audio books out of context #1
this is the first in the audio books out of context series. posts will appear every ¾(π²√5)² hours. the next post will be on november 13th, 2009 at 23:35 at which point the moon will be in a waning crescent phase (in the northern hemisphere) and a lady gaga song is predicted to be the #1 single (in eastern european night clubs).
logopandecteision
as many of you have read in the tabloids, i lost my virginity to rabelais’ the life of gargantua and pantagruel. what you may not know is that sir thomas urquhart, the english translator of the book was a rascally rascal in his own right. get a load of this shenanigan »
Logopandecteision is a 1653 book by Sir Thomas Urquhart, disingenuously detailing his plans for the creation of an artificial language by that name. The book is written in several parts, most notably including a list of the language’s 66 unparalleled excellences; the rest is made up of rants against his creditors, the Church of Scotland, and others whose neglect and wrongdoings prevent him from publishing this perfected language.
Urquhart was fond of this kind of very elaborate joke, sometimes so elaborate as to be taken by his contemporaries as in earnest. In this case, it is posterity which mistakes his intention.He promises twelve parts of speech: each declinable in eleven cases, four numbers, eleven genders (including god, goddess, man, woman, animal, &c.); and conjugable in eleven tenses, seven moods, and four voices.
you can peruse this short book for $0.00 here; in these tough economic times, that is a deal that even you cannot lightly refuse.
miscellaneous noms
Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar.
from the third policeman by flann o’brien (written in 1940 but published posthumously in 1967).
a word of warning: when reading the denis donoghue edition, SKIP donoghue’s introduction, he assumes that you have already read the book 100 times and therefore spoils the novel by nonchalantly revealing its choicest parts (ie. that the main character is ACTUALLY keyser söze).
In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point.
from: the sot-weed factor by little johnny barth (1960). i read this book every five years and each time that i finish the first line, i shriek in the faces of everyone on my subway car like a wild howler monkey and have 4,000 simultaneous orgasms.
certain writers elect to go by their middle name. usually this is because the mafia forced them to do it or a company holds a copyright for their first name and threatens to take them to court. other times it is because of medical conditions like 1. dyslexia or 2. chronic boogers. whatever the reason, here is a list of these individuals and their actual first names.
should you ever find yourself in the sack with any of the people in the list above, you now know the proper word to holler.
also: i have been slowblogging the pulp outta my source. if lists and literature are your thang, then you might want to consider buying this book from your local bookstore or shoplifting it from barnes and/or noble.
UPDATE (9/10/2009):
perhaps the only honor for an author greater than having his or her name adjectivised is having the name of his or her characters adjectivised. here are a few that i was able to find (irregulars are italic):
Arthurian, Bunyanesque*, daedal, Dryasdustic†, Falstaffian, Faustian, gargantuan, Herculean, Holmesian, narcissistic, Œdipal, Panglossian, Pecksniffian, pickwickian, quixotic
for the record, the hierarchy of literary adjectivisation goes something like this:
author’s name < character’s name < author’s name in lowercase < character’s name in lowercase (lowercase is the best case)
the ultimate achievements in this regard are cervantes, rabelais and dickens.
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*were i to venn these character terms with the previously posted auctorial terms, you would note that the single overlap is bunyanesque, referring both to john the writer and paul the folktale hero.
†a great summary word for this post.
i have always been fascinated by demonyms and so i compiled this fairly* exhaustive list on similar terms related to authors. what really tickles my pickle are: 1. the irregularities (given in italics) and 2. the authors that have not been adjectivised:
Asimovian, Austenian, Baconian, Ballardian, Balzacian, Borgesian, Brechtian, Bunyanesque, Byronic, Carrollian, Cartesian, Chaucerian, Checkovian, Chestertonian, Conradian, Dantesque, Dickensian, Durrellian, Dostoevskian, Emersonian, Erasmian, Faulknerian, Gravesian, Homeric, Huxleyan, Jamesian, Joycean, Juvenalian, Kafkaesque, Lawrentian, Lovecraftian, Machiavellian, Marlovian, Maughamian, Menippean, Miltonic, Nabokovian, Orwellian, Pinteresque, Poundian, Proustian, Rabelaisian, Randian, sadistic†, Sapphic, Sartrean, Shakespearean, Shavian, Spenserian, Tennysonian, Thurberesque, Thoreauvian, Tolkienian, Tolstoyan, Trollopian, Vergilian, Voltairean, Vonnegutian, Waughian, Wildean, Woolfian.
notice: huxleyan and tolstoyan BUT dostevskian
miltonic and byronic‡ BUT chestertonian
marlovian, thoreauvian, and shavian BUT waughian
pinteresque and thurberesque BUT spenserian
conspicuously absent: twain, poe, hemingway, conan doyle, ibsen, dickinson, rowling <gag>, wallace, et alii
see also: the literary onomasticon and/or this humorous article.
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*i say fairly because i omitted a bunch of classical “writers” that we really don’t owe any sort of credit to. seriously, what literary legacy of any value did the greeks or romans leave for us?
†this adjective from the marquis de sade is the only term on the list that is genuinely lowercase.
‡there are scads of great rhyming words here for my man, baba.
there have been many fascinating characters to come out of english restoration but none are more intriguing than the poet (and johnny depp look-a-like) john wilmot, the second earl of rochester—a notorious rake known throughout england for his debauchery, dirty jokes, and drunken hijinks. yet he was admired by literary all-stars by the likes of tennyson, voltaire, hazlitt, and goethe. a listicle »
an aside: the movie smells.
UPDATE: a further aside: but the intro to the movie is rather marvelous.
roy g. biv has a posse -or- melvil dewey has got nothin’ on me
laura, my former badminton adversary, recently linked to a very interesting guardian article on the topic of bookshelf arrangement. she then asked her readers how they chose to arrange their bookshelves. i answered that i (after a long period of introspection) finally arrived upon a chromatic system.
this drew a certain amount of incredulity from some mutual friends who impugned me privately and asked if i was goofing or being 1000‰ honest the way that i usually am. as evidenced above (and with this as precedent) you can see that my record of always telling the truth remains without pimple or blackhead. with my honour restored, let me tell you: the benefits of such a system are numerous:
in conclusion, another thing that i arrange chromatically is the drawer where i keep my underpants.
front matters
i love me a good old timey title page. perhaps this is because old timey title pages bring together three of the nineteen pillars that the ragbag is based upon: typography & design, esoteric knowledge, literature, and huffing glue. the foxy specimen above is from the english translation* of the manual of classical erotology (1884).
and you thought that taking the know your dvořák quiz was the maximum amount of mirth that you could have on the internet… well guess again, pipsqueak. i give you the know your odyssey translation quiz.
the following are seven famous translations of the epic’s opening line. can you match them to their translators? (note, for each answer that you get wrong, poor odysseus must wait an additional year before returning to his special lady friend (and to ratchet up the gravitas, he’s not allowed to engage in any autoerotic proclivities))
αʹ Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.βʹ Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
γʹ Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far and visited
The capitals of many nations, learned
The customs of their dwellers, and endured
Great suffering on the deepδʹ The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall
Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wallεʹ Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.
ϝʹ The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way
Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
That wander’d wondrous far, when he the town
Of sacred Troy had sackt and shiver’d down;
ζʹ The man, my Muse, resourceful, driven a long way
after he sacked the holy city of Trojans:
tell me all the men’s cities he saw and the men’s minds,
the translators: george chapman (1616), alexander pope (1713), william cullen bryant (1871), robert fitzgerald (1961), richard lattimore (1965), robert fagles (1996), and edward mccrorie (2004).
answers can be found here. also: which translation do you think is the tops? (for my money, it’s fitzy-fitzgerald’s but maybe this is because this was the first interpretation that i read. related: doesn’t it always seem that the first version of a song that you hear is always the standard and all covers become inferior?)
this pretty much sums up my evenings
woodcut by clyde j. newman (1902).
for wunderkammer: a northrop frye postage stamp
my seventeen year search for the elusive northrop frye postage stamp is finally over thanks to gold star comment-writer, slobone. also minted is frye’s fellow countryman (and intellectual sparring partner) marshall mcluhan. and now i am off to petition the united states government to start making its own line of literary theorists stamps instead of ugly little birds and boring flowers that nobody cares about. philately + literary criticism 4 life.
