The Daily Blague

After spending the day watching an infant whose nervous system has yet to advise him that his head will always interrupt the arc of his backward-swinging fist discover his body, I spent the evening watching a troupe of men and women at the top of their form stop on dime after dime. The two experiences interbled, but only because Paul Taylor, the prince of euphoria, has not lost track of how we begin.

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¶ Matins: A few days ago, Felix Salmon looked at the Zachary Kouwe plagiarism hoo-haw at the Times and took the opportunity to share an incredibly interesting insight: print media companies still don’t understand blogging. We’ve been chewing it over, and we’ve decided that we do.

¶ Lauds: Fundamentally silly but still full of goodies: Michael Kimmelman on Caravaggio (stop it with the Michelangelo already!) at the Times.

¶ Prime: What, exactly, is the “national debt” — besides scary-huge, that is? Bruce Bartlett lays it out, and, frankly, we recommend that you skip this part. (Capital Gains and Games; via Marginal Revolution)

¶ Tierce: Laura Miller discusses David Shenk’s explosive new book, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong, admitting that it left her somewhat shaken. (Salon; via 3 Quarks Daily)

We have always suspected that, in a nation of post-Calvinists, genetic determinism is a naturally compelling misreading of the hard facts.

¶ Sext: Now what? Now that the Oscars have been awarded, what’s a Hollywood blogger to do? Speakeasy asks a couple of writers.

¶ Nones: The pith of Martin Wolf’s provocative Financial Times piece about Germany’s “Eurozone nightmare:”

¶ Vespers: What with Christopher Hitchens stuck in the limelight, we sought relief — and, hoo boy, found it! — in Christopher Tayler’s arch-browed LRB review of the Latest Volume of Clive James’s memoirs, The Blaze of Obscurity: The TV Years.

¶ Compline: Nick Paumgartner’s “The Ski Gods,” a riveting look into the sport’s dark side, lies on the other side of the firewall at The New Yorker, but Christopher Shea comments on two of its major points at Brainiac. First, the invented tradition thing. Second: why no women jumpers?

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Plan A was to run a round of errands in the afternoon. Plan B was to catch up on the overdue Portico pages that have so alarmingly piled up (several books, three New Yorker stories, a movie, a play, and a concert). In the end, I settled on Plan C, because, after lunch, I felt both sleepy and gassy. The gassiness contraindicated gadding about, and the sleepiness ruled out writing. So I sat in my reading chair and swallowed Jonathan Dee’s The Privileges.

The day wasn’t a total loss. After the pizza that I ordered when Kathleen announced her homecoming, I sat down at my writing computer and sketched a lot of notes. It isn’t the same as writing, by any means, but at least it captures the raw material for writing that I so easily forget if I don’t write things down.

Why do I ever think that I’ll be able to remember something? Oh, there are plenty of things that I have no trouble remembering — but I’m never cautioned to write them down. The mystery at the moment is the crunchy alternative to sliced apple that I hit on when I adapted the curried chicken salad from Island, the Madison avenue bistro that Kathleen and I head off to on the odd Sunday afternoon. What can it have been? And how can I forget something that was perfect.  

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¶ Orbit designs a book cover. (via The Awl)

¶ Jean Ruaud’s crooked flues. (Mnémoglyphes)

¶ More Michigan Central Station photographs. (The Infrastructurist)

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¶ Matins: Joe Jervis reports a weird but deplorable press release from the Patriots For A Model Utah, announcing proposed legislation to deport homosexuals from the state. However seriously it is intended to be taken, Joe’s concern is not without foundation

¶ Lauds: Eduardo Porter, reflecting on the brief Oscars blackout, wonders if it wouldn’t make sense to pay Disney the seven cents an hour it seems to want, and to stop thinking of television as “free.” It’s a question of how much your time is worth. (NYT)

¶ Prime: Jeffrey Pfeffer outlines a method for tying CEO compensation to company performance. (What? You thought that they were already linked?)(The Corner Office)

¶ Tierce: Why, if the brain is so smart — one of Jonah Lehrer’s readers wants to know why, “if the brain is so smart, why do half of all marriages end in divorce?” Mr Lehrer has some scientific things to say (”We adapt to our pleasures; we habituate to delight.”), but his ultimate authority seems to be Shakespeare. (The Frontal Cortex)

¶ Sext: All about pockets. (BBC; via The Morning News)

¶ Nones: Peter Mair sketches the new political landscape in the Netherlands, where the government collapsed last week on the issue of sending troops to Afghanistan.

¶ Vespers: Jim Behrle tells you everything that you need to know in order to become a celebrated poet “overnight.” It’s as funny as ground glass! (via The Awl)

¶ Compline: Our friend, George Snyder, reflects on the overlooked fact (it suits no one’s ego) that it’s not a good idea to expect your interesting friends to like each other. Case in point: Interior designer Herman Schrijver (1904-1972).

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Later on, in a few years, I hope to be reporting that Will O’Neill and I have had a super time dashing through the city, crossing against the lights and cadging free rides on garbage trucks. For the time being, though, I’m not only not going to make up stories about grandfatherly escapades (or steal them from Wes Anderson movies). I’m going to treat Will’s visits as sacrosanct — as all but unmentionable. What you can’t see, I can’t say.

I’m reminded of something that happened a few years ago. A very nice French gentleman ran a blog called Journal d’un vrai Parisien. Perhaps you read it, too. The Journal runs no more, because the Vrai Parisien fell in love, and he very prudently concluded that he could not conduct normal blogging activities while developing an intimate relationship. At some point, the lady’s privacy would have to be compromised. Not because the VP had a juicy story that he couldn’t resist sharing, but because the blog simply wouldn’t make sense without a few corroborative details.  

Happily, I face no such dilemma. I’ve got plenty of other stories to bore you with. But if I go silent every now and then, you’ll know why: I’ve been burping.

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¶ Matins: At 3 Quarks Daily, Richard Eskow posts an extremely thoughtful piece about a technogenic disease, mesothelioma, for which a vaccine appears to be in the offing. Should we congratulate ourselves for finding a cure, or scold ourselves for having unleashed the underlying disease?

¶ Lauds: Here’s why our position on artworks more than one hundred years old is firmly socialist: “Michelangelo letters up for grabs as Renaissance archive goes up for sale.” (Guardian)

¶ Prime: Robert Shiller urges us to reconsider the national preference for home-ownership, taking care to understand the preference as a cultural product, not an economic calculation. (NYT)

¶ Tierce: Jeremy Dean considers the strategy of playing hard to get. (PsyBlog)

¶ Sext: At The Awl, Choire Sicha has a few words about Elinor Burkett. (Nice, linked words!)

¶ Nones: Reading Tom Downey’s report on the Chinese phenomenon of “human-flesh searching,” we can only be grateful that Mao Zedong did not live to exploit the Internet. (Times Magazine)

¶ Vespers: Silje Bekeng writes drolly about the Jante Law and contemporary Norwegian literature. (n + 1; via Three Percent)

¶ Compline: At Speakeasy (which is, after all, a blog run by the Wall Street Journal), Gerard Baker reflects, in a Tacitan undertone, on the absence of political comment during this year’s Academy Awards presentation.

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Remembering how nearly I almost fell into crankiness yesterday, I was going to write about my new weekend regime, which is centered on the idea that Sunday is a day of rest. Of rest and review. Of cooking my head off, if friends are coming to brunch. What it is not for: organizing closets, sorting through old Christmas cards — you know what I’m talking about. La drudgerie. On Sunday, the apartment ought to sport very clear decks.

And it didn’t, certainly not yesterday. But never mind about all of that now. Ever since I read the latest page at Number 27, Jonathan Harris’s often engaging Web site, I haven’t been able to summon much interest in my housekeeping problems. Sorrow, occasioned by the death of a bright young man over the weekend, won’t let go. I feel the dimensions of the hole that his dying has left in the lives of his bright young friends, certainly; but, as a new grandfather, my heart lurches out to his parents.

So here is the link. “How sad,” indeed. “How very sad.”

My friend Jean Ruaud discovered Mr Harris’s Web site during the holiday season, and I’ve been following it ever since. Pretentious as this sounds, I think of Number 27 as a Bildungsblog, as the record of a man’s character development. Not that one’s character ought to be very fluid by the time of one’s thirtieth birthday — the occasion that inspired Mr Harris to inaugurate his photo-a-day site. In today’s world, however, thirty is the new thirteen, minus the hormones, at Mr Harris’s level of privilege. Life has been so varied and interesting that it is only now beginning to sink in that some of the varied and interesting people with whom his path has intersected do not themselves lead varied and interesting lives. In fairness, perhaps, it sank it some time ago, but I sense, in the epigrammatic, sometimes vatic notes that Mr Harris strikes, that my point is being felt and discovered. 

This must be why, even though the young man is in his physical prime and quite capable of taking care of himself, Jonathan Harris seems to me to be one of the most vulnerable creatures on earth. Because of his very giftedness (which he still hasn’t sorted out, of course), one senses the gods’ gimlet stare, poring for a weak spot. Isn’t that what happened to poor Tom over the weekend? (I almost typed, “the weakened.”) It’s not clear whether anybody knows why Tom toppled from his fire escape — but it doesn’t seem to matter. At some fatal level or other, he lost his balance, and that is all there is to it.

Now I shall stop, lest I compound my presumption.

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¶ Hilobrow’s newly-appointed magister ludi illustrates krabbatophily.

¶ Daughter of film royalty — certainly. But with those parents? (Café Muscato)

¶ All-purpose trailer. (Gawker)

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The prospect of watching the Academy Awards broadcast has never appealed to me, even when, as recently, I’ve seen most of the nominated films. I remember the bad old days, when the show was plagued by kitschy and interminable dance numbers. (There seemed to be an idea about that, in order to appeal to millions of viewers,the Oscars ought to mimic the Las Vegas extravaganza.)Last night, though, it seemed not only that the show had gone back to its roots but that it was doing so in a manner that a seasoned audience could follow.

As entertainment, the presentation is one of countless parodies that, year after year, accompany the kind of ritual ceremony best known as “graduation.” Replacing solemnity with mockery, talented wits roast the leading personalities of the closing year. Tics are exaggerated and pratfalls commemorated. The Academy Awards actually run the two programs together, and if you are familiar with Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos you know how tricky the conjunction can be. Giggles and exaltation require careful buffering. Even more, the giggles have to be prompted by the right kind of silliness.

Among many favorable indicators last night — the band’s Fifties vibe, the voluminous skirts — it was the fishing rod that convinced me that the Oscars producers are getting it right at last. Ben Stiller, presenting the makeup award, came out in Na’vi drag, complete with funny ears, yellow corneas, and a tail. (And a suit.) This outfit neatly eyelined the fact that Avatar was not a nominee in the category. Looking wonderfully uncomfortable, Mr Stiller barked some gibberish and explained that it was Na’vi for “it seemed like a good idea at rehearsal.” Then, just as he was opening the envelope to announce the winner, his tail was snagged by a fishhook. After a bit of tugging, the actor reeled in the rod from the wings.

Without fussing over the unpacking of this gag, I think that we can agree that the incursion of a fishing rod into the dream that is Pandora constitutes the droll Dada of a Bugs Bunny romp. It also reminds us that Avatar is a cartoon.

You didn’t have to understand the fine points to get a laugh out of the cutup,  but if you did, or thought that you did, then you belonged amongst the horde of family and friends customarily invited to spectate at such productions. You could sigh and think that, maybe next year, that nice Professor Streep will win the distinguished-faculty award. 

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¶ Exploding banana mask: demented Zen. (via The Awl)

¶ Vintage Micro Fish Reader. (You Suck at Craigslist)

¶ Baby Gaga. (The Awl)

¶ Rush Limbaugh’s House of Horribles. (Gawker; via Joe.My.God)

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¶ Matins: The American Scholar has reprinted a speech, “Solitude and Leadership,” delivered by writer and critic (and former Yale prof) William Deresiewicz to the plebe class at West Point last October. It is an important speech, probably because it follows its own advice. Mr Deresiewicz offers no canned adages about leadership, and in fact he never discusses the skills required in order to command others. What concerns him is the moral self-awareness that can be achieved only after long and serious self-interrogation.

¶ Lauds: At the Guardian, Tanya Gold describes her visit to the Jewish Museum in north London, and her adventures in Yiddish drama with comedian David Schneider at the museum’s “tiny interactive theatre.”

¶ Prime: At the Guardian, Tanya Gold describes her visit to the Jewish Museum in north London, and her adventures in Yiddish drama with comedian David Schneider at the museum’s “tiny interactive theatre.”

¶ Tierce: Felix Salmon quite brilliantly compares the monoculture of genetically-modified crops to CDOs — and it’s brilliant because each side of the comparison illuminates the other.

Essentially, you’re trading a large number of small problems for a small probability that at some point you’re going to have an absolutely enormous problem.

¶ Sext:  Sam Sifton has quickly established himself as a peerless reviewer of restaurant experiences. Each piece is a memoir, rich in incidental associations. He doesn’t think a whole of Choptank, ‘way down on Bleecker Street, but we’re always on the lookout for awesome fries. (NYT)

¶ Nones: Back from the dead, as it were, Yukos Oil stakeholders have brought a claim for whopping damages against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights. (NYT)

¶ Vespers: Jessica Ferri reviews Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy, by Melissa Milgrom, at The Second Pass. Learn, among other things, about the power behind Damien Hirst, a “short-haired, chain-smoking battle-axe who finds beauty in death.”

¶ Compline: James Crabtree and Nicholas Christakis take the social-network-contagion findings apply them to politics. (About time.) But the fascinating passage relates to Brian Uzzi’s study of Broadway production teams over more than forty years. (Prospect; via 3 Quarks Daily)

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As I write, I’m listening to something that I haven’t heard in well over twenty years. The last time that this music was in my library, it was on an LP. Very likely, I probably still have the LP, in storage. I can well imagine that, the last time I looked at it, I promised myself that I would make a tape recording. Because tape was still the only other game in town. Then, along came modern times, pretty much like the Jamestown Flood. Lots was lost.

But a phrase stuck in my mind, and so did the knowledge that this phrase was written by Alexander Borodin, my favorite Russian composer. (I think of  Tchaikovsky as a Baltic writer, classed with Sibelius and Grieg, and not as a true Russian.) I thought for the longest time that the Borodin phrase came from a piano trio, but in fact it turns out to come at the end of the composer’s Piano Quintet in c.

When I acquired the LP — I’m not entirely sure that I actually paid for it; this would have been during my radio days in Houston — it was unusual in featuring chamber music from outside the Viennese-classical canon. Like most callow youths, I regarded chamber music as either ennobling or boring, and possibly both, but never as fun. And the Borodin, despite its minor-mode signature, is fun. And when it’s not being fun it’s gorgeous, the way the sun on the snow is gorgeous after your first all-nighter with a significant other.

The work on the flip side of the LP was Mendelssohn’s Piano Sextet, Op 110. I picked up the Naxos recording of that a while back, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. What I was looking for is what I’m listening to right now, this very minute. I wish that I could whistle it for you.

When you re-read a novel that made a big impression twenty or thirty years ago, when you read it the first time, you find yourself wondering if you’ve actually ever read it before: books change, and that’s, in the end, the mosts lovable thing about them. Novels are always new.

Music, at least for me, is just the opposite. Oh, I’m not saying that this Borodin quintet “takes me back.” It doesn’t. The only thing that it reminds me of is a time when I thought that it was very beautiful, and I think that it’s beautiful right now in very much the same way. As with a book, I hear things that I didn’t hear the first time, but the sense of seeing an old friend again as if no time had intervened is very strong, and pretty terrific.

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¶ Matins: In a discussion with with Christine Smallwood, at The Nation, philosopher Martha Nussbaum isolates the irrationality of disgust, and argues that it ought not to be allowed to influence the discussion of gay marriage.

¶ Lauds: The obituary, in Gramophone, of Bernard Coutaz, founder of classical recording label Harmonia Mundi. Don’t miss the video clip. (via Arts Journal)

¶ Prime: Don’t blame Wall Street for the European debt mess. Blame Jacques Chirac. His politically-savvy victory in 1996 rendered debt regulation fairly toothless. (Wall Street Journal)

¶ Tierce: The earthquake in Chile may have shifted the planet’s axis, and shortened the day by microseconds. (Sidney Morning Herald; via cityofsound)

And, at The Infrastructurist, Melissa Lafsky discusses the “strong column, weak beam” technology that was instituted in Chile after the 1960 quake, and which may be credited with saving many lives.

¶ Sext: The Rumpus interviews Web log pioneer Jason Kottke. We have always admired Mr Kottke’s fundamental humanism.

¶ Nones: So, does Chinese spokesman Zhao Qizheng mean that the US gets to pick the radio station? We’re reminded of Lord Macartney’s Embassy. (BBC News)

¶ Vespers: At The Millions, fiction writer Victoria Patterson confesses that she can’t write at home. But she knows how to make writing in public work for her.

¶ Compline: Why Tony Judt believes that “‘Identity’ is a dangerous word. It has no respectable contemporary uses.” We could not more whole-heartedly agree. (NYRBlog)

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What to do with the pile of fiction — that is the question.

At bottom, I suspect that there was some sort of train wreck: books that novels weren’t entirely congenial, all being read at once. Two are rather hard-boiled (Falconer and Hard Rain Falling) while two are British/Overseas (How to Paint a Dead Man and Bone China). All are well written, but all have strokes against them. I don’t want to read about (a) prison life, (b) marginal frequenters of pool halls, (c) being stuck in a crevasse — another kind of prison, or (d) decayed colonial gentry. No one could make these topics interesting to me, so all that good writing is rather thrown away. I read with pleasure but only after having forced myself to open the books; and I never want to go back for more.

Instead, what I want to read is The Night Climbers, a caper novel that falls somewhere between The Secret History and Dorothy Sayers. Ian Stourton has acquired his title by the ingenious clipping of a longer one: The Night Climbers of Cambridge, by the pseudonymous Whipplesnaith. Originally published in 1937, The Night Climbers of Cambridge has been brought out more recently by Oleander Press. Here is the opening of Chapter Eleven, “Trinity.”

With the Guide-book in our pocket and high expectation in our hearts we go to Trinity, the aristocrat of the college climbing-grounds. King’s can offer some more severe climbing, St John’s has strong counter attractions in the New Tower and the Bridge of Sighs, the Old Library is a safter romping-ground, but Trinity heads the list. It has everything in its favour. It is more extensive than other colleges, and offers every variety of easy and difficult climbing test. The roof-hiker can wander over many furlongs of roof-tops, alone with his thoughts in an empty world, so near and yet so far from the world of sleeping men below.

There is nothing quite like the austere, “I want to be alone,” rogue male British undergraduate. He knows nothing of the world, but he already overflows with its cares. Treating the university as a pocket Himalaya is a good way to clear the mind, what?

By Ian Stourton’s day — The Night Climbers appeared in 2008 — the sleeping men below were approximated by sleeping women, sometimes very closely. Otherwise, I expect, his Cambridge would not be unrecognizable to Whipplesnaith.

I don’t recall how I found out about night climbers. It was in connection with the Daily Office, of course, and I may even have given the matter a link or two. But what I also did was to go Amazuke and order books. Of course it was a mad impulse. I would never be a night climber; it’s not my kind of mischief at all. (I altogether lack the desire to “prove myself physically,” whatever that means.) And I still don’t understand just how Oxbridge functions as an educational institution. There seem to be fearsome examinations, but what comes before has never quite made sense. The Night Climbers of Cambridge suggests that the point of a university education has little to do with classrooms.

But I was always in or about some sort of trouble as an undergraduate; frankly, I think it’s a miracle that I lived through it. (There were at least two serious brushes with fatality — even if neither broke the skin.) And I am going to bring my experience to bear on the pleasure of reading The Night Climbers (the novel). The only thing more terrifying than recalling my reckless collegiate exploits is to imagine my little grandson growing up to follow in my footsteps. It ought to be very scaring.  Watch for tweets.

It would seem that the thing to do with the fiction pile is to ignore it. Maybe it will just go away.

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¶ You never know: Harry Truman’s last letter written as vice president — signed later, too. (Letters of Note)

¶ Why You Can’t Work At Work. (Big Think; via Felix Salmon)

¶ Shocking cat abuse — seriously! (The Awl)

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¶ Matins: Now this is more like it: the Coffee Party. Kate Zernike’s account is almost too good to be true. (NYT)

¶ Lauds: Steve Smith writes, lucidly as always, about the Kronos Quartet. (We believe that everyone ought to have at least one album.) (NYT)

¶ Prime: At New York, Justin Davidson reports on proposals to make New York safe from rising sea levels precisely by opening up to them.

¶ Tierce: Melissa Healy confirms our suspicions: merely listening to music doesn’t build better brains. (LA Times; via Arts Journal)

¶ Sext: Dave Bry may be getting to the bottom of his barrel of sins, and, frankly, he doesn’t sound altogether penitential, but we found, after we read the story, that “No, you shut up” is a truly refreshing remark. (The Awl)

¶ Nones: We never did understand how “North Atlantic” comprised the Black Sea: at Real Clear World, Daniel McGroarty reports on Russia’s determination to restore its hegemony on the inland sea despite neighboring NATO alliances. (via The Morning News)

¶ Vespers: At The Rumpus, a long and occasionally bizarre interview with an interestingly strange lady, Paula Fox.

¶ Compline: “Weaponizing Mozart“: Haven’t the Brits read A Clockwork Orange? (reason.com; via MetaFilter)

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Journée de paperasse. As I intended it to be. For one thing, there was the lamp issue from Gracious Home to settle.

To understand the lamp issue, you must also understand the Quatorze frugality. Last Wednesday, I bought a pile of stuff at two branches of Gracious Home on Third Avenue. (There are three separate store-fronts at the moment: the original hardware store, the linens and china shop across the street, and the lamps and plumbing fitures outlet catercornered to the southeast. Quatorze and I foresee consolidation.) I bought stuff and “had it delivered.” Q was almost beside himself that I didn’t just carry what was carryable. Why have it delivered? Because I always have things delivered. I read once that a gentleman doesn’t even carry a handbag, much less a package, and while I’m not quite that austere, and often lug heavily laden tote bags to and from the storage unit, I take advantage of delivery services wherever they’re available.

When the halogen lamp, marked down, on sale, to $300, wasn’t delivered, Q swallowed his Schadenfreude and advised me to make some calls before the weekend. I disregarded that advice as well.

So, today, I had a situation. I was on the phone for quite a while, explaining various coded messages that I won’t bore you with to various personages. (Namely, the fact that I received two shopping bags, each of which was labeled “1 of 2,” an ominous mistake, especially as there ought to have been a 3rd.)

On the telephone this morning, the gentleman at Gracious Home’s shipping department was rightly skeptical for a while — I can only imagine what blue-haired scattiness keeps him hopping from day to day — but by deploying the scissorhands that I developed in law school (clarity and documentation!) I eventually coaxed a halfway grudging determination to cooperate. When the lamp was eventually located in a dark corner of the store’s premises, grudging cooperation became abject apology. I felt that I ought to apologise, too — if I hadn’t tried to combine two deliveries from different branches into one, the lamp would never have been mislaid (I’m quite sure of this) — and we wound up the conversation with wreaths of mutual thanks. The lamp arrived about two hours later, forty minutes before a further call told me that it was on its way.

A happy ending; but Q would have eschewed the drama. 

Kathleen said, “I like the new lamp!” Of course it was for her — a halogen table lamp that will allow her to see what she’s doing at the writing table in the bedroom. She sounds forbearing in the story as I tell it because she decided to let me buy the lamp, and she decided to let me buy the lamp because she didn’t want to hear about an ugly purchase. So I bought a handsome lamp (reasonably handsome; halogen is so Sixties), and it took forever to arrive.

We all pick our battles. Even Quatorze.

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