In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

I read the article in the Nov. 22 issue about CeCe Moore, who uses genetics to solve cold cases. The article mentions her identifying the killer of a schoolteacher, who was raped and murdered in her home in Pennsylvania in 1992. This crime took place in my home town.

[serious crayons]

I'd also like to mention Nick Paumgarten's article on energy in the November 8 issue. It had a boring start for me but it picked up when he talked about wearables like Oura and the Whoop. They work at night too and I've been wondering what I could do to improve my sleep quality. My doctor wants me to take an expensive sleep test that is not covered by insurance. I'd like to use more low-tech ways to improve my sleep.

A neighbor uses Oura and swears by it. I've been tempted myself.

[Front-Ranger]

...delving into the book review for The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, which is coming out soon. By David Wengrow and David Graeber, who sadly died last year at the age of 59, it is in the vein of Sapiens, chronicling the decline of civilization from migratory hunting/gathering into agriculture and bureaucracy. I already read a review of it in The Atlantic.

I now have a copy! I bought it at a used bookstore but it looks new. I'm starting with the chapter on urban civilizations in the Americas, sort of in the middle of the book. Reading all those book reviews, I don't have to start at the beginning!

[serious crayons]

I now have a copy! I bought it at a used bookstore but it looks new. I'm starting with the chapter on urban civilizations in the Americas, sort of in the middle of the book. Reading all those book reviews, I don't have to start at the beginning!

Wow, keep us posted! I'd join you for a mini-bookclub but for some reason I found myself committing to try reading Infinite Jest.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Wow, keep us posted! I'd join you for a mini-bookclub but for some reason I found myself committing to try reading Infinite Jest.

Isn't that like Proust? Goes on forever?

[serious crayons]

So I glanced at the excerpts from Patricia Highsmith's diaries in the Oct. 4 issue (I know, I know). I wasn't particularly interested as I've never read anything by her especially after it said she was a racist and anti-Semite. But I skimmed a few and saw something interesting.

may 11-30, 1948: What to say of Yaddo? I shall never forget it. A singularly dull bunch, no big names?though Marc Brandel is interesting. Bob White, Clifford Wright, Irene Orgel, Gail Kubik, Chester Himes, and Vivien K[och] MacLeod, W. S. Graham, a Scots poet, Harold Shapero & wife, Stan[ley] Levine, painter, Flannery O?Connor. Great desire to drink, after 3 days. The drunkest evening of my life after ten days. At the Maranese Restaurant btw. here & town, the place we took dinner when the kitchen moved from garage to mansion. None of us ate much. We trooped into the bar & drank as if we had never had cocktails before. Mixing was the order?for a thrill?Marc soon succumbed, with carrot hair in his carrot soup. I exchanged a revealing phrase with C. Wright, the solitary gay person here, which was carried no farther. We both know. So what?

The first blue thing threw me. They were dull? Does she mean it was boring to be around them or they weren't big names? They don't sound exactly dull, but I guess you can go out drinking wildly and still be boring.

The second red thing is even more mysterious. At first I thought she meant gay as in lively and carefree, contrasted to dull. But the rest of the context suggests she means gay in the modern sense. But nobody used that word back in 1948, did they? So is it Bowdlerized? Which suggests to me that she used a term that would be offensive now. If she'd said "homosexual" I don't think they'd have needed to change it. But "gay" draws attention to itself, given the era. Right?

[serious crayons]

Isn't that like Proust? Goes on forever?

Or think of Robert Caro! Outside of scholars, who would read a three-part biography of LBJ at this point? I have a lot of respect for him (and always love that accent -- like Fauci's, I think) but his venture seems kind of Quixotic, doesn't it? At least in Proust's day people actually read long endless books.


 

[Jeff Wrangler]

Or think of Robert Caro! Outside of scholars, who would read a three-part biography of LBJ at this point? I have a lot of respect for him (and always love that accent -- like Fauci's, I think) but his venture seems kind of Quixotic, doesn't it? At least in Proust's day people actually read long endless books.

But does anybody do that anymore? Which brings me back to Infinite Jest. 

[Jeff Wrangler]

The second red thing is even more mysterious. At first I thought she meant gay as in lively and carefree, contrasted to dull. But the rest of the context suggests she means gay in the modern sense. But nobody used that word back in 1948, did they? So is it Bowdlerized? Which suggests to me that she used a term that would be offensive now. If she'd said "homosexual" I don't think they'd have needed to change it. But "gay" draws attention to itself, given the era. Right?

There is a very famous--and very funny--"screwball comedy" called Bringing Up Baby, which starred Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. At one point, Grant has a line, delivered to an older woman, "Do you think I've gone gay, or something?" He emphasizes the word gay, and since he's wearing a woman's housecoat at the time, I think the implication is pretty obvious.

Thing is, the movie was made in 1938.

Of course, that doesn't mean the usage was common, but, as I said, I think the line delivered by a man in a frilly woman's housecoat is pretty obvious.

(Incidentally, Baby is a leopard. I highly recommend the movie.)

[southendmd]