Boredom

I remembered Roger Ebert saying this about The Age of Innocence. I was right about the topic; wrong about where. It’s in his review of The Remains of the Day.

“I got some letters from readers who complained (Innocence) was boring, that “nothing happens in it.” To which I was tempted to reply: If you had understood what happened in it, it would not have been boring.

No stain of cruelty…

“As a man, his character cannot be spoken of too highly; no stain of cruelty or faithlessness rests on him.”

That’s an old fashioned, but quite wonderful, assessment of a life. It comes from the 11th Edition Britannica, discussing Étienne Macdonald, one of Napoleon’s marshals.

(To explain his surprising last name: His father was a Jacobite exile, who was of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s retinue. The elder Macdonald married well, giving his son the background to have a chance to advance in the Army.)

In the Icebox

“Another of this wonderful woman’s wonderful sayings (I told you—I got a million of ‘em; don’t make me prove it) was “Milk always takes the flavor of what’s next to it in the icebox.” Not a very useful saying, you might think, but I suspect it’s not only the reason I’m writing this introduction, but the reason I’m writing it the way I’m writing it.
Does it sound like Harlan wrote it?
It does?
That’s because I just finished the admirable book which follows. For the last four days I have been, so to speak, sitting next to Harlan in the icebox. I am not copying his style; nothing as low as that. I have, rather, taken a brief impression of his style, the way that, when we were kids, we used to be able to take a brief impression of Beetle Bailey or Blondie from the Sunday funnies with a piece of Silly Putty (headline in the New York Times Book Review: KING OFFERS EERILY APT METAPHOR FOR HIS OWN MIND!!).”

— Stephen King, from his introduction to Harlan Ellison’s Stalking the Nightmare

Focus

“If, on balance, you focus more on remembrances than projects, something (central) in you is starting to decay. This also applies to groups, institutions, and countries.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Twitter

Elizabeth Hardwick

In The Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction, No. 87”

INTERVIEWER

I was present a few years ago at a panel discussion where you were asked who was the greatest American female novelist, and you said Henry James. I had the feeling you meant something serious about that. 

HARDWICK

Such remarks don’t bear scrutiny. Did I actually say that? I do remember saying once that maybe the greatest female novelist in English was Constance Garnett. Sometimes I try to lighten the gloom of discussions but I notice that no one laughs. Instead you see a few people writing down the name. 

“Foreshadowing”

Lexicon.

About a week before Bloom County went on a substantial sub-plot about Bill the Cat being a Russian spy, there was this glorious 3-day sequence. It has even been quoted in academic papers.

“Foreshadowing” — Your clue to quality literature.

Here, have a link to the very first Bloom County strip, December 8, 1980. Then, you can read through the whole thing. If you want.

Chaucer’s Salons

From a long-time favorite novel, Steven Minkin’s A No Doubt Mad Idea:

“On to the library. And all through his time at the card catalog, combing the shelves, filling out the request cards, he danced a silent, flirtatious minuet of the eyes with a rosy-cheeked redhead in the biology section, pages of notes spread before her. All his life, he had had a yen for women in libraries. In a cerebral setting, the physical becomes irresistible. Also, he figured he was really more likely to meet a better or at least more compatible woman in a library than in a saloon. Ought to have singles libraries, with soups and salads, Bach and Mozart, Montaignes bound in morocco; place to sip, smoke, and seduce in a classical setting, noon to midnight. Chaucer’s Salons, call them, franchise chain.”