Moving again, editing

Back in 1974 John Hersey published

a kind of diatribe of a nightmare

novel, My Petition for More Space,

which I undertook to review for a

nice little paper in a coastal par-

adise which had managed just fine,

thanks very much, before the Gol-

den Gate Bridge made it a commut-

ers' cockpit. He stated the prob-

lem of infinitesimal tenancies in

the most disturbing way, and al-

though his report from Hiroshima

had given him carte blanche to

say whatever he liked thereafter,

this hadn't much lifted his mood.

Unfortunately, I managed to weed

my library of that volume right a-

way, so as I now contemplate fur-

ther compression, I can't exploit

its argument to my advantage anew.

How do we succumb to the collect-

ing of authors? I realize, I ad-

dress a crisis which the ubiquit-

ous "reading tablet" has eased,

only to replace it with an out-

break of acquisitive promiscuity

without any of the stimulation

of exerting judgment. My guess

is that there must have been a

writer somewhere along the way,

who eventually got better after

Timon of Athens. But for every

Shakespeare there is, notorious-

ly, a fellow who should have

been liberated to go outdoors,

by The Glass Menagerie. Still,

you don't gain much shelf space

by sacrificing Small Craft Warn-

ings, just to lug Ackroyd's one

good book, Dickens, from pillar 

to post. By the same token, who

could not embrace the vacuum of

the desert island, with the Ox-

ford English Dictionary? There,

at least, endless reward absolves

the larder, especially with the

sweet revenge of obsolescence.

Is anything more elegant, than

a usage expunged by progress? 

La nuit américaine

Georges Delerue
La nuit américaine
  Grand Choral
1973





 

Put out more flags

    Perhaps host and guest is really

    the happiest relation for father

    and son.

Evelyn Waugh

Party upside down cake

The American celebration of the 4th

of July commemorates a proclamation

of separation from relative tyranny

as described in a bill of particul-

are against a reigning monarch. The

decay of factual contexts in these

interesting times has permitted the

most decayed of factual conscious-

nesses ever to lead this portion of

North America since George III, to

abscond with the celebration by an

act, natural for him, of inversion.

Stunts of ambiguous diplomacy

I was disappointed as the American

President forgot everything he had

practiced in rehearsal for his hug

at the DMZ with North Korea's only

current despot, and performed that

act standing up. Commentators were

ungenerous to call it inconclusive,

when ambiguity is what it is about.

Sunday nibbled sleeve x: What's become of the bacon?

We, too, are acquainted with students

of metallurgy who feel the art reached

its apogee in relevance, by isolating

the culinary properties of cast iron,

copper, aluminum, and the molecular an-

omaly, steel, stainless and not. Lit-

erature in their distinctions has been

molded heatedly in the dies of each

of these elements, with a tendentious-

ness which, in calmer times, would em-

barrass any reader. Today, such texts

seem no more than drawn from familiar

kilns of irreconcilable conceit, jaded

by forgetfulness of the subject itself.

Why've they lost the bacon, we ask ap-

ologetically, not to suggest ingestion.

          In a large cast-iron cocotte, render the fat from

          the bacon over medium-low heat until the edges of

          the bacon are crispy. Remove the bacon to a large

          bowl, leaving the rendered fat in the pan. Increase

          the heat to medium high. Add the beef to the fat in

          the pan and brown it on all sides. Remove the beef

          from the pan to the bowl with the bacon. [Now, pay

          close attention for a lapse in content]. Add the on-

          ion, carrots, celery, and mushrooms to the pan. Re-

          duce the heat to medium and cook for 5 to 7 minutes,

          until softened. Add the garlic and cook for another

          30 seconds, or until aromatic. Remove vegetables

          from the pan to the bowl with the beef.

In the past week, we were treated to

four broadcast hours of discussion os-

tensibly of the ends of political ves-

sels, with only the most fleeting nod

to their content. We were treated, in-

stead, just to the fond appreciation

of their properties, as if a boeuf

bourguignon were proprietarily an ex-

pression of their own anatomy. And yet,

what did they do with the bacon in the

shell game we were witnessing, and who

will ever get their answer? Once, there

was a bowl with the beef and the bacon.

Then there was not. Accidental lapse, 

or just more self-absorbed legerdemain?

Now the putative winners are reinforced

in their incompatibilities, and the in-

contestable losers are doubling down in

self-exculpations. Who can be gratified,

when no one is performing as proclaimed,

and all are distanced from compatibility?

Amanda Frederickson

  Editor

The Staub Cookbook

  Modern Recipes for

  Classic Cast Iron

Zwilling J.A. Henckels, LLC

2018©

Saturday commute clxxiii: Image to epigram

The passage, with which we are
all familiar, of an image to 
an epigram is so ethically ex-
pensive that this must play a
large part in fatigue with the
President's endless proof of it.
Never seeing straight, one el-
ement of evidence, he frames a
whole world from fancies of the
timid wretch extracting his re-
venge by the propagation of myth.

              Europa of Athens can be had for a drachma

                    with nothing to fear, no resistance,

                         clean sheets,

              a fire in winter. So, my friend Zeus,

                    you had no business turning yourself

                         into a bull.

Antipater of Thessaloniki
11 BC - 15 AD
  Edmund Keeley
  translation
Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas,
  Edmund Keeley and Karen van Dyck
  editors
The Greek Poets
  Homer to the Present
op. cit.

Suppose it were Friday clxxiv: In the last week of June

Oh, my, yes. Tell you the truth,

I do, too. The final day of any

annual term of the American high

court always encourages one to

kick back on the deck, and savor

the strands of mental majesty in

all their interweaving splendor,

even as we steel ourselves for a

deprivation for ever so long, to

tantalize the thoughts with vi-

sions of undiscovered postures.

Just today, to bask in the anci-

ently unheralded, not to say em-

phatically contradicted revela-

tion, that it's no business of a

Federal Court how a State may a-

buse the right to vote, is both

to know the bluntest stupefaction

and the keenest delectation of a

latitude in jurisprudence in de-

nial of its definition, bestowed

to our humble porch since corpor-

ations were embraced as persons.

If this is not a wondrous burning

of a bush, it is at least a cel-

ebration of intellectual torsion

at its contrapposto finest. Yet if

there is a thread binding this in-

genious trick with the simple re-

quirement for a census which fol-

lows its inscribed prescription, 

it is that no one need be granted

a vote just because he is counted.

Rucho v. Common Cause

Department of Commerce
  v. New York