Category Archives: Books

Between Hitchen and Hittite Law

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A major re-arrangement of books and other items continues on the lower level of our house. Today I moved my copy of the 14th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Why do I have a copy of such a weighty set of volumes – and I mean that literally, since I had to move them all – in this age of vast libraries accessible via broadband? Sentiment. Inertia. My fixed notion that I’ll never get rid of a book unless it’s completely fallen apart.

That isn’t quite true. I’ve donated books. But only ones I have no interest in, and I’ve never had many books like that.

Besides, I acquired the 14th Edition nearly two decades ago, before the rise of easy Internet information, misinformation, and pseudoinformation. I chanced across a church rummage sale one day in 1995. The entire set was being offered there for exactly $2. So at 24 volumes, that was 8.3 cents a volume. Not the famed 11th Edition, but at that price worth the investment.

I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time with Britannica over the years, but I’ve dipped into the well now and then. One day I spotted the entry for Hitler, Adolph. The entry isn’t as prominent as you’d think, because the 14th Edition was published in late 1929, which turned out to be awful timing for selling expensive books. Hitler merits only 16 lines on Volume 11, page 598, there between entries for Hitchen, a town in Hertfordshire, England, and Hittite Law: see Babylonian Law. Would that he had stayed there in his obscure corner of an old reference work.

He’s called a “Bavarian politician.” It’s clear from the text that his main claim to fame at that moment, at least in the English-speaking world, was his part in the Beer Hall Putsch. (Ninety years ago this month, which I’d forgotten; but the Chicago Tribune, of all things, recently reminded me of the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht this month. The paper was able to find a few survivors and interview them.) The text also points out that, whatever his status in the NSDAP, Hitler didn’t even have a seat in the Reichstag representing the party – Dr. Frick and Ludendorff did.

Ludendorff, whose entry in the encyclopedia is a lot longer than Hitler’s, later broke with the Nazis and had the good fortune to die of natural causes in the mid-30s. By contrast, Wilhelm Frick, not one of the better-known Nazis any more, was shown the business end of a rope in Nuremberg in 1946.

Why a Duck?

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Unusually cool for this time of year, with rain a lot of the time, but not so many thunderstorms lately. During such moments, at least when work doesn’t intrude, there’s always the option of parking yourself somewhere with a book. Such as Hail, Hail, Euphoria! by Roy Blount Jr. (2010), which is about the making of Duck Soup, “the greatest war movie ever made,” according to the cover.

From page 15: “… when the director of Horse Feathers couldn’t get the crowd he had assembled for a big football scene to show any enthusiasm for the third or fourth take, Harpo said he’d take care of it. He did a lap around the field naked and honking his horn, and the fans went wild.”

No Thanks, Mr. Luhrmann

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Back to posting around June 16. Not exactly a summer vacation, especially since the pace of for-pay work isn’t slacking off, but more like a warm-weather interlude. Except that it isn’t quite warm enough to be summer, at least not in northern Illinois.

I’ve heard about the latest version of Gatsby, and so decided to read the book again. I’m going to pass on the film, for reasons stated before. But also because I’ve heard about the soundtrack.

From hotnewhiphop.com: “The director, Luhrmann, spoke on the adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, and creating music for it that blends the Jazz Age with a modern spin. ‘F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is peppered with contemporary music references specific to the story’s setting of 1922. While we acknowledge, as Fitzgerald phrased it, “the Jazz Age,” and this is the period represented on screen, we—our audience—are living in the “hip-hop age” and want our viewers to feel the impact of modern-day music the way Fitzgerald did for the readers of his novel at the time of its publication.’ ”

Something like Classical scenes in medieval paintings featuring clothes and armor that looks suspiciously medieval? No, that’s being too generous. The producers clearly believe (and correctly so) that a genuine period music soundtrack — or even one featuring closely authentic, newly recorded versions — wouldn’t sell as well as a hip-hop soundtrack, and are pretending it’s for artistic reasons. Yet posh Jazz Age clothes and cars seem to be OK for the movie (to judge by the marketing). I don’t see why Jay Gatsby shouldn’t be dressed like a hip-hop star.

I forget which costume drama I saw about Marie Antoinette some years ago, but it had the same problem — a distractingly modern soundtrack. In that case it was ’80s New Wave, which I’d prefer over hip hop any time, but it still didn’t sit well on the film.

Wednesday Gallimaufry

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Missed the conjunction of Venus, Jupiter and Mercury so far. Every night I’ve thought about it, it’s been cloudy. Every time it’s been clear, I’ve forgotten about it. Ah, well. I satisfied my need to see major celestial events for a while about this time last year with the Transit of Venus. If the next big thing I get to see is the eclipse of August 21, 2017, I’ll be satisfied.

Oz the Great and Powerful was an interesting failure. Ann wanted me to take her to a movie last weekend, and that happened to be one we could agree on, and playing at the second-run theater for $1.75. The 2D visual effects – layer-caked CGI – were worth that much, especially the colorful landscape of Oz. The story was uneven and so were the characters, especially Mila Kunis’ Wicked Witch of whichever direction.

Hyde Park on Hudson was likewise an interesting failure. Saw that on DVD a few weeks ago. Mainly I wanted to see Bill Murray give FDR a go. At times he did quite well with the part. Then there were moments I looked at him and thought, that’s just Bill Murray.

Chanced across this video not long ago. Wow, these kids are talented. How does that happen? It also made me look the original English version of the song. I can’t remember the last time I heard it.

The last book of the year that Lilly is reading for freshman English class is Animal Farm. She asks me about it, and I oblige her with what I know, but it’s all I can do not to overload her with detail about the Russian Revolution, Whites vs. Reds, Lenin, Marxism, Stalinism, Trotsky, show trials, old Bolsheviks, the gulag, Five Year Plans, the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, etc., etc. Over the summer she’s supposed to read Nineteen Eighty-Four. I’ll have to resist the urge to blather on about that, too.

Dog Chew

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The dog’s got some canine habits, for sure. Such as chewing things. Pictured below is a stuffed figure I don’t ever remember getting, and which no one in the house has paid much attention to for years. The hound found it recently and did some damage. Was Mr. Sluggo to its Mr. Bill. Reminds me of the young days of Katie, my mother’s dog, who destroyed (among other things) most of the pine-cone elves acquired in Germany in the ’50s that we used to hang as Christmas decorations.

A few months ago I picked up a hardback book at Big Lots. That retailer isn’t generally known for its books, but it had a bin of landfill-destined titles that I had to rummage through. I found A Fiery Peace in a Cold War (2009) by Neil Sheehan, whom I know as the author of A Bright Shining Lie, which I read some years ago, and remembered liking.

The progression of pricing was from $32 on the dust jacket to $7 at Bargain Books, which I could tell from a partially obscured price tag, to $4 at Big Lots. For that price, I would take a long look at Mr. Sheehan’s latest.

The book promised a biography of the man more responsible for the creation of the U.S. ICBM arsenal than anyone else: Air Force Gen. Bennie Schriever (1910-2005). I’d never heard of him. I started reading it the other day, and it’s good so far. I was interested to learn that Schriever mostly grew up in San Antonio. The early chapters contain a number of references to places that I would know 50 years later.

Longitude John

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I’ve been reading Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel (1995), which is about John Harrison, solver of the Longitude Problem, and I came across this passage: “Sometime around 1720… Sir Charles Pelham hired [Harrison] to build a tower clock above his new stable at the manor house in Brocklesby Park.

“The clock tower that Harrison completed about 1722 still tells time in Brocklesby Park. It has been running continuously for more than 270 years, except for a brief period in 1884 when workers stopped it for refurbishing.”

Wow. I had to find out if that was still the case, and it seems that it is. That’s a clock tower I would go look at, if I were in the neighborhood. I saw the Harrison chronometers at the Maritime Museum in Greenwich before I had much inkling of what they were or what he did, but finding out things sometimes works that way.

Naturally, specialists are busy revising the legend of John Harrison, including this fellow, who asserts that the clockmaker might have farmed out some of his brass parts. Could well be, though I’m in no position to pass judgment on the matter. But even if it were true, that hardly takes away from Harrison’s achievement.

There’s even a song about John Harrison. That’s what we need more of, songs about generally obscure but remarkably important people, places or events.

The Slow Decline of the Yellow Pages

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A book of yellow pages showed up at our door the other day. Fewer of those arrive with each passing year, but arrive they do. It’s a little hard to remember when they were essential reference works for the house, but so they were.

And like any good reference work, it was good to browse through them occasionally. Almost 30 years ago, in Nashville, I remember thumbing through one edition – it must have been an “official” one by one of the Baby Bells – and coming across a quarter-page ad for a roofing contractor that promised DEATH TO ROOF LEAKS, complete with skull-and-cross illustrations. Who knows, maybe the Republican Guard was getting into the roofing business in those days.

The edition we just got covers a big chunk of the Northwest suburbs. It has some standard reference information in the front, including a map of North American area codes. The metro New York and Los Angeles insets are very crowded with numbers, and metro Chicago could probably stand its own inset, too, but doesn’t get one. Are there still any states with one area code? Yes. Quite a few, actually: Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming.

Next are “City, County, State and U.S. government offices” pages, which were blue in some yellow pages, but white in this one. These are always good for finding some oddities, such as a toll-free number for information on adopting wild horses and burros, a number of the inspector general of the Peace Corps, and a general information number for St. Lawrence Seaway Lock Operations.

My packratish nature won’t let me throw it away for a while. But I doubt that I’ll need it to use it to call the St. Lawrence Seaway or anywhere else.

“Stand when I speak to you, earthman.”

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There’s all kinds of interesting things at this blog, which I chanced across the other day, but which also seems to have been discontinued. I think I understand why. It looks like a lot of work: all the scanning, caption writing, linking and publishing.

I’ve only skimmed it, but I like the tone of the site. Not: look at all this junk from the past we can feel superior to, for moral or aesthetic reasons. And not: look at all this cool stuff that reminds me of my childhood, when the world was a better place. But rather, look at all this! The world’s got an inexhaustible supply of interesting things, for endless reasons. Enjoy!

I found it because I was trying to learn more about the cartoonist Charles Rodrigues. I have the paperback book Spitting on the Sheriff and Other Diversions (1966). I picked it up at my mother’s house at some point, where it had been kicking around for years. “the in crowd” has scanned a number of them here, some of the better ones in fact. One of my favorites is, “Stand when I speak to you, earthman.”