Sunday Sundries, 263

1. HBOTW [HUMAN BEING OF THE WEEK]: Chuck Wilson, a former Harmon Middle School student in Aurora (I taught him in 8th grade in 1985-86--in the same class as our son). Chuck now lives in Hudson. Yesterday, I looked up from my reading in the coffee shop--and there he was. He told me he'd learned I was having some trouble with my balance, etc., and he gave me his card and told me to call him anytime for any help we might need. (A confession: I wept.)

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - The first was a new novel (her second novel) by Téa Obreht, Inland (2019). It's set in, sort of, the Old West (Arizona in the late 19th century) and Obreht has two stories going (they overlap near the end), one about a boy named Lurie (who grows into a man), and he narrates his sections, telling his story to Burke, his camel. (This would take some explaining--read the book!)

The other story (in the 3rd person) is about a struggling family in Amargo, AZ, a family in the newspaper business, a family struggling to survive (there's a drought going on), a family caught up in a political battle as well about the railroad and their town. The focus is on Nora, wife and mother (whose husband is not around, to say the least).

So ... back and forth we go between our two principal characters--violence in Lurie's story, survival in Nora's.

The end surprised me. I mean, I had a whiff of what was going on, but I couldn't see what was cooking. Don't want to say more.

It's not an easy book to read (complications, shifting points of view)--but, once I got "into" it, I was hooked.

     - The second was a book I should have read a long time ago--Nathaniel Philbrick's graceful and full account of the whale ship Essex, a ship rammed by a sperm whale and destroyed, a ship whose story Melville knew, a ship whose story was one of the inspirations for Moby-Dick.

The survivors spent months in their smaller whaleboats in the vast Pacific--and near starvation, they resorted to cannibalism to survive. Only a handful did survive.

Philbrick, who, as you no doubt know, is a wonderful writer about maritime subjects (and he has some books on the American Revolution, too), and you can tell from the outset that you
are in the hands of an authority. So we get not just the cover story--but much background: on whaling, on Nantucket (the ship's home port), on seafaring in 1819-20 ... and much more.

Near the end I read of a local connection. It seems that another ship later discovered, floating in the sea, a chest that had belonged to Captain Pollard of the Essex; it was purchased by another whale hunter, whose daughter inherited it and took it with her to ... Garrettsville, Ohio, where she was living. (She later donated it to the whaling museum on Nantucket Island.)

Garrettsville, Ohio, where my mother taught for ten years (1956-66), where my younger brother graduated from high school (1966), where we, living in Hiram (three miles away), did virtually all of our shopping when I was an adolescent.

(BTW: Joyce and I got to meet and talk with Philbrick on Nov. 7, 2018, when he did a presentation at our local Hudson Library & Historical Society--a presentation arranged by archivist Gwen Mayer.)

3. Last night I went to see Bad Boys 3 (Bad Boys for Life) at the local Hudson Regal Cinema. Although the film's been out for a few weeks, the auditorium was crowded--but no problem in these days of reserved seating!

It was gory (no surprise), sometimes funny (no surprise), sometimes emotional (surprise), sometimes puzzling (the end is, to say the least, morally challenging!).

I thought, watching it, how common it has become for women to appear in kick-ass roles. This one had two women cops who scared me. Ferocious hand-to-hand fighters, crack shots, etc. It's a major change in the film culture during my lifetime. I'm not objecting, mind you--just observing.

Martin Lawrence has, uh put on a few, and even Will Smith is showing his years (as, of course, I am), but I still found myself laughing at the damnedest things--which, of course, is precisely why I went to see it ... well, that and the popcorn!

Not for everyone, but most in the audience seemed to be loving it. (Link to film trailer.)

4. We've started streaming the most recent season of one of our favorite shows--Vera--via Britbox. Good, brisk pacing, unique characters, great acting, clever plots (she's a cop), wonderful scenery (Northumberland in England).

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

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

literose, adj. Literary in a studied or affected way. [RARE]

Origin: A borrowing from Latin. Etymon: Latin litterōsus.

Etymology: <  classical Latin litterōsus well versed in literature, cultured, erudite <  littera letter n.1 + -ōsus -ose suffix1.

In quot. 1859 apparently: full of letters, elaborate.

1859 Athenaeum  12 Nov. 628/2 The whole subject of substituting the Roman character for the illegible, difficult, and, to coin a word for the occasion, literose alphabets of India.

1888  W. D. Howells in Harper's Mag.  Feb. 479/2 Daudet is always literose.

1928  G. J. Nathan Art of Night  9 Don't be afraid of slang if it will make your point better and more forcibly than literose expression.

1998 Jrnl. Amer. Oriental Soc.  118 566/2 Less successful, but similarly literose, are ‘commentary ad literam’..whatever that may be; and ‘questiones’ and ‘sophismata’.

Derivatives

 liteˈrosity n. the quality of being literary in this manner.

1887 Harper's Mag.  Sept. 640/2 What is notable in all the descriptions is the absence of literosity.

1981  W. Alexander William Dean Howells  ii. 49 By the same token, prose style and dialogue must avoid literosity and affectation.