H.L. Mencken on insect terminology: U.S. v. U.K.
February 27, 2012 | Comments Off
My latest New York Times Magazine columnlet draws on a passage from H.L. Mencken’s The American Language (1921) about the word “bug.”
“An Englishman,” he says, restricts its use “very rigidly to the Cimex lectularius, or common bed-bug, and hence the word has highly impolite connotations. All other crawling things he calls insects. An American of my acquaintance once greatly offended an English friend by using bug for insect. The two were playing billiards one summer evening in the Englishman’s house, and various flying things came through the window and alighted on the cloth. The American, essaying a shot, remarked that he had killed a bug with his cue. To the Englishman this seemed a slanderous reflection upon the cleanliness of his house.”
In a footnote, Mencken elaborates: “Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Gold Bug’ is called ‘The Golden Beetle’ in England. Twenty-five years ago an Englishman named Buggey, laboring under the odium attached to the name, had it changed to Norfolk-Howard, a compound made up of the title and family name of the Duke of Norfolk. The wits of London at once doubled his misery by adopting Norfolk-Howard as a euphemism for bed-bug.”
Even today, slang guru Jonathon Green confirmed when I asked him on Twitter, the UK “does use ‘bedbug’ but otherwise, I would say UK still mainly [uses] ‘insect.’” A British friend of mine agrees. Nowadays, though, she says, “bug has no connotations of uncleanliness, it’s just not used. The only time an English person says bug to mean insect is ‘don’t let the bedbugs bite’ and no modern British person’s ever had bedbugs, so it’s just a saying, not an insult! We know that it’s a general American term for insect, but we tend to call insects by their species, generally — fly, beetle, ladybird, etc — or, if we need a catch-all euphemism, we’ll say ‘creepy-crawly’ or in Scotland ‘beastie’ (or ‘wee beastie’).”
As the plague spreads, visitors to the UK may wish to make linguistic adjustments.
Tags: bedbugs > bugs > hl mencken > insect
Talking with Ellen Ullman about By Blood
February 24, 2012 | Comments Off
Ellen Ullman’s By Blood is a dark, brooding, and marvelous novel that doesn’t really resemble anything else, though disparate elements of it remind me of so many stories I love. The book combines a disturbing confessional intensity, as in Coetzee’s Disgrace, Lasdun’s Horned Man, and Tartt’s The Secret History, with a paranoid claustrophobia akin to that of The Conversation, Coppola’s surveillance masterpiece. Surprises from strange and terrible historical alleyways bring to mind Schlink’s The Reader and Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s The Informers. And the philosophical underpinnings recall, in their unobtrusiveness and urgency, the best of Iris Murdoch.
Don’t miss Parul Sehgal’s admiring (and profound) review in the weekend’s New York Times Book Review.
I talk with Ullman on Thursday, March 1, at Book Court, at 7 p.m. She will also read, and we’ll celebrate the release of this wonderful book into the world. Join us if you’re free.
Cabbing it with Charles Dickens
February 12, 2012 | Comments Off
My latest New York Times Magazine mini-column is on London’s taxi drivers, who memorize 25,000 streets and 20,000 landmarks to obtain a license; they emerge from the training with a larger hippocampus. In the smaller city of his day, Charles Dickens also mastered the city’s roads — to avoid being overcharged. But eventually, as he explains in an essay published in 1860 in All the Year Round, an interview with one man left him with “a more charitable view of the business and trials of cab-driving.”
My wife, accompanied by a servant, and our first-born, an infant, aged three months, had started, one November afternoon, to visit a relative at the other side of London. The day was misty, but when the evening came, the whole town was filled with a dense fog, as thick as soup. I gave them up at an early hour, never supposing that they would attempt to break through the black smoky barrier, and accomplish a journey of nearly nine miles. In this I was mistaken, for towards eleven o’clock the door-bell rang, and they presented themselves muffled up like stage-coachmen. The account I received was, that a four-wheeled cab had been found, that they had been three hours and a half upon the road, that the cabman had walked nearly the whole way with a lamp at the head of his horse, and that he was now outside awaiting payment.I felt a powerful struggle going on within me. The legislature had fixed the price of cab-work at two shillings an hour, or sixpence a mile, but it had said nothing about snowstorms, fluctuations in the price of provender, or November fogs. There was no contract between my wife and the cabman, and she had not engaged him by the hour, so that, protected by the Act of Parliament, I might have sent out four-and-sixpence for the nine miles’ ride by the servant, and have closed the door securely against the driver. Actuated, perhaps, as much by curiosity, as a sense of justice, I did not do this, but ordered the man in, and gave him the dangerous permission to name his own price. He was a middle-aged driver, with a sharp nose, and when he entered the room, he placed his hat upon the floor, and seemed a little bewildered by novelty of his situation.
“If I am to, I am,” he said,” but I’d my rather leave it to you, sir.”
“This is a journey,” I replied, “hardly within the meaning of the act, and whatever you charge, I will cheerfully pay.”
“Well,” he said, with much deliberation, “I don’t think five shillin’s ought to hurt you?”
As you probably know if you encountered any news source of any kind last week, February 7 was the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth. In honor of the occasion, the Guardian filmed Simon Callow on Dickens’ London, the British Council sponsored a readathon, A.N. Devers visited London, Sam Anderson recalled a visit to Dickens World, and Ralph Fiennes introduced the Morgan Library’s special exhibition and signed on to play Dickens in The Invisible Woman.
Coincidentally, I’ve been gearing up to re-read my favorite Dickens novels: Bleak House and Great Expectations. Several years ago I visited his only surviving house in London.
Tags: anniversaries > cabbies > charles dickens > hackney carriage > nytmag
The Chimerist: my and Laura Miller’s new site
February 7, 2012 | Comments Off
One thing I really like about my friend Laura Miller is that she, like me, is fascinated by literature and technology, and interested in the places they meet. Sometimes that intersection feels like a lonely place to hang out.
We both have iPads and (though we’re appalled by Apple’s employment practices) are excited about the potential of tablet computers. But we haven’t found many sites that talk about them in the way we would like them to be talked about. So we decided to start The Chimerist: Two iPad lovers at the intersection of art, stories, and technology. And fun.
My first post is here, and, if you’re also a tablet lover, we’re looking for your screenshots.
Tags: ipad > laura miller > tablets > the chimerist
Ray Bradbury’s robots, and more
February 7, 2012 | Comments Off
I’m behind on everything around here, even linking to my New York Times Magazine mini-columns. Recently I’ve written about: plans to turn the old Miami Herald building into a casino; Laurie Anderson’s stint as Andy Kaufman’s sidekick; the (partial) realization of Ray Bradbury’s dream of robot teachers; and, courtesy of Madeline Miller and Plato, The Iliad as love story between Achilles and his man Patroclus.
Bradbury’s comments about robot teachers appeared in a 1974 letter to Brian Sibley. And his short story, “I Sing the Body Electric,” about a girl and her electric grandmother, inspired one of my favorite old Twilight Zone episodes — favorite even though it gave me nightmares — and a mini-series (clip above).
Tags: achilles > electric grandmother > iliad > madeline miller > miami herald > patroclus > plato > ray bradbury > robot teachers > south florida landmarks > twilight zone
The orangeless childhood of Bertrand Russell
January 18, 2012 | Comments Off
I’m still obsessed with the life and writings of Bertrand Russell, and I keep meaning to post the passage from his autobiography that inspired one of my recent New York Times Magazine microcolumns, on Victorians’ belief that fruit was bad for children. Here it is:
I remember an occasion at lunch when all the plates were changed and everybody except me was given an orange. I was not allowed an orange as there was an unalterable conviction that fruit is bad for children. I knew I must not ask for one as that would be impertinent, but as I had been given a plate I did venture to say, ‘a plate and nothing on it’. Everybody laughed, but I did not get an orange. I had no fruit, practically no sugar, and an excess of carbohydrates. Nevertheless, I never had a day’s illness except a mild attack of measles at the age of eleven. Since I became interested in children, after the birth of my own children, I have never known one nearly as healthy as I was, and yet I am sure that any modern expert on children’s diet would think that I ought to have had various deficiency diseases. Perhaps I was saved by the practice of stealing crabapples, which, if it had been known, would have caused the utmost horror and alarm. A similar instinct for self preservation was the cause of my first lie. My governess left me alone for half an hour with strict instructions to eat no blackberries during her absence. When she returned I was suspiciously near the brambles. ‘You have been eating black-berries,’ she said. ‘I have not,’ I replied. ‘Put out your tongue!’ she said. Shame overwhelmed me, and I felt utterly wicked.I was, in fact, unusually prone to a sense of sin. When asked what was my favorite hymn, I anwered ‘Weary of earth and laden with my sin’. On one occasion when my grandmother read the parable of the Prodigal Son at family prayers, I said to her afterward: ‘I know why you read that — because I broke my jug.’
A little earlier on, Russell establishes that this grandmother, who raised him, “ate only the plainest food, breakfasted at eight, and until she reached the age of eighty never sat in a comfortable chair until after tea.”
The impression Russell leaves of his boyhood self is a lonely, anxious, and searching one. Reading about his long, solitary days, I kept wishing someone would swoop in, give him some candy, and whisk him off on a fishing trip or to the fair or something.
His friend Annabel Huth Jackson recalls him in her A Victorian Childhood (which he quotes) as “a solemn little boy in a blue velvet suit with an equally solemn governess…. [E]ven as a child I realised what an unsuitable place it was for children to be brought up in. Lady Russell always spoke in hushed tones and Lady Agatha always wore a white shawl and looked down-trodden. Rollo Russell never spoke at all. He gave one a handshake that nearly broke all the bones of one’s fingers, but was quite friendly. They all drifted in and out of the rooms like ghosts and no one ever seemed to be hungry.”
The image above is W.C. Rainbow’s watercolor of Pembroke Lodge, Russell’s childhood home, painted in 1883. And below is an 1884 photograph of Russell’s grandmother, the Dowager Countess Russell; you can read an entire book about her, and if this fixation continues I probably will.
Tags: bertrand russell > dowager countess russell > nytmag > oranges > the prodigal son > victorians
At Full Stop: The situation in American writing
January 4, 2012 | Comments Off
Full Stop interviewed me about literature, politics, criticism, and the responsibilities of writers, as part of a series called “The Situation in American Writing.”
Others who’ve answered the same questions: Marilynne Robinson, Alexander Chee, Victor LaValle, Porochista Khakpour, Geoff Dyer, Gary Shteyngart, T.C. Boyle, Roxane Gay, George Saunders, Aimee Bender, Siddhartha Deb, Christopher Bollen, Steve Himmer, Laura van den Berg, John Warner, Dana Spiotta, Philipp Meyer, Kio Spark, Danielle Evans, Lars Iyer, and Darin Strauss.
Muriel Spark + Maggie Smith = a better January
January 4, 2012 | Comments Off
Muriel Spark, Jean Brodie, Maggie Smith, and Downton Abbey feature in my most recent New York Times Magazine micro-column.
Smith is best known now for her role as the Dowager Countess, but she won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Muriel Spark’s dramatic and overbearing schoolmistress in the 1969 adaptation of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. It’s the perfect apéritif for the second season of Downton Abbey, which airs on PBS this Sunday. And obviously the novel is even better.
Speaking of drinks, if you’re looking for something wintry to cut the sting of January, and if you have good heat and don’t mind juicing a big bag of clementines, I recommend Rosie Schaap’s wondrous Bitter Darling, my last drink of 2011.
Tags: bitter darling > dowager countess > downton abbey > maggie smith > muriel spark > nytmag > the prime of miss jean brodie
William Faulkner’s hot toddy recipe
December 21, 2011 | Comments Off
Twitter was so excited about William Faulkner’s mint julep yesterday that it seemed wrong, especially at the holidays, to withhold his cure for anything from “a bad spill from a horse to a bad cold, from a broken leg to a broken heart.” (So said Dean Faulkner Wells.)
I’ll stick with Kate’s hot toddy, personally. But here, as told to The Great American Writers’ Cookbook by Faulkner’s niece, are directions for making his version.
Pappy alone decided when a Hot Toddy was needed, and he administered it to his patient with the best bedside manner of a country doctor.He prepared it in the kitchen in the following way: Take one heavy glass tumbler. Fill approximately half full with Heaven Hill bourbon (the Jack Daniel’s was reserved for Pappy’s ailments). Add one tablespoon of sugar. Squeeze 1/2 lemon and drop into glass. Stir until sugar dissolves. Fill glass with boiling water. Serve with potholder to protect patient’s hands from the hot glass.
Pappy always made a small ceremony out of serving his Hot Toddy, bringing it upstairs on a silver tray and admonishing his patient to drink it quickly, before it cooled off. It never failed.
See also Rosie Schaap’s glogg and gingersnaps, Eudora Welty’s recipe for “Charles Dickens’ eggnog,” Faulkner’s bourbon trolley, Kate Christensen’s food (and life) blog, Ford Madox Ford’s Provencal chicken, and my winter cold Rx.
Portrait of William Faulkner by Carl Van Vechten, via the Library of Congress.
Better science through sci-fi: Stephenson & NASA
December 21, 2011 | Comments Off
My most recent New York Times Magazine mini-column concerns Neal Stephenson’s — and NASA’s — efforts to encourage scientific and technological innovation through speculative fiction.
See also Stephenson’s “Innovation Starvation” speech, NASA’s partnership with TOR Books, Arthur C. Clarke’s predictions for the future (made in 1964), Isaac Asimov’s Visions of the Future (he starts speaking at 6:45 of part 1, above; here are parts 2, 3, and 4), and Asimov on the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Tags: arthur c clarke > innovation > isaac asimov > nasa > neal stephenson > nytmag > sci-fi
When the place outlives the preaching
December 12, 2011 | Comments Off
The Crystal Cathedral of “Hour of Power” fame is the subject of my latest New York Times Magazine mini-column. Not so long ago the most lavish symbol of U.S. Protestantism, the building sold in bankruptcy last month to a Catholic diocese.
Although the congregation has agreed under the terms of the deal to vacate the premises after three years, pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman, daughter of founder Robert H. Schuller, assures her flock, “lest you think that it’s too late for a miracle, I want to reassure you and remind you that it is not too late. There is still time for God to step in and rescue Crystal Cathedral Ministries.”
Bonus reading: Joseph Clarke’s “Infrastructure for Souls,” on the “parallel histories of the American megachurch [including the Crystal Cathedral] and the corporate-organizational complex.”
Tags: architecture > catholics > crystal cathedral > evangelicals > hour of power > nytmag > philip johnson > robert schuller
A secret chord that David played
December 12, 2011 | Comments Off
My mini-column for last week’s New York Times Magazine is on poetry and song. King David viewed them as natural companions, but these days they’re seen as distinct, unrelated arts.
Accepting Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for Letters recently, musician and poet Leonard Cohen implicitly took David’s view. He spoke of learning a progression of six flamenco chords from a mysterious young Spaniard who soon killed himself. “It was those six chords,” Cohen said, “it was that guitar pattern that has been the basis of all my songs and all my music… Everything that you have found favorable in my work comes from this place. Everything. Everything that you have found favorable in my songs, in my poetry [is] inspired by this soil.”
And he expressed unease over the honor. “Poetry comes from a place that no one commands and no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.”
Related: Christopher Ricks, Jonathan Lethem, and Lucinda Williams on the case for Dylan as poet; PEN New England’s new prize for excellence in song lyrics, judged by Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Rosanne Cash, Paul Muldoon, and others; The Village Voice’s jokey list of contenders for the award; and, courtesy of my friend Michael Taeckens, Rimbaud and Jim Morrison. And, just for fun, Roger Miller and Dave Hickey on Hank Williams’ hooked-up verse.
Tags: bob dylan > christopher ricks > elvis costello > leonard cohen > lucinda williams > nytmag > paul muldoon > paul simon > PEN > poetry > rosanne cash
From du Maurier & Hitchcock to grudge-holding crows
November 28, 2011 | Comments Off
Angry birds — and especially smart, angry birds — aren’t just the subject of my latest NYT Mag mini-column. Because my mom collected and bred parrots, they’re something I’ve spent far too much time pondering.
Did you know that crows develop grudges against individual people that they impart to their flocks? Or that African Greys are capable of labeling and counting objects and grasping the concept of zero? Or that birdsong appears to be in some sense grammatical? Often parrots use their powers for good, and not evil, of course. As far as we know.
Daphne du Maurier (above) said the idea for her avian-apocalypse novella, “The Birds,” came to her after she saw a farmer ploughing a field while seagulls dived above him, and she imagined the birds “becoming hostile and attacking.” Evidently she disapproved of Hitchcock’s also-harrowing, more famous adaptation.
Unfortunately, this BBC interview doesn’t seem to be viewable in the States these days. In it she talks about her life and work for almost 50 minutes. The clip opens at her typewriter, “the standard ‘the author at work’ establishing shot except for du Maurier’s super-strong finger-punching technique on the keys.”
Tags: angry birds > du maurier > hitchcock > nytmag
The Grapes of Wrath, the real-life sequel?
November 21, 2011 | Comments Off
My latest New York Times Magazine mini-column looks at a sandstorm — “Steinbeck-ish in its arrival,” according to a city councilman — that rolled through Lubbock, Texas last month, as the harbinger of a likely impending Southwestern Dust-Bowlification.
“I expected at any moment to see a line of Model Ts coming through headed to California,” the councilman said. “It really did look like pictures I had seen of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.”
Also: The ending of The Grapes of Wrath; retracing the characters’ journey in 2009; Woody Guthrie’s “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” (above); and Even Nobel laureates get the blues.
Tags: drought > dust bowl > great depression > nytmag > sandstorm > steinbeck > texas > the grapes of wrath > woody guthrie
Gaudí day job fantasies
November 14, 2011 | Comments Off
My second New York Times Mag mini-column is on the futuristic skyscraper Antoni Gaudí designed in 1908 for what is now Ground Zero. His Hotel Attraction (pictured) would be a lot more fun to watch going up outside my office window than the new glass towers are.
But see Rowan Moore on the still-in-process Sagrada Familia: Is it really Gaudí?
Tags: antoni gaudi > day job > ground zero > hotel attraction > nytmag > rowan moore > sagrada familia > wtc