Sunday Sundries, 156

1. AOTW: The Impatient Dude who tailgated me through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park last night (I was doing 39 in a 35; he wanted ... more). Right on top of me. Lights flashing. When I finally turned off to go to Szalay's Market, he accelerated like someone in a Fast and Furious movie (he was both), letting me know what a Wuss I am, letting me know he was fully qualified for the AOTW award. And so he was ...

2. It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted one of these "Sundries." We've been on the road ... seeing some things ... visiting family ... back home now.

3. Here's a suggestion for all you drivers who like fast-food drive-thrus. You're on the highway, going to turn right into the fast-food place; ahead of you, you see a car that got there before you, waiting to turn left from the highway. Let 'em go first. The other day, we were in the left-turn situation, and two righties cruised right on in and got in the drive-thru line, where they ordered enough food to feed all the warriors at Waterloo.

4. I finished several books since last I posted here ...

     - The first was John Irving's A Son of the Circus (1994), one of my read-a-bit-in-bed-each-night novels. I think I started this book on a earlier occasion but couldn't finish it. And I took a Good Long While finishing it this time too (from March 7 - August 29!). Not only does it have many pages (633), but the pages are big (the font isn't), and the story just didn't really grab me most of the time. I have long been a HUGE Irving fan, beginning with The World According to Garp. I've read everything. Except this one. And now I have. But I didn't really like it all that much. Takes place (mostly) in India; a cop; a movie-maker; a doctor; some twins; a murder; a circus ... couldn't really get caught up in it. But hacked my way through the undergrowth nonetheless.

   
     The Epilogue takes place in Toronto (where a principal character has gone). And then ... here's this on p. 601-02: "It greatly upset him to read about the Heritage Front--those neo-Nazi louts, that white supremacist scum. Since there were antihate laws in Canada, Dr. Daruwalla wondered why groups like the Heritage Front were allowed to foment so much racist hatred."

Rings vaguely relevant, eh?

     - I also finished an early novel by Elizabeth Strout, whose work I'm really enjoying. I'd not read anything by her until she won a Pulitzer Prize (Olive Kitteredge, 2009). So I started in on them ... got hooked. The one I finished last week was Abide with Me, her second novel. Like some of her others, this one takes place in a small town in Maine. It involves a minister, Tyler Caskey, who has a couple of daughters (one is a handful), and is a recent widower. We see him working with his sometimes-troublesome congregation, his troubled little girl, his housekeeper, the small-town choreography.

Strout is an absolute adept with multiple points-of-view, shifting here and there, letting us know what a variety of people think, feel, say. Loved the book. Have started her earlier one, Amy and Isabelle, which I'll post about next week.

     - Finally, I've been reading the William Faulkner novels I've never managed to get around to. (Shame on me--and thanks, Library of America, for collecting them all!) Last week it was his 1935 work, Pylon, which deals with one of Faulkner's loves: aviation. (He had earned a pilot's license in 1933, owned a plane for a bit, participated in air shows.) And air shows are the key in this novel about a group of itinerant fliers and aerial performers--and a local journalist. Things don't go well the few days we are with them--crashes, deaths. And the enormous, painful irony is this: His novel appeared in March 1935; in November that same year his beloved brother Dean died in a crash of William Faulkner's plane. (He'd also learned to fly.)


5. This week we finished the latest available (Netflix) season of the Welsh cop drama Hinterland, which (as seems to be a popular thing these days) involves a dark, depressed detective who has many Personal Issues as well as grisly crimes to deal with. This recent series dealt (among other things) with an old child-abuse case in a children's home ... were the police incriminated?

6. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--a word that fits more and more these days ...

unlustiness, n.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: unlusty adj., -ness suffix.

Etymology: < unlusty adj. + -ness suffix, after lustiness n.

1. Lack of enthusiasm or willingness; laziness; disinclination.

?a1425   tr. Catherine of Siena Orcherd of Syon (Harl.) (1966) 400 (MED)   The þridde chapitil is..of þe inperfeccioun of hem þat ben slowȝ or vnlusty in religioun..& of þe remedy how þei schulen come out of þat vnlustynes.

c1450   Bk. Gostlye Grace (1979) 441 (MED)   We maye behalde þe slewth ande vnlustynes of owre herte aȝenste God.

1506   tr. Thordynary of Crysten Men (new ed.) iv. xxx. sig. JJiv   By vnlustynes in dyffaylynge wtout desyre to do well.

1583   A. Golding tr. J. Calvin Serm. on Deuteronomie x. 54   Wee see what vnlustinesse is in vs when God commaundith vs any thing.

1613   W. Webster Plaine Mans Pilgrimage iv. 111   They which feele their coldnesse & vnlustinesse, doe craue the spirit of feruentnesse & earnestnesse.

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2. Lack of health, strength, or energy; listlessness; physical weakness or debility.

1486   Bk. St. Albans sig. b viv   A medecyne that an hawke shall not lie in mew for vnlustynese.

1547   A. Borde Breuiary of Helthe xlix. 15   [Gaping] doth come of unlustines or els for lake of slepe.

1596   P. Barrough Method of Phisick (ed. 3) viii. 470   When..the wearinesse or the vnlustinesse of the sinewes is to bee asswaged.

1620   T. Venner Via Recta Introd. 4   Vnlustinesse of the limmes.

1677   G. Miege New Dict. French & Eng. ii. sig. Hhh2v/3   Unlustiness, debilité, foiblesse.