Ordinary and dazzling

The book "Stoner" by John Williams opens with these two audicious paragraphs:


William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same university, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his course. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University Library. This transcript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: "Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues."

An occasional student who comes by the inscription may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones, it is merely a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.


And from there launches into the story of Stoner's life, beginning with the next sentence:

He was born on a small farm in central Missouri near the town of Booneville, some forty miles from Columbia, the home of the University.


I'm not sure why I find this opening so thrilling, other than the implied boast by the novelist: "I will make this ordinary unspecial life of interest to you." Which he does.

Woof

from NYT article about Highsmith-related locations in Greenwich Village:

"Morton Street was where Highsmith “started her lifelong career of aggressive seduction,” Ms. Schenkar explained. It is also where Kenneth Rowajinski, the psychopathic dog killer, is murdered in her 1972 novel “A Dog’s Ransom.” (The unlucky poodle, Tina, bears the name of a dog owned by one of her amours.) “She kills so many dogs,” Ms. Schenkar said of Highsmith. “She hated dogs. She couldn’t bear sharing attention.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/books/11highsmith.html

Roger Angell reappears

His New Yorker baseball articles are fewer and shorter, but still full of grace notes of felicitious phrase and precise observation:

"It wound up 6-1, Phillies -- an outcome that was almost visible when Lee fanned Jeter and Teixeira in the first inning and the holiday crowd at the Stadium went all murmurous."

"Utley, who has slicked-back, Jake Gittes hair, possesses a quick bat and a very short home-run stroke; he looks like a man in an A.T.M. reaching for his cash."

from the Nov 30, 2009 issue,

as is this amusing casual by Mike Sacks:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/11/30/091130sh_shouts_sacks

Wittgenstein helps with the war effort

by taking a menial job as a hospital orderly:

"Wittgenstein's job as a porter was to delivery medicines from the dispensary to the wards, where, according to john Ryles' wife, Miriam, he advised the patients not to take them."

from Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius p. 432.

My New Philosopher Joke

Philosopher Fred: Oy!

Jim: What's wrong, Fred? You seem a little down.

Philosopher Fred: I'm so discouraged. It just doesn't seem like I'll live long enough to find out what happens after death.

Overheard at the Bar

I want to write a column for the L.A. Weekly: "This Day In L.A." It would cover what happened in L.A. the preceding week.