The Best American Poetry

When Henry James Asked for Directions by Edith Wharton

Henry James and Edith Wharton often went "motoring" together.  Wharton wrote about one such trip in  A Motor-Flight Through France (1908).  Here, she describes an experience with James while traveling in England: 

 From A Backward Glance by Edith Wharton

The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. […] While I was hesitating and peering out into the darkness James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze at us. ‘Wait a moment, my dear—I’ll ask him where we are’; and leaning out he signalled to the spectator.

‘My good man, if you’ll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer—so,’ and as the old man came up: ‘My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.’

I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: ‘In short’ (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), ‘in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right) where are we now in relation to…’

‘Oh, please,’ I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, ‘do ask him where the King’s Road is.’

‘Ah—? The King’s Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King’s Road exactly is?’

‘Ye’re in it’, said the aged face at the window.

-- sdh

Quote of the Day: Octavio Paz

“The melting pot is a social idea that, when applied to culinary art, produces abominations.”

Chicken Parmesan Meatloaf Muffin via Chow

Discuss.

-- sdh

 

Gertrude Stein, never out of date. . . [by DL]

"Rose is a rose is a rose." -- Gertrude Stein

"It is what it is." -- contemporary version

Camus on Irony: When does the truth get censored? [by David Lehman]

The July 2012 Harper's has a lot going for it, but a most enjoyable surprise for this reader was a previously unpublished, because censored, essay that Albert Camus wrote in 1939 -- November 25, 1939 to be exact. France and Britain are technically at war with Germany, but so far there has been no direct engagement on the field. Germany has invaded and overwhelmed Poland and has neutralized the Soviet Union by concluding the infamous non-aggression pact in August 1939. The west waits anxiously. In this context a "free journalist" defends freedom of the press and protests the work of the censors. The piece was not signed, though it has been attributed to Camus. Le Monde published it in March 2012. It was written for the Algerian newspaper Le Soir republicain but it never appeared there. It is not entirely clear why the French authorities suppressed it, but they appear to have been instinctive ironists. Here is a central passage. As translated by John Cullen.
<<<
. . .as a rule, a mind with a taste for applying constraints and possessed of the means to impose them is a mind impervious to irony. We don't see Hitler -- to take only one example out of several -- employing Socratic irony. Conversely, when it comes to weapons that can be used against the too powerful, irony remains unparalleled. It completes refusal in the sense that it often allows its user not only to reject the false but also to say what is true. A free journalist in 1939 hasn't got many illusions about the intelligence of those who are oppressing him. In regard to humanity, he's a pessimist. Nine times out of ten, a truth proclaimed in dogmatic tones gets censored. When presented in an amusing way, the same truth gets censored five out of ten times.
>>>
Therefore (Camus reasons), a "free journalist in 1939" must employ ironic means. "Truth and freedom, having few lovers, are demanding mistresses."
The fact that the piece (published in Harper's under the title "Rules of Engagement" and characterized as a "manifesto") was censored does not invalidate its thesis, nor does it convict the author of being "dogmatic." -- DL

More on Cooking and Writing

Leslie McGrath's recent post about the similarities between writing and cooking reminded me of this passage, by Charles Simic:

If not in bed, my next writing-place of choice is the kitchen, with its smells of cooking. Some hearty soup or a stew simmering on the stove is all I need to get inspired. At such moments, I‘m reminded how much writing poetry resembles the art of cooking. Out of the simplest and often the most seemingly incompatible ingredients and spices, using either tried-and-true recipes, or concocting something at the spur of the moment, one turns out forgettable or memorable dishes. All that’s left for the poet to do is garnish his poems with a little parsley and serve them to poetry gourmets.

-- Charles Simic, New York Review of Books, February 10, 2012

-- sdh

Billie versus Ella [by DL]

You can love both, of course, and we do, but it is fun to compare these peerless singers, and one of our friends may have nailed it. "Billie makes me feel like things are only going to get worse," he said. "Ella makes me feel like things are looking up." The reflection occurred to us today while driving on a spidery network of roads that have "High" in their name -- Highland, Highgate, with different suffixes, "place" and "road" and "avenue" -- and we were in no hurry and were trying out the new Siirus-XM satellite car radio. And then we heard Lady Day's cover of a happy Irving Berlin song from Top Hat, "Isn't This a Lovely Day to Be Caught in the Rain?" She made this cheerful tune sound like a dirge, albeit one with a kick -- DL

Quote of the Day

 "All Schnitzel cooks agree that the color of a Weiner Schnitzel should be a light golden brown.  Certain Breughel paintings and Stradivari violins have the perfect Schnitzel color." 

-- from The Cooking of Vienna's Empire (Time-Life Books, 1968)

-- sdh

"No R" -- a short story by David Lehman [with a coda by Borges]

<<< Kaminsky knows how to survive in the magazine business: start a magazine that almost nobody can understand, and become the darling of the academy
>>>

from "No R," a story by David Lehman, in The American Scholar. Click here to read this three-part story that wowed the crowd at KGB Bar in February 2013 when Lehman read it aloud.

And remember what Jorge Luis Borges said: "I respect translators, and my stories have sometimes been greatly bettered by them. One of them told me so himself. Besides, I am so fond of English that I like anything better in English than in Spanish." While the relevance of this quote to "No R" is not obvious, people of good faith can figure it out. Borges also declared unequivocally that Robert Louis Stevenson "is the most wonderful writer of all English writers, after Shakespeare."

Homage to Stanley Bing [by DL]

The pseudonymous Stanley Bing is the businessman ("executive vice-president of corporate communications") and wit who writes the consistently entertaining and smart "While You Were Out" column on the last page of Fortune magazine.

"We're Forever Blowing Bubbles" in the June 11 issue is an excellent example of Bing's style. (After writing that sentence I think I will put on a Crosby song before continuing. OK. "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" Bub-bub-bub-boo.) The column is arresting and quotable and I wanted to quote the whole of the second paragraph, not only because of the individual points made, but because of the vast distance between the short paragraph traverses .

But rather than give you the whole paragraph, let me turn it into a prompt: I will quote the first and last sentences of the graf and ask you, dear readers, to fill in the middle. The middle consists of five sentences, four of them short. How does Bing get from

<< Men all used to wear fedoras. >>
to
<< But I can't believe that in the future everybody is going to continue to want to share things. >>

There then follows a very fine passage about what's wrong with "sharing."

OK, for the multiple-choice part of the endeavor, who ridiculed the verb "to share" by writing, "'Let me share this knife with your throat,' suggested Mack."
1) Matthew Arnold
2) Arnold Stang
3) William Matthews
4) William Meredith
5) Meredith Wilson

-- DL

Quote of the day: On the Transit of Venus

"Venus will look like a dark pea drifting across a bowl of carrot soup."

Robert Siegel, Senior Host NPR's All Things Considered, June 5, 2012