Inspiration

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

One summer afternoon in 1932, William Faulkner and his wife Estelle were sitting on the side porch of their home in Oxford, Mississippi.

She said, “Does it ever seem to you that the light in August is different from any other time of the year?”

He said, “That’s it!”, disappeared into the house, and returned a moment later.

“What he had done was to go to his worktable and draw four pen strokes through the title ‘Dark House,'” Estelle wrote later. “Above and slightly to the left he printed ‘Light in August.'”

| Literature

The Territory

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Much blood has … been spilled on the carpet in attempts to distinguish between science fiction and fantasy. I have suggested an operational definition: science fiction is something that could happen — but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen — though often you only wish that it could.

— Arthur C. Clarke, foreword, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, 2000

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In a Word

pluvial
adj. relating to rainfall

A little tap at the window, as though some missile had struck it, followed by a plentiful, falling sound, as light, though, as if a shower of sand were being sprinkled from a window overhead; then the fall spread, took on an order, a rhythm, became liquid, loud, drumming, musical, innumerable, universal. It was the rain.

— Proust, Swann’s Way

| Language · Literature

Off Schedule

Mark Twain approaches the international date line, 1895:

Sept. 8. To-morrow we shall be close to the center of the globe … And then we must drop out a day — lose a day out of our lives, a day never to be found again. We shall all die one day earlier than from the beginning of time we were foreordained to die. We shall be a day behindhand all through eternity. We shall always be saying to the other angels, ‘Fine day today,’ and they will be always retorting, ‘But it isn’t to-day, it’s tomorrow.’ We shall be in a state of confusion all the time and shall never know what true happiness is.

Next Day. Sure enough, it has happened. … While we were crossing the 180th meridian it was Sunday in the stern of the ship where my family were, and Tuesday in the bow where I was. They were there eating the half of a fresh apple on the 8th, and I was at the same time eating the other half of it on the 10th — and I could notice how stale it was, already.

That’s from Following the Equator. “[F]ortunately the ships do not all sail west, half of them sail east. So there is no real loss. These latter pick up all the discarded days and add them to the world’s stock again; and about as good as new, too; for of course the salt water preserves them.”

| Literature · Oddities

Pithy

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marc_Antony%27s_Oration_at_Caesar%27s_Funeral_by_George_Edward_Robertson.jpg

Mark Antony’s funeral oration rendered in Scrabble tiles, by Pete Stickland:

COUNTRYMEN, I AM TO BURY, NOT EULOGIZE, CAESAR; IF EVIL LIVES ON, BEQUEATHING INJURY, GOOD OFT EXPIRES: A PALSIED, AWKWARD DEATH!

The tiles can also spell:

QUEASY RADIOMAN WEPT: GOT TO EYE FEROCIOUS BLAZE OF VIVID AERIAL EXPLOSION, CREMATING WILTED HINDENBURG AT LAKEHURST, N.J.

| Language · Literature

Misc

  • Vatican City has 2.27 popes per square kilometer.
  • Skylab was fined for littering.
  • Five-syllable rhyming words in English: vocabulary, constabulary
  • 8767122 + 3287682 = 876712328768
  • “We die only once, and for such a long time!” — Molière

Above is the only known film footage of Mark Twain, shot at Twain’s Connecticut home in 1909. The women are thought to be his daughters Clara and Jean.

| Language · Literature · Quotations · Science & Math · Technology · Trivia

In a Word

rarissima
n. extremely rare books, manuscripts, or prints

In The Book Hunter (1863), John Hill Burton identifies five types of “persons who meddle with books”:

  • “A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book.”
  • “A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.”
  • “A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.”
  • “A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure.”
  • “A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases.”

These groups seem to have been proposed by French librarian Jean Joseph Rive. Bibliographer Gabriel Peignot added four more:

  • bibliolyte, a destroyer of books
  • bibliologue, one who discourses about books
  • bibliotacte, a classifier of books
  • bibliopée, “‘l’art d’écrire ou de composer des livres,’ or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author.”
| Language · Literature

To Whom It May Concern

After his Connecticut home was burgled in September 1908, Mark Twain posted a sign on the front door:

NOTICE

To the Next Burglar

There is nothing but plated ware in this house now and henceforth.

You will find it in that brass thing in the dining-room over in the corner by the basket of kittens.

If you want the basket put the kittens in the brass thing.

Do not make a noise — it disturbs the family.

You will find rubbers in the front hall by that thing which has the umbrellas in it, chiffonier, I think they call it, or pergola, or something like that.

Please close the door when you go away!

Very truly yours,

S.L. Clemens

| Crime · Literature

Exchange

After performing in a revival of George Bernard Shaw’s play Candida, Cornelia Otis Skinner received a telegram from the author: EXCELLENT. GREATEST.

She wired back: UNDESERVING SUCH PRAISE.

He responded: I MEANT THE PLAY.

She replied: SO DID I.

| Literature

Close Reading

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Teaching at Cornell in the 1950s, Vladimir Nabokov offered a European fiction course whose exam questions could be distressingly broad or pitilessly specific — some examples are given in an appendix to Lectures on Literature:

Bleak House

  • Why did Dickens need to give Esther three suitors (Guppy, Jarndyce, and Woodcourt)?
  • If you compare Lady Dedlock and Skimpole, which of them is the author’s greater success?
  • Discuss the structure and style of Bleak House.
  • Discuss John Jarndyce’s house. (Mangles? Surprised birds?)
  • Discuss the visit to Bell Yard (Neckett’s children; and Mr. Gridley).
  • Give at least four examples of the “child theme” in Bleak House.
  • What kind of place was Bleak House — give at least four descriptive details.
  • Where was Bleak House situated?
  • How is the “bird theme” linked up with Krook?
  • How is the “fog theme” linked up with Krook?
  • Whose style are we reminded of when Dickens raises his voice?
  • The social side (“upper class” versus “lower class” etc.) is the weakest one in Bleak House. Who was Mr. George’s brother? What part did he play? Should a major reader skip those pages, even if they are weak?
  • Follow Mr. Guppy through Bleak House.

Madame Bovary

  • Describe briefly Flaubert’s use of the counterpoint technique in the County Fair scene.
  • There are numerous thematic lines in Madame Bovary, such as “Horse,” “Plaster Priest,” “Voice,” “The Three Doctors.” Describe these four themes briefly.
  • Discuss Flaubert’s use of the word “and.”
  • What character in Madame Bovary behaves in very much the same way as a character in Bleak House does under somewhat similar circumstances? The thematic clue is: “devotion.”
  • Is there a Dickensian atmosphere about Flaubert’s description of Berthe’s infancy and childhood? (Be specific.)
  • The features of Fanny Price and Esther are pleasantly blurred. Not so with Emma. Describe her eyes, hair, hands, skin.
  • Would you say that Emma’s nature was hard and shallow?
  • Would she prefer a landscape peopled with ruins and cows to one that contained no allusions to people?
  • Did she like her mountain lakes with or without a lone skiff?
  • What had Emma read? Name at least four works and their authors.

In his annotated copy of The Metamorphosis, Nabokov, a trained entomologist, observed that “A regular beetle has no eyelids and cannot close its eyes” — and thus Gregor Samsa is “a beetle with human eyes.”

| Literature