Sunday Sundries, 160

1. AOTW: Well, I had a couple of tailgaters this week, guys who were very much in the running (so to speak) for the coveted award--especially one guy who rode my bumper all along Old Mill Road from Aurora back toward Hudson. Again ... my crime? Going "only" 39 in a 35. But I have to give the award this week instead to a guy who pulled up beside me in a big black SUV at a stop light, patently aware that his lane would disappear in about 100 yards. He was going to gun it by me. But he dozed (or texted?) at the light, and my Prius and I "roared" off ahead of him; when he realized he could not get in ahead of me, he forced his way in front of a guy behind me, a guy who was manifestly not pleased by the aggressive move. Then Black SUV Guy tailgated me on into Hudson, and nearly went up my tailpipe when I had to stop quickly because a guy in front of me turned left, suddenly, without signaling. In my mirror, I saw Black SUV Guy veer off onto the right berm to avoid hitting me. And I rolled along, thrilled that (a) I was ahead of him, (2) I had a hands-down AOTW winner!

2. Over the past few nights, Joyce and I have enjoyed watching (via Netflix DVD) the 2016 film A Quiet Passion, Terence Davies' film about Emily Dickinson. (Link to film trailer.) There was so much to like--though it was a real adjustment for me, initially,  to "buy" Cynthia Nixon (of Sex & the City fame) as ED. But that was the problem, of course, from the outset: All fans of ED have their own images of her, and seeing someone else's version of that is a bit disorienting.

The "look" of the film was so different from what has become customary these days: We see/hear lots of dialogue (and voice-overs of ED reciting her poems), slow pans around a room, unmoving close-ups of folks). I thought this showed us both the slower pace of the 19th century and the intensity of life then--especially among the Very Bright.

I was surprised they did not deal at all with the relationship between Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a relationship that earned its own (fine) book by Brenda Wineapple--White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson (2008). Oh well.

I loved some of the supporting players--especially Jennifer Ehle, who played ED's sister, Vinnie. An emotional, entirely believable performance.

Especially wrenching: the scenes of ED battling Bright's disease near the end ... Almost too intense to watch (at least for wussy me).


3. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first was The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine (2017), a book based on some notes for a children's story found in the vast Mark Twain archives at the University of California Berkeley. Converting those notes into an illustrated story were Caldecott--winning Philip and Erin Stead--and they've done a beautiful job.

There's a trading-a-chicken-for-some-magic-seeds; seeds planted; flower grows; boy eats flower; can now talk with animals. A dragon. A cave. Some real surprises--and some meta-fictional stuff, too, as we get moments in the author's life.

One thing that annoyed me: the repeated use of the word alright instead of all right. Have we lost this one?

     - The second was Nicole Krauss' latest--Forest Dark--a novel with two parallel stories. With Israel as the principal setting.

I've been reading Krauss for a while now, and we saw her on September 15, 2011, at the Ohio Theater in Cleveland, where she received an Anisfield-Wolf Award for her novel Great House (2010) (and, yes, I got her to sign our copy!).

On the cover of Forest Dark  is a stunning blurb from Philip Roth: A brilliant novel. I am full of admiration.

And I have to say that the novel reads in places (a lot of places) like a Roth novel.

Krauss artfully weaves throughout some of the story of Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who (according to some of the characters here) did not die in 1924 but sneaked into Israel/Palestine and lived out his days there in solitude.

There is a lot about fantasy, imagination, madness here--and one of the main characters (who narrates her portions in the first person) a novelist who can't think of what to write about anymore. So she goes to Israel ... where she revisits family history ... copes with a kind of madness ...

I think this is Krauss' most ambitious novel--literary and intensely personal as well.


4. In one more day we will have a waterproofed basement. Supposed to rain this week. We shall see!


5. Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--an archaic word I think we ought to restore!

† overslop, n.  A loose overgarment; a cassock, a surplice.

Forms:  see over- prefix   and slop n.1

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: over- prefix, slop n.1

Etymology: < over- prefix + slop n.1 Compare Middle Dutch overslop, oversloppe.

Compare the Old English (i-mutated) parallel formation oferslype, in the same sense. 

OE (Northumbrian)   Lindisf. Gospels: Luke xx. 46   Ambulare in stolis : geonga in stolum uel on oferslopum.

OE   Prognostics (Tiber.) in Archiv f. das Studium der Neueren Sprachen (1910) 125 50   Byrrum album habere, letitiam significat, byrrum coloreum habere, nuntium fedum significat: oferslop hwit haban blisse getacnað oferslop bleofah habban ærende fullic getacnað.

c1395   Chaucer Canon's Yeoman's Tale 633   His ouersloppe [v.rr. ouerslope, ouersclope, ouer slop; ouer clothe] nys nat worth a myte..It is al baudy and to tore also.