Book disasters

Digging out a hardback copy of "Gaudy NIght" almost caused a major disaster in my study -- all the books over it started to spill out.

I have other copies of "Gaudy Night," of course. One of them is a first American edition that a supervisor gave me back when I worked in a D.C.-area bookstore. She didn't respect first American editions.

In the mail today I received my third copy (later edition) of an early Barbara Cartland romance, "Desire of the Heart." The book was written before her stable of secretaries reportedly took over. (I can't find the other copies.)

On the back cover of the later edition, received today:

When Cornelia, unexpectedly wealthy, arrives from Ireland to stay with her uncle and aunt in London, she dresses in dowdy country clothes and hides shyly behind her spectacles.

The beautiful Lady Bedlington, to save herself from having to relinquish her handsome young lover, persuades the Duke to propose to Cornelia. A few hours before the wedding, Cornelia, who has fallen in love with her fiancé, finds out why he is marrying her.

In Paris, disguised as a very different person by one of the famous demi-mondaines of the City, she makes a desperate fight to capture the heart of her debonair husband.

'Gaudy Night'

When I was an undergraduate, my father sent me a copy of the Dorothy Sayers novel "Gaudy Night." I keep returning to it, and I have many favorite passages. Here are two.

From Chapter xiv:

"It appears to be altogether a choice of evils. But you have only to command. My ear is open like a greedy shark to catch the tunings of a voice divine."

"Great heavens! Where did you find that?"

"That, though you might not believe it, is the crashing conclusion of a sonnet by Keats. True, it is a youthful effort; but there are some things that even youth does not excuse."

"Let us go down-stream. I need solitude to recover from the shock."

At least one edition of Keats turns three sonnets on women into one; was it really the conclusion?

From Chapter xxiii:

He was wrapt in the motionless austerity with which all genuine musicians listen to genuine music. Harriet was musician enough to respect this aloofness; she knew well enough that the ecstatic rapture on the face of the man opposite meant only that he was hoping to be thought musical, and that the elderly lady over the way, waving her fingers to the beat, was a musical moron.

I'm hopeless with music, and that confession is painful from the daughter of a musician. I've been known to bang my head.

OK. One more Sayers quotation, back in Chapter xiv:

"Would you have your youth back if you could, Harriet?"

"Not for the world."

"Nor I. Not for anything you could give me. Perhaps that's an exaggeration. For one thing you could give me I might want twenty years of my life back. But not the same twenty years. And if I went back to my twenties, I shouldn't want the same thing."

Addendum on 'Fat'

I should note that I recanted on mayo. A few years after I wrote the column below, I wrote another diatribe that badmouthed mayo. A reader set me right, and my formal apology was printed the next Sunday.

Have I told you that I adore "An Officer and a Gentleman"?

Fat

Oct. 19, 1997

I have little patience with the fat police -- dietary experts and columnists who won’t rest until almost every gram, no matter of what type, has been wrung out of their recipes and recommendations for the good life. Some fat, I agree, is absolutely vile and evil, but the intake of good fatty acids is necessary for health.

Let me tell you a story -- and no, I am not making this up.

Sixteen years ago, with the help of Adele Davis, a much ridiculed nutritionist, I and a whole lotta fat revived an absolutely pathetic old pup.

The spouse and I had taken a one-term job in an idyllic college town in the mountains of Tennessee, and the house we rented came with two cats and an aged Welsh Corgi. I was ecstatic about the cats, but cynophobia runs in my family, and the idea of sharing living quarters with any dog distressed and disgusted me. Ick.

But Becket (cq) wasn’t any dog -- he was one of the worst excuses for a dog we’d ever met. The sluggish little thing wheezed, snuffled , shivered, whined and was covered with eczema. He regarded the great outdoors, apparently, with even greater loathing -- it required standing up and moving. Becket oozed decrepitude.

Now this was exciting: The dog immediately called to mind a particularly dramatic description of a case of oil deficiency I’d read a number of years before in Davis’ “Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit.” In our story, Davis is called in to look at the 18-month-old son of a former fashion model, who had shunned fat for years -- and of a dad who desperately wanted an athletic boy.

“This pathetic child was smaller than most one-year-old children,” Davis writes, “and had been covered with eczema since he was three weeks old. The boy was lethargic and seemed dim-witted.” She starts feeding the kid tablespoons of salad oil, and he perks up, electrified, and screams for more. He blooms into a normal, healthy boy. “If there is one man in this world who is willing to die for me,” Davis concludes, “it is probably this boy’s father.” Wotta story.

No problemo (sic) with a mere dog, I thought. We slupped in liberal quantities of oil on top of the dog’s long-standing and owner-prescribed diet of dry food. And he seemed to improve. Getting him to go outside to do whatever it is dogs do was no longer a trial and a tribulation for the spouse.

But then, Becket disappeared. And this was not fun, even for a cynophobe. We looked for him frantically, on foot and by car. In the process of calling his name over and over, we composed an anthem, begging the pup to come home.

Soon we were scum, at least in others’ eyes: After a few days, we got a call from a disapproving neighbor, who clearly thought our neglect -- or worse? -- had driven pitiful old Becket away from a house that was by rights his and not ours. She had seen him way up on campus, and she knew Becket wasn’t the type to go more than a few feet outdoors.

Becket wasn’t suffering at all, it turns out. We found him carousing with new furry friends and aggressively stealing such goodies as students would take out from their eating hall. Becket had gone from homebound invalid to jaunty dog-about-town. A low-rider, yes, but a sportster.

We coaxed him back and this time slathered him with affection to bind him to us. The three of us fell in love. But Becket looked good and we were low on oil, so we stopped giving it to him. A big mistake. Very quickly, he was sluggish and shivering again. We bought good, nonhydrogenated vegetable oil in jugs after that (no, not olive oil; nutritional science wasn’t that advanced in 1981) and made sure he got at least a couple of tablespoons a day.

And soon, we were no longer pariahs in the little town, for the story of our nutritional triumph, our resurrection of dear little Becket, spread. My husband and I taught the classics -- Greek and Latin -- but the best thing we did that semester was teach the glory that was grease.

And when his owners dropped by in April or May to pick up summer clothes, Becket’s vim and vigor stunned them. We were in a state of triumph.

When I explained about oil deficiency and its apparent effects, the woman almost wailed: “And he’d been like that for SIX YEARS.”
*****************************************************
When you buy prepared food, you’re likely to be paying good money for bad fat. No need to get hysterical, but read labels and ask questions, and above all, don’t overdo. Sometimes your body will tell you when you’ve been a wretch; when I’ve eaten potato chips, for example, and I love the miserable things, I can soon feel a thin but unpleasant layer of sticky goo build up on my skin.

When you’re at home, there’s no excuse to use shortening, margarine, processed cheese, hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, hydrogenated peanut butter, mayo or whipped salad dressing in jars, and so on. You wanna feel bad? You wanna endanger yourself and your loved ones?

But you should consume a moderate amount of extra-virgin olive oil (first cold pressing!) and/or, where less flavor is a boon, canola (rapeseed) or peanut oil, cold-pressed if possible. (There are also sesame and walnut and other oils that come from foods that are naturally oily, so use them if you can afford them and are careful in storing them; I don’t associate oilyness with corn, however, or safflowers and the like, and so I don’t buy them.)

Working good oil into a menu is a no-brainer. I trust you know how to make a vinaigrette and pour it on a salad, or how to saute vegetables, or that you can put olive oil on pasta with freshly grated parmesan cheese. Don’t let anything swim in oil, but remember what happened to the Tin Woodman when he couldn’t get to his oil can.

Kingsley Amis on headline English

A recent wordplay ban (excellent discussion by Nicole Stockdale) made me think of Kingsley Amis' views on headlines. I reproduced the punctuation as best I could, though I often disagree with it; heck, I can't say I agree with a lot in the text, either, but I still think it both instructive (utile) and amusing (dulce).

Kingsley Amis, _The King's English_, pp. 95-98.

Headline English

It is no secret that newspaper headlines no longer content themselves with announcing pieces of news in abbreviated but relatively unphilistine language. Nowadays headlines come in several styles. One is the over-informative, such that not only the piece of news is given but also what followed from it, so that we learn before we start to read that story that not only has Chancellor raised interest rates, say, but also that his doing so has 'fuelled' a Tory 'panic' about this or that. I like a headline to state straightforward non-clever things like PRIME MINISTER ASSASSINATED. To add details or consequences ahead of time is to weaken both the story and one's desire to read it, as if anyone cared.

But such matters are not my concern; other styles of headline are. A particularly barbarous one is to take advantage of the hospitality of the language to the use of nouns as adjectives; thus an escaping couple cease to be an ESCAPING COUPLE and become an ESCAPE COUPLE. A string of unleavened nouns will form a whole headline. Three nouns stuck cheek by jowl was once the limit, but now four is standard. Some months ago two tabloids gave their front pages to SCHOOL COACH CRASH DRAMA and SCHOOL OUTING COACH HORROR and a week or two later one of them achieved five with SCHOOL BUS BELTS SAFETY VICTORY. There is some loss of decent seriousness here, as if anyone cared.

This loss is clearer with the style of headline that uses puns or otherwise plays with words. Last month an understandably giggly tabloid carried the following in a single issue:

Page 1. Picture of a pretty girl who had just had a success. Caption: 'A star is born: British actres Julia Ormond gets a pig part.' Headline reads, 'Movie queen is crowned', i.e. is to play Queen Guinevere in £40m King Arthur film.

2. Headline reads, 'Still on tract for more rail misery'.

3. Headline reads, 'Arnie [i.e. Arnold Schwarzenegger] his true self after pregnant pause'. [His part in a recently made film had required him to simulate pregnancy.] Also headline reading, 'Careerof Julia the obscure is into top Gere'', i.e. the actor Richard Gere is to star as Sir Lancelot in the film. An accompanying photograph is captioned, 'Knight movies: Richard Gere makes his point [flourishes sword] while rehearsing his Lancelot swordplay.' Copy contains the sentence, 'In showbusiness terms, unknown actress Julia Ormond has found the Holy Grail.' On the same page, a large photograph of another actress is captioned, 'Dressed to thrill: . . . at premiere of new Arnie film.'

5. Headline reads, 'We're on the road to photo licences' [i.e. to the introduction of driving licences that carry a photograph of the licencee].

6-7. Headline reads, 'Crying all the way to the bank' [Barclays' profits, customers' grievances].

7. Headline reads, 'Food firms find health guide hard to stomach'.

10-11. Headline reads, 'Food firms boil over with anger as Brussels goes sour on soya milk'.

12. Headline reads, 'Banned be thy name' [a church authority has banned the use of pet-names etc. in gravestone inscriptions].

17. Headline reads, 'How our garden paradise was lost' [through nasty neighbours].

18. Headline reads, 'Border skirmish over a hedge'.

21. Heading: 'Crusoe, your island awaits'. Headline reads, 'Talking heads' [on solicitors' wigs].

23. Headline reads, 'A hot issue' [on crematoria]. Headline reads, 'Cine season'.

24. Headline reads, 'Extra time to save Graces' [statuary].

There follows a financial feature with eighteen headlines and no wordplay in ten pages.

The effect of all this in one issue is to make human concerns seem trivial to the reader. But what sort of reader is being looked for? If any, an unusual sort, one well acquainted with the Arthurian legends who knows about Jude the Obscure and much else in literature and yet is at home with 'Arnie' and talking heads. And when we read of somebody headlined in this tabloid and another as 'death husband' and 'kidnap horror man', and puzzle out that the same person is meant, we may start to suspect that, as in the case of much modern poetry, the journalists concerned are not really interested in an identifiable reader. They are just playing a silly game among themselves. After all, they have to fill the paper somehow whether they have anything to say or not.

Stop Press (to use an outdated expression): The other day I read in the columns of a 'quality' newspaper -- in the body of a story, not in a headline -- that bird-protection societies had been sent all of a twitter by something or other. Oh God, when will it end?