, like, first thing, in the afternoon. We’re talking half-past twelve everyday. Who’s together by then? You can still taste the toothpaste.

—dialogue from “Kryten”
—Red Dwarf episode 2.1, September 6, 1988

WORD(S)

pareidolia /payr-it-DOHL-yə/. noun. The human tendency to find patterns where none exist, whether seeing images in random or ambiguous visual patterns or hearing intentional sounds in similarly random or ambiguous audio patterns. For example, seeing the face of Jesus in a tortilla or hearing words on a record being played in reverse. From German pareidolie (a coinage for a disorder known as “confusion of objects”), from Greek par- (abnormal) + eídōlon (image, reflection).

“There was supposed to be some rational explanation to justify the mumbo jumbo. Left-hemisphere pattern-matching subroutines amped beyond recognition; the buggy wetware that made you see faces in clouds or God’s wrath in thunderstorms, tweaked to walk some fine line between insight and pareidolia.” (Peter Watts)

“…Arcimboldo might either have experienced pareidolia or wanted to; in any case he arranged it ceaselessly for others—also faces in lichen, ice formations, rock forms, patterns of stars.” (Kim Stanley Robinson)

“Expectant attention and pareidolia have undoubtedly transformed sightings of birds, otters, logs, and waves into sightings of Nessie. Mirages have transformed more than one merganser into a monster.” (Rick Emmer)

WEB

1. A History of Punctuation for the Internet Age

2. “Taking the [terribly sexist, ignorant] words of Scott Adams and combining them with the art of Scott Adams.” → MRA Dilbert

3. What Happens When You Can’t Talk to Yourself?

4. The Science of Gratitude. Pair with: Happiness Doesn’t Help You Live Longer.

5. Today is Zamenhof Day, a worldwide observance celebrating the birth of L.L. Zamenhof and the Esperanto language he created. Zamenhof, a Russian ophthalmologist, created the simple artificial language in hopes of furthering peace and harmony between people of different countries. A simple language with just 900 roots and a 28-character alphabet, studies have shown that learning Esperanto takes about 1/10 the time for the same amount of gain as studying English. In this TEDx talk, Tim Morley makes a good case for learning Esperanto. But Esperanto never took off the way Zamenhof hoped: there are an estimated 1000 native Esperantists and 100,000 active users among a total population estimated at between 1–2 million who have studied the language significantly. The lernu! site has Esperanto learning resources in dozens of languages, but I prefer learning Esperanto soap-opera style. And, of course, YouTube has plenty of Esperanto learning videos. But the one Esperanto link to rule them all: ► Incubus, the 1966 horror film—in Esperanto—starring William Shatner, written and directed by Leslie Stevens of The Outer Limits and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

WATCH/WITNESS

Tired of the same old holiday fireplace videos? How about 45 Straight Minutes of Nick Offerman Quietly Drinking Single Malt Scotch by the Fire?

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. goes down the rabbit hole: “…I opened my browser to ‘google’ something, but was pleasantly distracted by your email, links and all the wonderful things I learned by clicking on the article about using bigger words, and the Emily Dickinson! Thanks!”

• Reader G. brings in some Kingly support: “As tempting as it is to beseech and implore, Stephen King in his book advising writers says to just use said. Because it’s not as distracting and irritating as beseeching and imploring and shouting and barking. What you say should convey how you say it.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

Enjoy the WORD(S) section? Check out my other little project: Concīs Magazine » http://concis.io/

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.”

Is thinking of doing sometimes enough?

WORK

“Salute”

Past is past, and if one
remembers what one meant
to do and never did, is
not to have thought to do
enough? Like that gather-
ing of one of each I
planned, to gather one
of each kind of clover,
daisy, paintbrush that
grew in that field
the cabin stood in and
study them one afternoon
before they wilted. Past
is past. I salute
that various field.

—James Schuyler
—from Freely Espousing

WORD(S)

battology /ba-TAH-lə-gee/. noun. Needless, tiresome repetition. Babbling. From Ancient Greek battologia (stammering speech), possibly named after Battos who, in Herodotus’s Histories, asked the Oracle at Delphi about his speech defect—he was prone to “long hymns consisting of many lines, full of tautologies”—and was given in answer a prophecy that he would become king.

“I cannot see how he will escape that heathenish battology of multiplying words, which Christ himself, that has the putting up of our prayers, told us would not be acceptable in heaven.” (John Milton)

“But see the battology here: ‘God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.’ Why this repetition—which adds neither to the emphasis nor to the expressiveness of the document?” (Benjamin B. Warfield)

WEB

1. A great MeFi thread on a practice everyone should be, ummm, practicing. » Commonplace Books: Notebooks for Magpies

2. Death By Coconut: A Story Of Food Obsession Gone Too Far

3. Drink me! “DNA molecules can be the basis for an archival storage system potentially capable of storing all of the world’s digital information in roughly nine liters of solution, about the amount of liquid in a case of wine. […] The new storage technology would also be capable of keeping immense amounts of information safely for a millennium or longer” » “Data Storage on DNA Can Keep It Safe for Centuries”

4. What should we call ‘Grammar Nazis’?

5. Today in 1980, John Lennon, singer, songwriter and founding member of the Beatles, is shot to death in front of the entrance to his New York City apartment building. I remember exactly where I was when the news came over the one radio station we could get in our tiny, freezing cabin in bush Alaska, and I have no more commentary now than I did as a bewildered 10-year-old. Instead, some links: Lennon’s final interview, Dec. 8, ► Lennon’s Poster, ► “Jealous Guy”, ► "Working Class Hero and—because I love it despite the overplay—► “Imagine”.

WATCH/WITNESS

► “Lost Property”…a charming animated short film by Åsa Lucander.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. is a trickster: “I can’t get enough of alternative and extra punctuation like the irony mark¡”

• Reader F. asks: “Thanks for bringing Limetown Stories to my attention. What other podcasts do you listen to?” — Because I’m old and enfeebled and can’t multi-task well enough to do anything else while listening to podcasts, I don’t listen to many…and I’m often way behind. That said: Mystery Show, A Way With Words, WTF (just skip the self-indulgent intros), Memory Palace and The Allusionist continue to make the cut.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

“Culture is the rule, and art is the exception […] The rule is to want the death of the exception.” Bam!

WORK

“In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday. She is not beautiful, mocked, cursed or disowned by all. But don’t be mistaken, she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind; for there is a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule, and art is the exception. Everybody speaks the rule; cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody speaks the exception. It isn’t spoken, it is written; Flaubert, Dostoyevsky. It is composed; Gershwin, Mozart. It is painted; Cézanne, Vermeer. It is filmed; Antonioni, Vigo. Or it is lived, then it is the art of living; Srebrenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for cultural Europe is to organize the death of the art of living, which still flourishes.”

—Jean Luc Godard
—from Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo

WORD(S)

xystus /ZIS-təs/. noun. For ancient Greeks, a covered portico used for exercise. For ancient Romans, an open colonnade with trees designed for recreation and conversation. Also a Latinized form of the Roman name Sixtus. From Greek xystos (scraped, polished).

“Mentioned by Josephus as a place in Jerusalem surrounded by porticoes and used by gymnasts and for public assemblies; it was designed by Herod the Great.” (Oxford Dictionary of the Bible)

“Philosophers who aired their elegant doubts in the shady xystus.” (Frederic William Farrar)

“…she is standing on the Xystus with Agrippa, entreating the people not to injure themselves by resistance.” (George Eliot)

“…there were gates on that side above the Xystus, and a bridge that connected the upper city to the Temple. This bridge it was that lay between the tyrants and Caesar, and parted them…” (from The Great Events by Famous Historians)

WEB

1. “Molaison’s testable intelligence remained normal; his basic personality seemed unchanged; and he could remember quite a lot of his past, but he was no longer able to form new memories. […] He could read the same magazine day after day without showing any sign that he had encountered it before. H.M. had become a stunningly pure case of anterograde amnesia.” » The Man Who Forgot Everything [Thanks, Reader C.]

2. The deepest history (yet) of the Irony Mark (¡) (bonus, from the comments section, “why not use the analogous Spanish character ‘¿’ to indicate, say a rhetorical question¿”)

3. An eery and delightful podcast, “Limetown follows journalist Lia Haddock as she investigates the infamous disappearance of a doomed research facility.” → Limetown Stories

4. Don’t be put off by the title…some fascinating explorations here » Q’s perpetual and amazing quest for an algorithmic typography

5. Today in 1930, French New Wave director, screenwriter and film critic Jean-Luc Godard is born in Paris. A revolutionary who seemed intent on breaking every rule, always to great effect, and who worked with disdain for the idea of “high” vs. “low” cinema, Godard is one of the most influential and stylish filmmakers ever. I have yet to go wrong with any of his films, but if you haven’t seen them yet Godard’s films from the 60s are must-sees, particularly Breathless (1960), Contempt (1963) and Alphaville (1965). Related reading: Jean-Luc Godard pronounces film dead.

WATCH/WITNESS

Video: “Where the so-called ‘brinicle’ met the sea bed, a web of ice formed that froze everything it touched, including sea urchins and starfish. ¶ The unusual phenomenon was filmed for the first time by cameramen Hugh Miller and Doug Anderson…”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. has some nature sounds for the Clamor: “…if you want the sound of the woods, how about this one? ► Francisco López — Wind [Patagonia]”

• Reader A. sets me straight: “…the ‘first narrative film’? Not so fast, my friend. Georges Méliès’ Trip to the Moon is very certainly narrative, and dates from 1902. ¶ First narrative film in North America, maybe? ¶ More on Méliès, worthy of the Clamor, imho: Early hand-painted colors in a 1900 (narrative!) film, ► Georges Méliès: Jeanne d’Arc, and an eternal fan favorite, ► A Trip to the Moon - Viaje a la Luna - Le Voyage dans la lune - Georges Méliès 1902”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

"A skillful comedian could coax a laugh with tiny indicators such as a vocal tic (Bob Hope’s ‘But I wanna tell ya’) or even a slight body shift. Jack E. Leonard used to punctuate jokes by slapping his stomach with his hand. One night, watching him on The Tonight Show, I noticed that several of his punch lines had been unintelligible, and the audience had actually laughed at nothing but the cue of his hand slap.

These notions stayed with me for months, until they formed an idea that revolutionized my comic direction: What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh."

—Steve Martin
—from Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life

WORD(S)

scumble /SKUM-bəl/. verb or noun. To soften the colors of a painting or other work of art by applying a thin coat or layer of opaque or near-opaque color. The effect of this process. Scumble is a frequentative (a form expressing repetition) of the verb scum (in its older sense meaning to clear, to skim), whose origin is unknown.

“‘Eschew surplusage,’ snapped Twain, that anti-European, anti-Catholic pinchfist from the American midwest, with his unlovely spray of scentless botanicals. Blink the incidentals! Fract that chicken! Scumble that depth-of-field! Rip off that wainscotting! Slubber that gloss! Steam down those frills!” (Alexander Theroux)

“But this wasn’t that flat, affectless Pop thing, the Brillo box, the soup can. If anything, it was the opposite: a stop-sign whose unique scumble of urban grit—whose peeling green pole, textured upon the canvas, whose reflection of morning light near a river in summer—made William want to cry.” (Garth Hallberg)

“I felt secretly sure any other teacher would kill all that was strangest and most luminous in her playing. That scumbled virtuosity of the nonnative speaker wouldn’t survive her first real lesson.” (Richard Powers)

“In this preliminary report on infinite consciousness a certain scumbling of the essential outline is unavoidable. We have to discuss sight without being able to see.” (Vladimir Nabokov)

WEB

1. It’s OK to just look at the phenomenal pictures. » Chronicling Depression With Photography

2. I’ve thought about Stan Alcorn’s article on (not) viral audio for a long time. Now Digg is revisiting the piece and the conversation is (sometimes) fascinating. » Can Audio Go Viral? Sometimes!

3. Speaking of immensely satisfying audio, the wonderful Frank Delaney is reading from and, with great insight, digging into Ulysses one 5-minute bite at a time » RE:JOYCE

4. Or there’s always nature’s constant soundtrack… » Someone Put Giant Megaphones in the Woods So You Can Listen to the Forest

5. Today in 1903 Edwin S. Porter, a former cameraman for Thomas Edison, releases ► The Great Train Robbery, the first narrative film. A western filmed mostly in New Jersey, the film pioneered many techniques including jump cuts, panning shots and even the first example of gunshots being used to force someone to dance. Just a bit over 11-minutes long, it’s hard to overstate The Great Train Robbery’s place in film history and its influence on every generation of film to come.

WATCH/WITNESS

A wonderful short film from 1947 on fore-edge and reverse fore-edge book painting that includes showing an artist painting them » Fore-edge Painting 1947 - Unusual Occupations Series.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. makes my day: “Thank you for bringing Mr. Childers to my attention. Also the Cassini footage. Actually, all this stuff. An uberous dose of knowledge for sure.”

• Reader W. has a tardigrade update: “Some of the clamor might be interested in this followup on the aliens in our midst: The tardigrade genome has been sequenced, and it has the most foreign DNA of any animal.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Take a step forward, lads. It will be easier that way.”

—Erskine Childers (last words to the firing squad assembled before him)

WORD(S)

uberous /OO-bər-us/. adjective. Abundantly fruitful, copious, fertile. Originally referring specifically to supplying milk or food in abundance when referring to breasts or animals/crops respectively. From Latin ūber (abundant, rich). See also French ubéreux and the rare noun form uberty.

“I am rather proud of my brain. It is a sensitive, lucid, and uberous organ. It contains a prodigious store of information…” (Roald Dahl)

“Vienna’s Mater, its uberous mothering Venus—among the world’s oldest and most perfectly preserved fertility figures—is not to be found among all the Rubens and Bruegel and Roman and Greek and Egyptian antiquities at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, but rather just across the park, with the mammoth taxidermy and Diplodocus and tektites and diamonds and ores, at the Naturhistorisches Museum—as if the Venus hadn’t merely been dug from the Danubian loess, but had been created by it.” (Joshua Cohen)

“Generally therefore that were to be chosen, which passing silently through ponds and other receptacles, exposed to the sun and air, nearest approaching to that of rain, dropping from the uberous cloud, is certainly the most natural and nursing…” (John Evelyn)

WEB

1. A powerful project, even in photographic form » The ‘Stone’ figures of Point Woronzof

2. All but a few issues of the Guild of Book Worker’s Journal have been digitized and made available for free

3. “Everyone states an interest in craft and skill and ‘creativity’, but what really seems to make a thing stand out on the contemporary internet is a striking blend of the eccentric and the skilful, the intangible qualities of the ‘viral object,’ as opposed to the quiet joy of individual discovery.” » No longer collecting for ourselves

4. Meanwhile, Near Saturn…11 Years of Cassini Saturn Photos

5. Today in 1922, while his appeal was still pending, Irish novelist and nationalist (Robert) Erskine Childers is executed by a firing squad in Dublin. Over the course of his life, Childers—whose novel The Riddle of the Sands: A Record of Secret Service was one of the earliest espionage novels—swung from avid supporter of the British empire to radical, gun-smuggling Irish nationalist…but his downfall was being caught with a single .32 calibre semi-automatic pistol (ironically a gift from his former friend Michael Collins, from whom he had split over the latter’s role in the Provisional Government of Ireland of Ireland) in his possession. In addition to shaking the hands of every member of the firing squad before his execution, Childers made his young son—who would later become the president of Ireland—promise to seek out and shake the hand of every person who had signed his death warrant.

WATCH/WITNESS

Walt Disney’s Operation Wonderland » The video’s given description says enough: “Some weird man wants to find out how production on Alice In Wonderland is going. We see him enter the studio and given a tour by Walt Disney himself. Storyboards, music, line readings, Alice actress doing homework, live-action rehearsals, multiplane cameras, and Walt riding the Lilly Belle steam train all in one!” » Part 1 and Part 2

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. shares one good idea and one…no so good: “Please get Tom Hiddleston to read [Barbara Ganley’s] 'The Physics of Falling' for your next issue. ¶ And I never thought anyone could ruin the Gettysburg Address. I was wrong.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

She gave him a small kick, he gave her one back, she punched his shoulder, he grabbed her arm, she tripped him, he pulled her down, she landed on him face to face, they rolled and rolled and rolled until laughter in the deep loamy leaves until hugging until he brushed her marble-y breast until he kept his hand there and until what was this what was this but here he was here she was here they were and there his breath and here hers and there his hand and here hers rolling and rolling up there the trees waving at them and the sky beyond like that the surface and this the sea.

—Barbara Ganley
—from “The Physics of Falling”
—found in Sonora Review (Issue 68)

WORD(S)

marmoreal /mar-MOR-ee-əl/. adjective. Resembling or made of marble. Cold, hard and smooth. If I spun wax, I’d be DJ Marmoreal. From Latin marmor (marble).

"Eyes brimming o’er and brow bowed down with lovey
Marmoreal neck and bosom uberous…
(Robert Browning)

“And to my surprise, I was comforted. Somehow, the great Nobodaddy in the sky reached down a marmoreal hand and laid it on my burning brow and soothed me.” (John Banville)

“God, she looked huge. Her crimson, purple wings, in flight, obscured the roof-tree of the Imperial Circus. Yet those marmoreal, immense arms and legs of hers, as they made leisurely, swimming movements through the air, looked palely unconvincing, as if arbitrarily tacked on to the bird attire.” (Angela Carter)

WEB

1. Dammit!

2. Crass materialism at its finest…because 70 years of copyright protection isn’t enough? » Anne Frank’s Diary Gains ‘Co-Author’ in Copyright Move

3. “Is marginalia, finally, truly marginal?” » Atlas of Interest: On the Hidden Life of Marginalia

4. I might need to play with this in a letter or two » A “masked letter” from 1777

5. Today in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivers what has come to be seen—despite being just ten sentences long and initially receiving deeply partisan reactions—one of the most eloquent and influential political statements ever made: the Gettysburg Address. Now seems like one of those times politicians should take a few minutes to really read and think about Lincoln’s words, doesn’t it?

WATCH/WITNESS

Giang Dinh’s work is instantly recognizable and his short (5 minute) TEDx talk is wonderful: A simple fold, a thousand words | Giang Dinh

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. writes in on a visionary: “Engelbart is one of the great, under sung heroes of our time.”

• Reader J. catches me out on ‘enow’: "Well, first, I can’t believe you skipped the Rubaiyat (or: why am I the only one thinking of the Rubaiyat?)

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

• and more: “And then, on the history of ‘sleep music,’ one of my favorite Townes van Zandt stories. He said a record company asked him to make an album of lullabies. But then (he said) he realized that if it was any good, no one would ever hear the B side.”

• Reader S. had something to say about sleep music as well: “Your reference to Songs in the Key of Zzz reminded me of one of my favorite music compilations, Songs in the Key Of Z, an engrossing collection of outsider music. (Also a book by Irwin Chusid.) If you’ve never encountered the Shaggs, now’s your chance.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“A wall covered in spines, shelved from floor to ceiling, recognises the correspondence between bricks and books. It is the point at which knowledge becomes embedded in structure and the appearance is of books holding up the ceiling. The implication is that enlightenment, the journey towards the sky or the sublime is available within these pages. It is a metaphor made clearer by the special pieces of furniture, the chairs and stools which ingeniously convert to become ladders or in the sliding steps which glide along the floor scanning the shelves. And just as bricks humanise the scale of even a vast wall by introducing an element of human scale—a solid unit designed to fit perfectly into the hand, so books define the space and give scale to even the largest the wall. They are endlessly reproduced and faked in a game of trompe l’oeil in which their symbolic role alone is invoked. There are bookish wallpapers, there are rows of fake books spines, there are hidden jib doors hidden amongst the bookshelves which open, just as do books themselves to reveal another world and there are dealers who specialise in slightly-worn, leather-spined books by the yard, not for reading but for recreating a country house effect, the impression of history and wisdom. Already in the 1st Century AD Seneca swore by a small library, for knowledge rather than vanity, not ‘endless bookshelves for the ignorant to decorate their dining rooms.’”

—Edwin Heathcote
—from “Books”

WORD(S)

enow /i-NOW/. adjective or adverb. Enough. In archaic usage, a plural for enough. In Scottish dialect: a moment ago, just now or presently. From Old English genog (enough).

“There are enow of zealots on both sides.” (David Hume)

“His mere looks threw darts enow t’impress Their pow’rs with trembling.” (Homer, translated by George Chapman)

“Away, Away, John Carrion Crow,
Your Master hath enow
Down in his Barley Mow.”
(Thomas Bewick, from The History of Little King Pippin With an Account of the Melancholy Death of Four Naughty Boys, Who were Devoured by Wild Beasts. And the Wonderful Delivery of Master Harry Harmless, by a Little White Horse.)

“I like thy spirit, I do in truth; but I do not admire thy judgment. Bone-rackings and bastings be plenty enow in this life, without going out of one’s way to invite them.” (Mark Twain)

WEB

1. “English is not normal: No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language”

2. Songs in the Key of Zzz: The History of Sleep Music

3. Lightweight but interesting nonetheless…I think I need to do a lot of personal investigation. » What Are the Defining Ingredients of a Culture’s Cuisine?

4. I’ve gone all descriptivist but I can still laugh at the funnies by would-be grammar czars and punctuation police » 20+ Gifts For Friends Who Work For The Grammar Police

5. Today in 1970, engineer and inventor Douglas Engelbart is granted a patent for an “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System” or, as we all know and love/hate it, the computer mouse (see some pictures of the first mouse). Though Engelbart developed his idea independently, there were in fact both earlier versions of a mouse and a trackball, but both of these were part of secret military projects and thus not made public or patented. Engelbart’s invention was also referred to as “the bug,” but the mouse moniker became popular because the cord was thought to resemble a rodent’s tail. The 1981 Xerox Star workstation, officially called the Xerox 8010 was the first commercial workstation to ship with a mouse (and a graphical interface featuring folders, icons and many other now-standard features as well).

WATCH/WITNESS

“In 2001, Artist Ha Schult Wrapped a Former Berlin Post Office in Thousands of Oversized Love Letters Collected From the Public”.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. on a funny find: “Re: The Onion for nerds – Here’s The Onion for designers.”

• Reader M. on the insanity: “The Box of Crazy is what really introduced me to Reddit…How I wish I had never seen the Crazy.”

• Another Reader M.: “I love your newsletter so much.” — A real lifeline coming from this particular reader.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

Today’s word via Errata, Wordnik’s “Wordie” blog, which every logophile should be reading.

WORK

“Boo, Forever”

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
      top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
      you.

—Richard Brautigan
—from The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

WORD(S)

logolatry /lə-GAW-lə-tree/. noun. An unhealthy veneration or worship of words. Coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. From Greek logo- (speech, words) + -latry (worship of).

“What is the whole system from Philo to Plotinus, and thence to Proclus inclusively, but one fanciful process of hypostasizing logical conceptions and generic terms? In Proclus it is Logolatry run mad.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

“What Mark scroggins calls the poet’s ‘logolatry’ includes not just an entrancing litany of polysyllabic and arcane words but also a fondness for utterances of humbler origin.” (Harryette Mullen)

But as “Protestant ‘logolatry’ supplant[ed] the idolatry of which the reformers accuse Catholicism,” Shakespeare’s stupid puritans point to what was potentially dangerous about the cult of the ear. (Robert Hornback)

WEB

1. “Science news you won’t read anywhere else” AKA The Onion for nerds » The Allium [Thanks, Reader M.!]

2. “Insomniacs Unite! The Podcast That Bores You to Sleep, on Purpose”

3. “30 Gorgeous Tattoos Inspired By Great Books”

4. “The Guggenheim Launches Its First Ever Online Exhibition”

5. Today in 1954, Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young is born. The “Godfather of Grunge” (see also: Sleeps with Angels) and twice-member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Young’s voice—both literally and in the form of his guitar playing and songwriting—is instantly recognizable and undoubtedly unique. Surprising fact: Neil Young is an an avid model train enthusiast who bought into (and helped revive) the Lionel model train company and who owns multiple patents on model train technologies of his own devising. A few great videos ►“Helpless” at Massey Hall, 1971, ►“Old Man”, early 70s, ►“The Needle and the Damage Done (unplugged), 2012” and ►“Southern Man”, last month.

WATCH/WITNESS

A man finds an old box by a dumpster. He opens it. The contents get mysteriously and continuously weirder. Pair with comments on the “Box of Crazy”.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D. enjoyed the Sesame Street trivia: “Thank you for the factoids about Sesame Street. I did not know there was a day when there was no guest star for Sesame Street. It seems such an integral part of the show. I do like the idea of the Cookie Monster liking everything wheel-shaped (cookies, included). ¶ The poem is very nice, too.”

• As did Reader C.: “Loved the Sesame Street trivia. Thanks for sharing!”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

    It looks nice in the snow

            getting lost
                        where I used to get lost

—Larry Eigner
—from Things Stirring Together or Far Away

WORD(S)

nyctography /nik-TAH-grə-fee/. noun. A form of shorthand invented by Lewis Carroll using a system of dots and strokes. Frustrated with waking and trying to capture ideas in the dark—or go through the cumbersome lamp-lighting process only to have to extinguish it a few moments later—Carroll invented this shorthand for use with a 16-square gridded card he called the Nyctograph. Maybe it’s just me, but couldn’t Carroll just use regular letters inside the squares? Test your nyctographic reading skills with the book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: An edition printed in the Nyctographic Square Alphabet devised by Lewis Carroll. From Greek nycto- (relating to night) + graph (related to writing).

“Any one who has tried, as I have often done, the process of getting out of bed at 2 a.m. in a winter night, lighting a candle, and recording some happy thought which would probably be otherwise forgotten, will agree with me it entails much discomfort. All I have now to do, if I wake and think of something I wish to record, is to draw from under the pillow a small memorandum book containing my Nyctograph, write a few lines, or even a few pages, without even putting the hands outside the bed-clothes, replace the book, and go to sleep again. … I tried rows of square holes, each to hold one letter (quarter of an inch square I found a very convenient size), and this proved a much better plan than the former; but the letters were still apt to be illegible. Then I said to myself ‘Why not invent a square alphabet, using only dots at the corners, and lines along the sides?’ I soon found that, to make the writing easy to read, it was necessary to know where each square began. This I secured by the rule that every square-letter should contain a large black dot in the N.W. corner. … [I] succeeded in getting 23 of [the square-letters] to have a distinct resemblance to the letters they were to represent.” (Lewis Carroll)

WEB

1. Some of these are astounding…from micropoetry and “linguistic serendipity” to imaginary moths. Don’t let the fact that Twitter is the platform for the experiments keep you from checking them out. » The 12 Weirdest, Funniest, Smartest Twitter Bots

2. Web Poets’ Society: New Breed Succeeds in Taking Verse Viral

3. The UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive contains digitized recording of more than 10,000 wax cylinders (dating back to 1893!) including vaudeville, Broadway, opera, famous speeches and the fascinating Recorded Incanabula. And there are thousands more awaiting your adoption.

4. Like his music, his life was sad and beautiful. » The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous

5. Today in 1969, Sesame Street—the program that taught me, and I suspect many others, to read—debuts on PBS. It has run there without interruption until sometime in the next month or so when it will move to HBO (with episodes appearing on PBS after HBO’s 9-month exclusive). The product of a grant worth more than $50 million in today’s dollars and the first show to be constructed based on educational research, Sesame Street debuted to high ratings and intense controversy about the effects of television on children. I don’t know about that, I just know I was addicted…and for many years was convinced Luis was my biological father. Even though I was 13 at the time, I still watched the show sometimes and cried when Mr. Hooper died (“we all feel sad”). Some trivia: Snuffleupagus was, for 15+ years, invisible to adults…whenever Big Bird tried to introduce him the adults couldn’t see him. This was changed because producers worried that the portrayal would discourage children from reporting abuse. Oscar the Grouch was originally orange (and in a now banned episode fell in love with the Wicked Witch of the West). Cookie Monster was created by Jim Henson for a commercial—he was then ►the “Wheel Stealer” AKA the Cracker Monster, I guess—years before the show. Ernie’s song ►“Rubber Duckie” reached #16 on the Billboard charts. The Count was born on October 9, 1,830,653 B.C. Big Bird is 8’ 2". James Earl Jones was the show’s first guest star…he ►recited the alphabet in 1979.

WATCH/WITNESS

The Poetry of Perception is “an eight-part video series [~20 min total] on representations of perception and sensation” featuring animations and work by Whitman, Dickinson and Williams. — Only 6 parts are available so far.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader P. is a confirmed Clamorer: "Ha! Just stumbled across sehnsucht and immediately knew it was a katexic type of word. Indeed, referenced Sept 29th! — And you can see sehnsucht in Logocopia.

• Reader J. on phatic and, um, “interruption phenomena”: “Roman Jakobson designated as one of his six functions of any speech act one ‘oriented towards contact,’ and he called it the phatic function. He, too, liked the example of various ‘empty’ greetings, but also ‘interruption phenomena,’ like ‘uh,’ ‘um,’ etc.—those gap-fillers in our utterances that make listeners aware that we’re not finished speaking. My teacher Al Cook used to extend it also to the holiday phone call in which we merely make contact with a string of uncles and aunts and cousins who are eating over at grandma’s house. An interesting phenomenon: when I explain vocal gap-fillers to my class by pointing them out in my own speech, I get caught in a loop where I can’t stop noting them (or, more exactly, where I have to rip myself away from attending to them as distinct from the actual content of what I’m talking about).”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

In a manner so delightful it almost makes me forgive myself, Reader B. called me out with the following clever note after the last issue: “Letheans 6.9:14?” It took me a few minutes to figure it out: I used demonym as a WORD before…on June 9 of last year! Not only did I repeat it in the last issue, I repeated some of the exact same examples. Le sigh. So, an increasingly rare 3rd issue this week.

And I wonder what Gardiner (below) would make of email?

WORK

“In the great sense letter-writing is no doubt a lost art. It was killed by the penny post and modern hurry. When Madame de Sevigny, Cowper, Horace Walpole, Byron, Lamb, and the Carlyles wrote their immortal letters the world was a leisurely place where there was time to indulge in the luxury of writing to your friends. And the cost of franking a letter made that letter a serious affair. If you could only send a letter once in a month or six months, and then at heavy expense, it became a matter of first-rate consequence. The poor, of course, couldn’t enjoy the luxury of letter-writing at all. De Quincey tells us how the dalesmen of Lakeland a century ago used to dodge the postal charges. The letter that came by stage coach was received at the door by the poor mother, who glanced at the superscription, saw from a certain agreed sign on it that Tom or Jim was well, and handed it back to the carrier unopened. In those days a letter was an event.”

“Now when you can send a letter half round the globe for a penny, and when the postman calls half a dozen times a day, few of us take letter-writing seriously. Carlyle saw that the advent of the penny post would kill the letter by making it cheap. ‘I shall send a penny letter next time,’ he wrote to his mother when the cheap postage was about to come in, and he foretold that people would not bother to write good letters when they could send them for next to nothing. He was right, and the telegraph, the telephone, and the postcard have completed the destruction of the art of letter-writing. It is the difficulty or the scarcity of a thing that makes it treasured. If diamonds were as plentiful as pebbles we shouldn’t stoop to pick them up.”

—A. G. Gardiner
—from “On Letter Writing” (1916!)

WORD(S)

phatic /FA-dik/. adjective. Speech or speech sounds that are intended to communicate emotions or affirm a social connection rather than convey information. For instance, the standard “How are you?” greeting for which no reply is necessary or expected. Trivial or purely formal speech. From Greek phatos (spoken).

“The doctor’s long speeches—customarily phatic and ceremonially polite—say little but sing much.” (William H. Gass)

“Every night, the 10-Port cabin steward, Petra, when she turns down your bed, leaves on your pillow—along with the day’s last mint and Celebrity’s printed card wishing you sweet dreams in six languages—the next day’s Nadir Daily, a phatic little four-page ersatz newspaper printed on white vellum in a navy-blue font.” (David Foster Wallace)

“Who is the enemy? We fully trained soldiers asked ourselves in Vietnam. The corrupt Diem family? Francophobes among the Chinese? The lieutenant’s West Point professors? The phatic orators in Congress?” (Barry Lopez)

“It was he who wanted to talk! The driver was content to dispense with phatic thanks and chatter.” (Samuel R. Delaney)

WEB

1. Dumb Cuneiform will take your tweets and convert them to clay tablets. Really.

2. “Here is the story of Maureen ‘Mo’ O’Neill. She spent her days mainly alone. She didn’t have many friends, she was getting older, she didn’t know who she was. After work she could never summon up the inspiration it took to get off the couch and leave the house. But that’s when she discovered the solution that opened up the world to her, competitive air guitar.”

3. Arkadiusz Podniesiński’s amazing photo essay on Fukushima, living and abandoned

4. Brian Lehrer talks with Roman Krznaric about his Empathy Museum.

5. Today in 1867, physicist and chemist Marie Skłodowska Curie is born in Warsaw. Curie, famous for her work on radioactivity (her exposure to it would ultimately kill her; in fact, her papers remain so radioactive today that they are stored in lead-lined boxes and those who wish to consult them must wear protective gear) and x-rays, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a 2nd Nobel and remains the only person to win that highest honor in multiple sciences (physics and chemistry). Curie’s work was epic scientifically and socially…but throughout the remained modest and charitable: paying back her her early scholarships, donating most of her Nobel money and refusing to patent her work in order that further research not be hindered. Many institutions—scientific and cultural—have been named after Curie, as have various elements and minerals—and her likeness has appeared on all kinds of art and currency. Upon her death, Curie became the first woman to be entombed in the Panthéon based on her own work. Another way Curie’s legacy lived on: in 1935 her daughter, Irène, also won the Nobel prize. Good watching: ►Marie Curie: Great Minds.

WATCH/WITNESS

“The lesser-spotted Adele is about to be everywhere, again…” » Sir David Attenborough narrates Adele’s “Hello”.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader T. writes in demonymically: “Used to be a Tokite (Toker?), but I’m happy to be a new New Mexican—although getting older every day—and a proud, if gringo, Burqueno.”

• Reader D. asks: “Was the ‘call’-ing in your subject line intentional? Because, you know, Marian Call?” — Yep.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Autumn”

I walk outside the stone wall
Looking into the park at night
As armed trees frisk a windfall
Down paths that lampposts light

—Samuel Menashe
—from Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems

WORD(S)

demonym /DEM-ə-nim/. noun. A word that identifies people from a particular place, e.g. American, Liverpudlian or Seattlite. Coined by Paul Dickson, of Merriam-Webster, in 1997 as a back-formation of demonymic. From Greek demos (populace) + -onym (suffix for name). See also domunym and gentilic.

Some interesting demonyms: Accidentals (Accident, Maryland), Munchers (Munich), Tangerines (Tangiers), Hatters (Medicine Hat, Alberta), Jovian (Jupiter), Cretans (Crete…come on, it’s a little funny), Abba-Zabbas (Albania, preferred over Albinos) and Nutmegger (Connecticut, funny history there).

“His designation ‘Chaldean’ no doubt points to the astrological thought of his time, as opposed to being a demonym for Babylonian natives.” (Francesca Rochberg)

“Let’s find out if you can tell the difference between a Cestrian (a resident of Chester, England) and a Cytherean (a hypothetical inhabitant of the planet Venus). Test your familiarity with demonyms…” (Richard Nordquist)

WEB

1. Continuing last issue’s moving-images theme: Moving Movie Posters. Clever.

2. Marian Call, favorite of Katexic and the Clamor, is issuing Yippee Ki Yay, her awesome (and unique) holiday album, on CD (and the usual digital). And she’s on tour (South, East and Far North USA). But anyone, anywhere can purchase “custom voicemail carols for the holiday season, deliverable on Solstice, on Christmas Eve, or on New Year’s Eve.” See Marian’s site for details.

3. Dakota Death Trip is compiling, from archival sources, “Tales of the tragic, harsh, strange, and amazing lives of those brave enough to claim the Northern Plains as home.”

4. Chaz Hutton’s post-it note illustrations/graphs/comics. Pairs well with Jessica Hagy’s classic Indexed work.

5. Today in 1639, the first post office is established in the American colonies. Located in the home of Richard Fairbanks and established by the General Court of Massachusetts: “For preventing the miscarriage of letters, it is ordered, that notice be given that Richard Fairbanks’s house in Boston is the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas, or are to be sent thither,’ to be brought unto; and he is to take care that they be delivered or sent according to their directions; and he is allowed for every such letter one penny, and must answer all miscarriages through his own neglect in this kind; provided that no man shall be compelled to bring his letters thither, except he please.” When you think about it (well, when I think about it, anyway), the U.S. Postal Service remains a rather amazing accomplishment. It’s too bad that, despite making a profit of over 300-million dollars in the last quarter, politically-motivated myths about its unprofitability and unviability continue to proliferate. It will be a sad day if the service is finally shuttered.

WATCH/WITNESS

“…O NE CHIEFLY NEEDS SWIFTNESS IN BANGING THE KEYS. THE MACHINE COSTS 125 DOLLARS. THE MACHINE HAS SEVERAL VIRTUES I BELIEVE IT WILL PRINT FASTER THAN I CAN WRITE. ONE MAY LEAN BACK IN HIS CHAIR & WORK IT. IT PILES AN AWFUL STACK OF WORDS ON ONE PAGE. IT DONT MUSS THINGS OR SCATTER INK BLOTS AROUND.” → Read more about Mark Twain’s first typewritten letter at the always fab Letters of Note.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader F. on memorizing poems: “I can’t say enough about how much richness memorizing poems has brought to my life in ways both obvious and much-less so. Thanks for sharing Dahlia Lithwick’s article.”

• On Twitter, Reader A. dives: “The internet rabbit hole gobbles me up—that clip on Props leads me to Raging Cinema tumblr.”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Too few people understand a really good sandwich.”

—James Beard
—from Beard on Bread

“Enjoy every sandwich.”

—Warren Zevon
—from an interview with David Letterman, February 2008

WORD(S)

futhark (futhorc, futhork) /FOO-thork/. noun. The runic (ancient Scandinavian) alphabet, named after the initial phonemes of the first six runes: F, U, Th, A, R and K. The futhorc is the name of the Anglo-Saxon variant, representing sound changes in Old English for the same six letters.

“Elder Futhark inscriptions were rare, with very few active literati, in relation to the total population, at any time, so that knowledge of the runes was probably an actual ‘secret’ throughout the Migration period.” (World Heritage Encyclopedia)

“Fairchild tipped the shot to his life and relaxed the craving. The man sitting next to him did the same for himself and waited with his hands in front him on the bar, the black penitentiary futharks on them blurred by trembling.” (Denis Johnson)

“In the Middle Ages, runes were used for divination and casting spells. As is shown in the Anglo-Saxon poem, the H´vam´l of the Elder Edda, it was a basic requirement of a rune master to know how to perform ‘the Sending’. Rune casting was fiercely condemned by the medieval Church as witchcraft and was poorly documented. So we have little knowledge about which futhark (or alphabet) was used by medieval rune readers in Britain or the interpretation they put upon the castings.” (Karen Maitland)

WEB

1. The Wellcome Library Internet Archive already contains thousands of scanned volumes including collections on Sexology and Forensics, with plans to put 15 million more pages into its 19th century medical books archive over the next two years. Absolutely fascinating browsing.

2. Earliest Known Draft of King James Bible Is Found. Pair with the inimitable Christopher Hitchens’ Blessed Are the Phrasemakers, on the making of the King James Bible.

3. Dahlia Lithwick on why you should memorize poems. I can’t agree with her characterization that doing so is “kale for the soul,” but I can relate to those moments where “I have stumbled backward into a memory of a stanza or a phrase that suddenly made the moment briefly beautiful, and connected, and deep.”

4. I Love TV Intros collects just what the title says (serious, too-much-time-in-front-of–70s-tv nostalgia alert).

5. Today is National Sandwich Day, celebrating the supposed eponymous invention of John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich. Montagu is said to have invented the sandwich as a convenient means of sustenance while he spent 24 straight hours at the gambling tables (the original sandwich, thus, was roast on toast). I’m willing to believe the story and further believe this should be an internationally recognized day. But I’m also hungry. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that Americans consume more than 300 million sandwiches every day. Linkage: Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches; the world’s longest sandwich (over 2400 feet long); classic ► Mr. Bean making a sandwich.

WATCH/WITNESS

“A look at the hidden power of film props…”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader C. writes: “Is it just me or do we live in an era of increasing numbers of increasingly bad portmanteau words? Libtards, Chrislam, Cuckservatives?” — Sturgeon’s law applies, I think.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“Hen”

The hen is the best example of what living constantly with humans leads to. She has completely lost the lightness and grace of a bird. Her tail sticks up over her protruding rump like a too large hat in bad taste. Her rare moments of ecstasy, when she stands on one leg and glues up her round eyes with filmy eyelids, are stunningly disgusting. And in addition, that parody of song, throat-slashed supplications over a thing unutterably comic: a round, white, maculated egg.

The hen brings to mind certain poets.

—Zbigniew Herbert (translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott)
—from The Collected Poems: 156–1998

WORD(S)

futilitarian /fyoo-til-ə-TAIR-ee-ən/. noun or adjective. One who is devoted to futile pursuits or believes in the futility of aspiration. A portmanteau of futile + utilitarian; coined by Robert Southey.

“If the Utilitarians would reason and write like you, they would no longer deserve to be called Futilitarians.” (Robert Southey)

“Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a futurist, a futurologist and a futilitarian.” (Lore Sjöberg)

“Better an ‘Old Futilitarian of the dead American left’ than a surf-rider on the Wave of the Future.” (Irving Howe)

“They are infinite, I am thinking, all these hungry, grasping people chasing after the new and improved, the super and imperishable, and I stand alone against them—but that’s the kind of thinking that led me astray all those years ago. Better not to think. Better not to act. Just wave the futilitarian banner and bury your nose in a glass of sake.” (T.C. Boyle)

WEB

1. The George Eastman House photo collection is a great place to spend some time. The albums are a good starting point. I particularly enjoyed the Autochromes featuring color photography from the 1910s, and the Lincoln Conspiracy albums.

2. An exceptionally well-written story that could have gone wrong in so many ways. Good stuff. → American Horror Story: The Cecil Hotel

3. “I am simply a Native American artist and writer whose creative mantra in best summed up with a word from my tribe’s own language as: ‘taʔčaʔx̣ʷéʔtəŋ’, which means ‘get into trouble’.” → Jeffrey Veregge Art, Design and Mischief

4. An interview with Peter Mendelsun, book cover designer extraordinaire (and some of his best designs) [Thanks, Reader B.!]

5. Today in 1924, poet, essayist and playwright Zbigniew Herbert is born in Lwów, Poland. Herbert’s poetry is plainspoken and often, thanks to the prominence of World War II and its aftermath in his life—a time in which he saw his hometown destroyed and replaced, essentially, with a concentration camp and he became active in the resistance—tragicomic. In Herbert’s work the extremes of beauty, even rapture, and despair are plain…as is the tragic and comedic circumstance of humanity as we are constantly ground between them. I’ve featured Herbert’s poems and prose here multiple times and heartily recommend his Collected Poems as a must-have for any poetry reader (the cover photo is awesome too).

WATCH/WITNESS

I’d never heard of it until now but ► contact juggling is mesmerizing. Sometimes it looks like the juggler has three hands, other moments seem impossible without CGI (which I don’t think is being used).

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader W. on a poetry coincidence: “Not sure if you know that Sylvia Plath and Dylan Thomas share a birthday.” — I realized that when I was preparing the last newsletter. Serendipitously, the owner of a ‘daily’ poems list I belong to shared this inspired pairing: ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ and ‘Poppies in October’. Bonus: listen to ► Sylvia Plath reading her poem and listen to ► Dylan Thomas reading his accompanied by a creepy animation.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“There is a sort of sweet madness about you and me, a sort of mad bewilderment and astonishment oblivious to the Nasties and the Meanies; you’re the only person, of course your’re the only person from here to Aldebaran and back, with whom I’m free entirely; and I think it’s because you’re as innocent as me. Oh I know we’re not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the road and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don’t know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don’t.”

—Dylan Thomas
—from a letter to Caitlin McNamara, 1936
—found in The Collected Letters (edited by Paul Ferris)

WORD(S)

agathist /A-gə-thist/. noun. One who believes things naturally tend toward the good. A systemic optimist. An adherent to the doctrine of agathism, a doctrine of optimism and a life devoted to the good. From Greek agath (good).

“From the agathist point of view, religion at its best is self-conscious, disciplined pursuit of knowledge of the good plus devotion to it. Such a life may or may not involve belief in a personal, transcendent God.” (Richard E. Creel)

“The existence of evil compels Dr. Miller to substitute the moderate title of ‘Agathist’ for that of ‘Optimist.’ Pawns, therefore, must fall, and bishops; but he will in part indemnify us by pointing out the reason.” (The Edinburgh Review)

WEB

1. 99% Invisible visits the USPS Dead Letter Office. The results are intriguing and disappointing; so much more should have been done, so many more stories produced.

2. ‘NPR Voice’ Has Taken Over the Airwaves. Pairs well with: An Example. Of. The NPR Podcast. Voice. And Why It’s. So Annoying.

3. I love the close attention Medium pays to typography and design. Their latest, on getting quotation marks right, is a typographical primer replete with info for type geeks. As was their piece on crafting link underlines. And pilcrows. They even have a typographical pod at their office…

4. Worth checking out just for the few photos of these remarkable books » A magical glimpse into the Tudor imagination: Lost library of John Dee to be revealed

5. Today in 1914, poet Dylan Thomas is born in Swansea. Thomas’s dazzling linguistic gifts have been obscured by the stories (and myths) of his destructive, alcoholic behavior and early demise as well as the curious and paradoxical diminishing that accompanies continuous inclusion in anthologies and references in popular culture. But give even his most anthologized poems such as “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” or “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” (both written when Thomas was a teenager) or “Do not go gentle into that good night” some slow, attentive reading time and be amazed anew at one of the greatest English wordsmiths.

WATCH/WITNESS

►Starlings Take Off at 200 Frames Per Second. Awesome.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. on Lorca: “It’s fascinating how different is Lorca’s Wall Street from our own. ¶ ”herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science" ¶ now Wall Street contains tons of quants, and thrives on science. The parts about gold and death still hold, though.

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

"The truly savage and frenetic part of New York…the terrible, cold, cruel part, is Wall Street.

Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills this street believes that the world will always be the same, that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever. This is what comes of a Protestant morality that I as a (thank God) typical Spaniard found unnerving.

I was lucky enough to see with my own eyes the recent stock-market crash, where they lost several million dollars, a rabble of dead money that went sliding off into the sea. Never as then, amid suicides, hysteria, and groups of fainting people, have I felt the sensation of real death, death without hope, death that is nothing but rottenness, for the spectacle was terrifying but devoid of greatness. And I, who come from a country where, as the great father Unamuno said, ‘at night the earth climbs to the sky,’ I felt something like a divine urge to bombard that whole canyon of shadow, where ambulances collected suicides whose hands were full of rings."

—Federico García Lorca (translated by Christopher Maurer)
—from Poet in New York

WORD(S)

cackle-bladder (cacklebladder) /KA-kəl BLA-dər/. noun. A tiny bag, or in modern times a capsule, of fake blood held in the mouth and used to counterfeit coughing up blood in order to fix a boxing match, participate in a con or play a part on stage or screen (or is that just another form of confidence game?). Originally filled with chicken blood, making the etymology obvious…

“Liddell shrugged. ‘It came off the shirt of an old-time con man. I’ve got a sneaking hunch it was a cackle-bladder. Cool off.’” (Frank Kane)

“Had him running around the country and took him for twenty-thousand dollars, then we blew him off with a cackle bladder in Buffalo, New York.” (Michael Kurland)

"It tells you how they work on the mark’s own larcenous cravings for a killing, how they build him up to betting his entire stake—and then ‘put the chill on’—via the ‘cackle bladder’ routine." (Billboard, June 16, 1951)

WEB

1. Feast and Phrase | Gastronomy in the world of words

2. “We asked renowned neuroscientists, physicists, psychologists, technology theorists and hallucinogen researchers if we can ever tell whether the ‘reality’ we are experiencing is ‘real’ or not. Don’t worry. You’re going to be ok.” (I’m not so sure) » Is the world real, or is it just an illusion or hallucination?.

3. Issues #1–49 (1987–1999) of ETCetera, the magazines of the Early Typewriter Collectors Assocation, are online (free)

4. Digging Up The Bones Of Billy The Kid

5. Happy Fechner Day. Today in 1850, German philosopher, physicist and experimental psychologist, Gustav Fechner wakes from a dream with an inspiration on how to study the mind and perception: instead of asking people to think about their perceptions, Fechner had the idea to vary an external stimulus (like the brightness of a light) and ask people when they could detect a difference. In this way Fechner, building on the work of Ernst Weber, developed a scale that related changes in physical intensity to changes in perceptual intensity: Fechner’s Scale/Law (turns out the relationship is logarithmic). Fechner’s work was the start of the new and continually fascinating field of psychophysics.

WATCH/WITNESS

“A drone pilot taking a look at a giant wind turbine was startled to find a man sunbathing on the top of it. Kevin Miller flew the drone all the way up the 200ft turbine to find the mystery man flat on his back catching some rays…”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. exclaims: “LONG LIVE THE WATERBEARS.”

• Reader F. on the ‘the rise, and rise, of literary annotation’: “Annotation might be on the rise in all kinds of new forms (I’m looking at you Hypothes.is) but is any of it any good (I’m looking at you Genius)?”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

"If and when humans do establish a greater and more durable presence in space we may have the Waterbear, also called the Tardigrade, to thank. In an experiment in 2007, helpfully labelled ‘Tardigrades in Space’, numbers of this tiny animal spent ten days in orbit without any protection and lived. They withstood the almost complete vacuum and temperatures ranging from of –272.8°C (which is very close to absolute zero) up to +151°C. They survived a dose of cosmic rays one thousand times as high as would kill a human and shrugged it off. When exposed to direct solar radiation in addition to the cosmic rays, a large proportion of the test subjects bit the dust (in as far as there is any in the near vacuum of space) but, still, many survived. No other multicellular animal looks to be remotely capable of this. Perhaps, in the long term, the characteristics that enabled them to endure will be of use to humans…or our successors.

A typical Waterbear is about the size of the full stop at the end of this sentence. Under a microscope it looks something like a roly-poly teddy bear—if a teddy bear were to have claws, red eyes and two extra pairs of legs. The phylum has been around, little changed, since at least the Cretaceous and perhaps the Cambrian, and is more closely related to velvet worms and arthropods than anything else. (In appearance, Waterbears are more like Velvet worms; in ubiquity, more like arthropods.) There are about 750 different species of Waterbear on Earth today, living in almost every conceivable habitat from ice shelves to hot springs, from the tropics to the polar regions, and from more than 6,000 metres up in the Himalaya range to marine sediments in the abyssal zone more than 4,000 metres below sea level. In the laboratory they can withstand pressure six times as great as that felt at the bottom of the deepest ocean. This animal is what they call a polyextremophile, happy in many different extreme environments."

—Caspar Henderson
—from The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: a 21st Century Bestiary

WORD(S)

zoilus /ZOH-i-ləs/. noun. A bitter, envious, even malignant critic given to unjust faultfinding. Coined after the Ancient Greek critic of the same name who was famous for his criticism of Homer, leading to his nickname Homeromastix (scourge of Homer) and his place in the proverb that “every poet has his Zoilus.” None of Zoilus’s writing has survived.

“I am unable to prevent my own Zoilus from imitating a bright and saucy schoolboy, but really he should not tell me how to spell the plural of ‘automaton’ which has two endings, both correct. And what business does he have to rebuke me for preferring Theocritus to Virgil and to insinuate that I have read neither?” (Vladimir Nabokov)

“As Homer had a Zoilus, so Mr. Rowe had sometimes his; for there were not wanting malevolent people, and pretenders to poetry too, that would now and then bark at his best performances…” (Samuel Johnson)

“Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will Merit as its shade pursue,
But like a shadow proves the substance true…”
(Alexander Pope)

WEB

1. More Titillated Than Thou: How the Amish conquered the evangelical romance market

2. Absolutely fascinating…and well-written enough for non-scientists like myself (even if the subtitle of the piece is a sophisticated kind of clickbait) → How Big Can Schrödinger’s Kittens Get?

3. “American history is told through the use of surnames from gravestones…” → Place. See also the artist/author’s previous Stonecipher: A Book of Seasons

4. On “the rise, and rise, of literary annotation”

5. Today in 1977, the plane chartered by the band Lynyrd Skynyrd crashes while attempting an emergency landing in Gillsburg, Mississippi, killing lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backup vocalist Cassie Gaines along with a manager and both pilot and co-pilot. The remaining band members reunited just once in early 1979 to perform an instrumental version of their famous song “Free Bird” (with the Charlie Daniels Band). Many other versions of the band have followed but none have approached the chemistry of the original lineup. Here’s the last time “Free Bird” was played and professionally recorded just a few weeks before the crash. And, arguably, one of their best complete concerts (it really is a great song despite being overplayed). Incidentally: the band’s name was an homage, of sorts, to gym teacher Leonard Skinner, who taught (and objected to the long hair of) several of the band members. Skinner would later become friends with the band and one of their albums featured a photo of his realty business sign inside.

WATCH/WITNESS

“…a millimeter-long tardigrade crawls on moss.”

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader F. writes in about last issue’s WORK and WORD: "Well, Calvino has about covered it! I am going to rearrange my bookshelves. ¶ And ‘finical’ made me think for some obtuse reason of ‘pernickety,’ which looks totally wrong without the ‘s’ that everyone puts in front of the ‘nickety.’ ¶ Actually, ‘finical’ sounds more architectural, while ‘pernickety’ seems more person-based.

• Reader J. sends me (and perhaps you) in search of a unique book: “When I discovered Calvino I went on an absolute Calvino bender, from the early Path to the Nest of Spiders through the books you mention. But my favorite of all–especially if you want to luxuriate in a metatextual mud-/mod-bath, is the matched double novella, The Invisible Knight and The Cloven Viscount. His image of horsemen charging upon each others’ lances and being sproinged over the heads of the groundlings will be with me forever. (And by the way, if you can get your hands on, and can swing the price of, the original Castle of Crossed Destinies with its full-color plates of the tarot deck that maps the narrative, grab it.)”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

A longer WORK today (maybe the longest ever). But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that the Clamor is full of bookworms who will appreciate Calvino’s rumination on the infinite reading list.

WORK

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

• the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,
• the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
• the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,
• the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,
• the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
• the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
• the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).

—Italo Calvino
—from If on a winter’s night a traveler

WORD(S)

finical /FIN-ə-kəl/ adjective. Overly particular; excessively fastidious. In architecture: inordinately delicate and detailed. Likely derived from fine, possibly from Dutch fijnkens (accurately, neatly). See also: foppish, finicky and perjink.

“While he ate, which he did with the finical niceness of an aged and dyspeptic gourmet on the umpteenth course of an imperial banquet, he would glance up at me now and then with a speculative and, so it seemed, drily amused expression.” (John Banville)

“Time was when I was thought entitled to respect. But now, debauched by this Frenchified rascal, they call me rude, surly, a tyrant! It is true that I cannot talk in finical phrases, flatter people with hypocritical praise, or suppress the real feelings of my mind. The scoundrel knows his pitiful advantages, and insults me upon them without ceasing.” (William Godwin)

“Now, the wry Rosenbloom is dead
And his finical carriers tread”
(Wallace Stevens)

“Scrupulous to the last, finical to a fault, that’s Malone, all over.” (Samuel Beckett)

“Now, mark you, I was devilish sharp set. I was in no mood to quibble about trifles: I was not, shall we say, in a finical mood.” (Philip Larkin)

WEB

1. “There are thieves in the archives and we don’t even know it.” → The Unseen Theft of America’s Literary History [Thanks, Reader B.] And this reminded me of the great Criminal podcast episode “Ex Libris”

2. These Are Words Scholars Should No Longer Use to Describe Slavery and the Civil War

3. Keith Houston (you have read Shady Characters, right?) strikes again, this time with the counter-intuitive history of the “%” sign. Hint: it has nothing to do with the digit zero. → Miscellany № 59: the percent sign

4. Because there just aren’t enough covers of songs using the stuff of the songs themselves → [“99 Red Balloons” played with red balloons]

5. Today in 1923, journalist, novelist and short story author Italo Calvino is born in Cuba. Calvino’s range was vast, but he leaned toward the challenging end of the spectrum. Even his most traditional stories have a touch of the fantastic about them, as you would expect from pioneer in metafictions that are sometimes as much puzzle as narrative (this was, after all, the man who said, “most of the books I have written and those I intend to write originate from the thought that it will be impossible for me to write a book of that kind: when I have convinced myself that such a book is completely beyond my capacities of temperament or skill, I sit down and start writing it”). If the names Borges, Beckett and Carroll arouse your interest, Calvino’s work will too. If you’re new to Calvino I recommend (in this order): The Baron in the Trees, Cosmicomics and If on a winter’s night a traveler. And if you haven’t read it yet, the Paris Review “collage” or “oblique interview” is required Calvino-related reading.

WATCH/WITNESS

The “origami inspired” cardboard Lexus that took a team of five designers more than three months to assemble out of 1700+ laser-cut pieces.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader H. on last issue’s WORD: “I could tell you how much I love paraprosdokians, but if I did I’d have to kill you.”

• Reader W. noticed: “Logocopia! Why have you been hiding this!?” — I keep thinking I’ll find time to fill in all 220+ historical words first…

• Reader F. shares a follow-up: “The Oregon Shakespeare Festival has responded to the controversy over its ‘translations.’”

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.

WORK

“We were excited about getting jobs; we hardly went anywhere without filling out an application. But once we were hired—as furniture sanders—we could not believe this was really what people did all day. Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone’s job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had a rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music.”

—Miranda July
—from “Something That Needs Nothing”
—found in No One Belongs Here More Than You

WORD(S)

paraprosdokian /pair-ə-prohs-DOH-kee-ən/ noun. A figure of speech featuring a surprise turn or ending. A common rhetorical device in comedy exemplified by the one-liners of Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg and Woody Allen. From Ancient Greek pará (against) + prosdokía (expectation). Some examples of paraprodoskians:

“I haven’t slept for ten days…because that would be too long.” (Mitch Hedberg)

“If all the girls at Vassar were laid end-to-end…I wouldn’t be surprised.” (Dorothy Parker)

“There but for the grace of God—goes God.” (Winston Churchill)

“It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” (Woody Allen)

“If I could just say a few words…I’d be a better public speaker.” (Homer Simpson)

“The last thing I want to do is hurt you—but it’s still on the list.” (Steven Wright)

WEB

1. Did you know Benjamin Franklin proposed a reformed alphabet for English? A brief paper by Nicola Twilley provides a lot of great information on Franklin’s creation, among others. And the optimistic, “has the time finally come?” conclusion—thanks to the Palm Pilot and digital fonts—is priceless.

2. Decoding the Range: The Secret Language of Cattle Branding

3. American Science & Surplus (I like the ampersand in the name; I'd like it even better in their company acronym) sells all kinds of—well—“incredible” stuff you don’t know you need. Yet.

4. There’s A Public Typewriter Booth In Tompkins Square Park

5. Today in 1915 Charles Hamilton Sorley—despite his youth one of the most important of the World War I poets—is shot and killed by a German sniper in Loos, France. Most of Sorley’s poems were recovered from his kit, though his body never was. The poems, such as ► “When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead” (read by Tom O'Bedlam) and “Such, Such is Death” speak for themselves. Thanks to the Internet Archive, you can also read Sorley’s letters (includes a useful biography).

WATCH/WITNESS

El Caminito Del Ray: The World’s Most Dangerous Walkway has re-opened (click through for more photos and nausea-inducing video). No thanks.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader D. is spot-on, particularly in the last two sentences: “That’s an interesting piece about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I wonder, too, about what happens to Shakespeare’s language when they do that. Shakespeare’s plots were never much (copies of other people’s plays): it was the language and the wordplay that made them standout. I think of operas–I once realized while telling someone the plot of Tosca that it sounded silly. It was hard to convey why I liked it so much. It was the music, not the plot that carried the meaning and emotion. Shakespeare’s language is his music. Without it, the plays seem rather silly and overdramatic (maybe like our own lives at times?). Its his language that makes them transcend the plot into the spiritual, reminding us that it is the soul that really matters. I just don’t know about tinkering with his music.”

• My thanks to all in The Clamor who brought the typo in the very first line of the last issue to my attention. It’s not that they don’t happen occasionally, but in the very first line? [le sigh]

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

And please feel free to share anything here as far and wide as you want! If you want to give a shout-out, please link to: http://katexic.com/clippings/.