Sunday Sundries, 172

1. AOTW: The past couple of weeks ... this one has been a no-brainer. The winner (hands down) is THE FLU, that fell virus that felled both Joyce and me for the better part of two weeks. (And, yes, we both had the high-powered flu shot last fall.) This is the first time I'd had the flu since I began getting the shots about thirty years ago (or longer), and it was a grim reminder of how fragile we all are. We're walking bags of chemicals, and when those chemicals get messed up? Well, we don't walk so well--or do much else very well, either.

2. During my illness I couldn't do much else but read--and I didn't do all that much of that. But I have finished a few books since last I did a Sunday Sundries a few weeks ago, so here we go (in no particular order):

     - Edward O. Wilson's The Origins of Creativity (2017), which was kind of an update of a book I had to read as an entering frosh at Hiram College back in the fall of 1966: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, 1959, by C. P. Snow (a book to which Wilson alludes, by the way).

Wilson has a lot to say here about how the humanities and the sciences ought to be more integrated (he decries the deep specializations that have made more difficult any communications among the disciplines). Much that is interesting is here--about the (nearly) universal fear of snakes, about the human fondness for the savanna, about our racial divisions, and much more.

I didn't always agree with his literary judgments: He takes a shot or two at Jonathan Franzen (one of my contemporary favorites). Of The Corrections he writes: "One gets the feeling that as literature this long book may not lift off the runway. For some it does; for me it does not" (37).

     - I finished re-reading Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady (1881), a novel--a long, long, long novel!--I re-read because I had so much enjoyed John Banville's new novel, Mrs. Osmond, which is a sequel to Portrait. And I am so glad I re-read Portrait! Not only is it a wonderful book (sentences wind around through the tale like lengthy sinuous snakes), but it also reminded me of so much I'd forgotten about the story--helped me admire even more what Banville had done.

As I wrote elsewhere, I read the novel in the Library of American edition (Joyce and I subscribe to the series), and when I opened the volume that contains Portrait, I noticed it was not a first printing. (Oh, no!) So I got online and ordered a first--and it turns out that this 1st printing had once belonged to Gore Vidal and had his stamp inside. An extra thrill ... I've always loved the late Vidal's work.

   - Last night I finished (via Kindle) another novel about Jack Taylor, the Irish ex-cop/unofficial PI who populates some novels of the talented Ken Bruen. (I've been reading them in the order he wrote them--reading them because we so much enjoyed the Jack Taylor series we streamed on Acorn.)

This one--The Dramatist (2004)--deals with the murders of some young women in Galway. Oddly, the work of  J. M. Synge figures prominently in the plot. Jack is trying to battle his demons, as well (alcohol, cigarettes), and deal with his imploding love life--and with his fractured relationship with his mother. Well, the case is a grim one, and the very ending is one of the most shocking I've ever read in crime fiction. I had to read it twice to make sure that what I thought had happened had indeed happened.

     - Finally, I finished (via Kindle) the latest Lee Child thriller about his laconic hero, Jack Reacher--The Midnight Line. It's a tale that begins simply: Reacher finds in a pawn shop a West Point ring with the previous owner's initials on it. He decides to find the person--return it. (He's a West Point guy, too.) And so the story unfolds, taking us into remote Wyoming (and elsewhere), where Reacher uncovers some most unpleasant goings-on.

I enjoy these Reacher tales that take place in the thinly populated areas of the country--more so than the ones that take place, oh, in London and elsewhere. Something about a loner in the wilderness ... though he is not alone in this one. He has some folks helping him out.

3. We've been streaming, and enjoying, a PBS documentary about Johnny Carson--not quite finished with it: Johnny Carson: King of Late Night (2012). Oddly: The narrator is Kevin Spacey (oops). Fun to watch all those old clips ... we used to watch the show now and then--for decades. (Link to the entire show.)

4. Joyce and I recently watched (via Netflix DVD) Nights and Weekends a film by Greta Gerwig--she of recent Lady Bird fame. Joyce did a Facebook post about it--and I pretty much agree with her, so I stole it:

Saw "Nights and Weekends" (2008) last evening, directed by Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig ("Lady Bird," 2017). Both also had leads in the film. The movie dissects a relationship that blossoms, dies, and then is temporarily reborn for one fragile moment through memory. Everything (well, perhaps except the sex!) is slight.The movie is not memorable for its script, poignant lines, or narrative rush. The characters often speak as if there are marbles in their mouths. You have to read the dissolution of this long-distance relationship in other ways, but, in fact, you usually do.

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

     - from dictionary.com

boustrophedon [boo-struh-feed-n, -fee-don, bou-]  noun

1. an ancient method of writing in which the lines run alternately from right to left and from left to right.

QUOTES

Many of the old Greek inscriptions were written alternately from right to left and from left to right, turning the direction as one turns a plow in the field, and this style was called "boustrophedon" (turning like oxen).

-- Carl Vogt, "Writing Physiologically Considered," The Popular Science Monthly, September 1881

ORIGIN

Only students of ancient scripts, especially (but not exclusively) of ancient Greek, will know the meaning and etymology of boustrophedon “like the ox turns (in plowing).” The major components of the Greek adverb boustrophēdón are the nouns boûs (stem, bou-) “bull, cow, ox,” and strophḗ “a turn, twist.” In the earliest Greek writing (mid-8th century b.c.), the first line was written from right to left (“retrograde,” as always in Phoenician and Hebrew); the second line from left to right; the third line retrograde, etc. Boustrophedonic writing was obsolete in Athens and most other parts of Greece by the mid-5th century b.c. Boustrophedon entered English in the 18th century.