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.

Moose and Squirrel Hit 50

Our namesake turns 50. Every appreciation insufficient. Here's a dim view of the statue in West Hollywood. But then even in the best of light, he's a little dim.

Also, he remembers everthing he ever has eaten.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2009/11/happy-birthday-rocky-bullwinkle.html

Bookstore story

Tobias Wolff, in The Morning News:

Robert Olen Butler told me a really funny story about going to a Borders out in Berkeley—Berkeley of all places. You know, he likes to travel around, goes to lots of bookstores and signs stock for them because it helps them sell and he likes to help them sell his book. So he goes into this Borders—it might have been a Barnes and Noble [there has never been a Borders in Berkeley—ed.], I can’t remember which and I don’t want to badmouth one if I’m wrong—she had never heard of him to begin with, the woman that was waiting on him. Then he said, Well I just had this book come out, and he had a nice big review of it and showed her. And he said, I’d like to sign these books. And she said, Well let me see if I can find them. She did find them; they had about 20 copies of his book. Brought ‘em over, he signed ‘em all. And she said, Well do you want to pay for these with credit card or cash?

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/birnbaum_v/tobias_wolff.php

Song of the day

Can you please crawl out your window?
Use your arms and legs it won't ruin you
(How can you say he will haunt you?
You can go back to him any time you want to.)

The Way They Write Now

"Put your left hand on the table. Put your right hand in the air. If you stay that way long enough, you'll get a plot," Margaret Atwood says when asked where her ideas come from. When questioned about whether she's ever used that approach, she adds, "No, I don't have to."

Others on the way they write: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703740004574513463106012106.html

The Five Most Ridiculous Sex-help Books

http://www.cracked.com/blog/how-to-f-like-a-librarian/

funnier than the premise

Poem, recommended by The Anthologist

"A Small Hotel"

Selima Hill

My nipples tick

like little bombs of blood.

Someone is walking

in the yard outside.

I don’t know why

Our Lord was crucified.

A really good fuck

makes me feel like custard.

http://everseradio.com/a-small-hotel-by-selima-hill/

Extra Points for Auden, for internal rhymes.

quoted in a review of the work of Edward Lear, by Brad Leithauser in NYRB


There was a Young Lady of Norway,
Who casually sat in a doorway;
When the door squeezed her flat,
She exclaimed, "What of that?"
This courageous Young Lady of Norway.

Edward Lear


There was an Archdeacon who said:
"May I take off my gaiters in bed?"
But the Bishop said "No,
Wherever you go
You must wear them until you are dead."

Anonymous


The Bishop elect of Hong Kong
Had a dong that was twelve inches long.
He thought the spectators
Were admiring his gaiters
When he went to the gents. He was wrong.

W.H. Auden

Dream

On the sidewalk I ran into, literally, my old friend the now notorious felon. He was running along and crossed the street and we saw each other and he ran up to me, and I ended up catching the back of my heels on the curb as he came up to embrace me, and I fell back on the ground. He was carrying a large water gun, as part of whatever it was he was doing that required him to be running around the streets of the city.

Soupy Sales

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/2009/10/22/2009-10-22_soupy_sales_famed_comedian_from_the_golden_age_of_television_dead_at_83.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdUD4giJPOk&feature=player_embedded#

Be true to your teeth, and they’ll never be false to you.

Stuff from Alasdair Gray

Gray:

It has to do with what money you have and what freedom you have to, you know, get on. My first wife was Danish. She comes through very badly in Rodge’s biography because my friends think she behaved very badly to me, and she did, she tended to have affairs with my friends, though not with my closest friends. Her basic attitude was that she didn’t enjoy sex with me and she had to do it with somebody. And I’m afraid I couldn’t take the line of, you will have sex with nobody but me! I thought, well, it’s not your fault. Just don’t tell me who it’s with, I don’t want to meet them socially.

And

Rumpus: Did you get to know the renters?

Gray:

Oh, yes. Most of them became friends. Taught you a lot about life. Somebody once introduced me to a young artist or a young writer, I forget which, it didn’t matter which, and asked if I had advise to give. I said, try and get a house with more rooms than you need and then sublet. It will be a small income, and you’ll find that a lot of people who you trust most don’t pay you, and many people who you don’t find to be particularly trustworthy pay you quite regularly. Of course, they thought I was making fun of them, but it was the only piece of advice I could give to anybody. If someone tries to show you their writing and says, do you think I should stick to this, do you think I could become a real writer? Say to them, If you have to ask that question, no, you can’t.

from The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2009/10/the-rumpus-interview-with-alasdair-gray/

See also Gray on the biography written by his secretary: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/biography1