Friday Vocabulary

1. obduracy — stubborn inflexibility, state of being unmoved or unashamed

Though Laithley continued in his obduracy, ever and anon did my lord offer the hand of friendship and pledged the return of his lands if only that stubborn knight would take the oath.

 

2. outrance — [obsolete] furthest extremity, at the very limits (of propriety)

And so the battle was joined à outrance, and no quarter would be pled nor given on either side.

 

3. lairy — [UK idiom] aggro; vulgar

Then this lairy lad in a Man U jersey comes up and smashes our lights and was just threatening to slash the tyres when the busies arrived.

 

4. ouzel (also water ouzel) — aquatic bird found in the Rocky Mountains

I knew the ouzel right away from the way he swam beneath the surface of the pool.

 

5. raffle — trash, rubbish

“Just toss it with the other raffle out back behind the cook’s cabinet.”

 

6. encomiastic — of or related to one giving a eulogy; laudatory

He had mistaken his encomiastic duties for yet another opportunity to perform his sky pilot holy roller tent meeting “Come to Jesus” routine.

 

7. kindle — litter of kittens, rabbits, etc.

Jesse wondered if this third report meant that three students had found the same litter, or if there were three separate kindles of kittens on the school grounds.

 

8. havey-cavey — suspect, dubious

The more we learned of this havey-cavey plan the less we liked it.

 

9. macerate — to soften or separate by steeping in liquid; to make thinner

It was found, however, that those plants whose inoculating agents had been macerated in acetone still had high likelihood of carrying the mosaic virus.

 

10. matelot — sailor; buddy

We exited the restaurant to discover the same gang of matelots lying in wait to reclaim their offended honor.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(archaic)

bear-garden (also bear garden) — place where bear baiting was offered as entertainment; any locale where hurly-burly is condoned or accepted

The strand alongside this part of the Thames was known to be a sort of bear-garden, and I saw exactly the sort of strutting popinjays I expected to find there.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. peripeteia — sudden turn of events, reversal of fortune, crisis

However, the thoughtful peripeteia of the classic Greek drama (as, for example, the drastic return of Neoptolemus to his normal open disposition) has been replaced by a poor pallid counterfeit, and every moviegoer knows that the dramatic scenes of failed plans and stratagems of The Avengers, e.g., are only a preface to the ultimate, inevitable, and—to be frank—quite boring triumph of the supposed heroes.

 

2. diuturnity — state of lasting for a very long time

What hand, through long mornings and nights of diuturnity, carved with mild feathered strokes these monuments of rock and packed earth through which we now floated on our rafts in awestruck wonder?

 

3. hieratic — of or related to priests, esp. those of Ancient Egypt; of or related to a cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing; severely formal, overly styled

As we went deeper into the cave, the hieratic illustrations suffered a decline, as if the deep and secret meanings of the bizarre images had been forgotten, so that only the shells and forms remained, debased figures lacking the strength of the earlier icons, as the underlying mysteries became more and more distant to this devolving culture.

 

4. putto — representation of a cherub (sometimes winged) in Renaissance and Baroque art

The chalice featured an embossed representation of Venus, flanked on either side by tiny putti holding a ribbon about her head.

 

5. putrid — rotting, decomposing, esp. with a bad smell; vile, morally loathsome

“If you must descend further into study of these putrid philosophies, I will thank you to leave my house!”

 

6. conjury — conjuration, magic, witchcraft; an act of the same

So simply did he assuage the bank manager’s concerns that the entire visit seemed sheer conjury, especially as the manager had had his hand almost on his phone to call the authorities when first we arrived.

 

7. cachalot — sperm whale

Only the rich reward of the ambergris and spermaceti would induce the fishing of the mighty cachalot, so fierce and huge are these mighty whales.

 

8. league — unit of distance of varying measure in different places or times, usu. calculated as roughly 3 miles

Exhausted though we were, Ronnie allowed us only a brief respite, though we’d already traveled twenty leagues since daybreak.

 

9. inchmeal — extremely slowly, by inches, little by little

I drew the curtain aside inchmeal, not daring to awaken the sleeper before I was ready to pounce.

 

10. melioration — [archaic] amelioration, something which makes a thing better

The estate benefited from his hard work and the many meliorations he had set on course during the lord’s long absence.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British informal)

go spare — to become angry

“I dunno just how it happened, only that he’d go spare when I told him he was being made redundant, so I thought, y’know, if maybe he had a few pints first the news would go down easier.”

 

Book List: 1100 Books (The Last Hundred)

As I told you not too very long ago .. oh, who am I fooling? it’s been quite over a month now … I recently passed the eleven hundredth book read in my little silly book tracking project. And that means it’s time once again to foist upon you a listing of all of the last hundred books read, with a few callouts for this or that special item. (The Dirty Old Man book, for example, was the 1100th Book Read and thus worthy of note because of the random milestone crossed.

My last hundred began with Well-Springs Of Wisdom: From The Writings Of Frederick W. Robertson, which is a ‘greatest hits’ set of quotations, extracts from the sermons of this once oh-so-fashionable preacher in England away back in the first half of the 19th Century. I’ve loved some of his sermons preached at Bath, and thought his insights into the nature of language to be intriguing. So I was quite interested in this survey capturing his thoughts on any number of subjects. I found many inspirational insights, much to like in this volume … and then I stumbled over his views about the place of (Christian) women. Sigh. Would his perspective have mellowed if he’d lived longer? (He died at the age of 37.) Who can say?

Of all the perfect little nothings I’ve ever read, this beautiful incredible tale, Rock Crystal, is among the best. Adalbert Stifter builds a story where nothing really happens at all, creating the most wrenching drama of two little children who— But I dare not say more. Just read the book, and be sure to skip the W. H. Auden introduction (actually a book review pasted into the front of this NYRB Classic edition, perhaps to bolster the wafer-thin page count) until you read the text itself. It is an excellent, gripping, moving, overwhelming tour de force. Oh, and also, let’s not forget my usual caveats and explanations about books read and numbers and all that. Basically, I only count non-comic books as books read, though I do track the total volume in a separate field. All right, onto the beginning of the list.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1001 8/15/23 Frederick W. Robertson Well-Springs Of Wisdom: From The Writings Of Frederick W. Robertson Religion & Spirituality
1002 8/16/23 John Portmann When Bad Things Happen to Other People Philosophy
1003 8/17/23 Jane P. Resnick International Connoisseur’s Guide to Cigars: The Art of Selecting and Smoking Cooking
1004 8/18/23 Steve Alten Meg Mystery
1005 8/18/23 Aldous Huxley Brave New World Fiction
1006 8/20/23 Tommaso Landolfi Words in Commotion and Other Stories Fiction
1007 8/21/23 Kenneth Bulmer / Brian M. Stableford The Wizards Of Senchuria / Cradle Of The Sun SF & Fantasy
1008 8/21/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Magic Moscow Children’s
1009 8/21/23 Adalbert Stifter Rock Crystal Fiction
1010 8/28/23 Leonard Shlain The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image Sociology

 

The best book I read in the next set of ten was a re-read, Tony Hillerman’s 4th novel featuring his police detectives from the Navaho Reservation, People Of Darkness. I went back to this one (originally this was the 95th book I read, way back in 2016) because I wanted to compare the plot with the second AMC TV miniseries drawn from Hillerman’s books. The book came out best in the comparison, though the television program was not as reprehensible a reworking of the original material as the first time around. Still and all, I enjoyed the book. Chee is a much stronger, much better character in the book, and his character has that ring of truth which is the hallmark of good fiction.

Sadly, no newly read book in this set came up to the same high standard as the Leaphorn & Chee mystery. There were several books I liked, and the Orhan Pamuk book might have been fine if he hadn’t made the classic literary mistake of trying to color his fiction as a mystery.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1011 8/29/23 Paul Guinan & Anina Bennett Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel SF & Fantasy
1012 8/30/23 Robert S. Baker Brave New World: History, Science, and Dystopia Literary Criticism
1013 9/1/23 Philip José Farmer Hadon Of Ancient Opar SF & Fantasy
1014 9/2/23 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine June 2023 Music
1015 9/3/23 Francis Wheen Hoo-hahs and Passing Frenzies: Collected Journalism Essays
1016 9/4/23 Eugen Herrigel Zen Religion & Spirituality
95* 9/5/23 Tony Hillerman People Of Darkness Mystery
1017 9/9/23 Orhan Pamuk My Name Is Red Mystery
1018 9/10/23 Daniel Pinkwater Attila the Pun: A Magic Moscow Story Children’s
1019 9/13/23 John Scalzi Old Man’s War SF & Fantasy
1020 9/13/23 William Osler A Way Of Life Psychology

*See above
 

Although I cannot claim to love all of the works gathered here, especially some of the later writings which trail off a bit from his earlier verve, and though The Master of Ballantrae to me was a terrible tale of family abuse, there was much to love in this one-volume edition of The Works Of Robert Louis Stevenson. Oh, this book wasn’t complete, missing Quentin Durward and The Black Arrow, among other things. But there’s enough adventure and excitement in these tales to keep the interest of any red-blooded boy. On the other hand, one can make a strong case that Stevenson peaked with Treasure Island, which remains one of the best pirate stories ever. Of All Time. Still, even a gradual decline from that great height spans a taller reach than most, including the masterful (and even more mysterious in the original) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (Though supposedly Stevenson said that the protagonist of that book had his name pronounced ‘jee-kul’.)

Finally got around to reading Ken Kesey’s masterwork, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Wow. What a stunner. At one point I got so distracted by McMurphy’s calculated use of the n-word that I almost lost sight of the fact that Cool Hand Luke and so many other American Christ tales have used so much of what was contained in this shattering, stellar, brilliant novel. Having seen the movie long, long ago (it was the first R-rated picture ever I saw), I thought I knew the story. But reading this prose made me (finally) understand what all the fuss about Kesey was all about.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1021 9/14/23 Daniel Pinkwater Devil In The Drain Children’s
1022 9/18/23 Ken Kesey One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Fiction
1023 9/25/23 Charlotte Joko Beck Everyday Zen: Love & Work Religion & Spirituality
1024 10/1/23 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine July 2023 Music
1025 10/4/23 Robert Louis Stevenson The Works Of Robert Louis Stevenson Fiction
1026 10/4/23 Michael S. Kimmel Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation Sociology
1027 10/5/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Muffin Fiend Children’s
1028 10/10/23 Terence Real I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression Psychology
1029 10/11/23 Kenneth Bulmer / Jeff Sutton The Ships Of Durostorum / Alton’s Unguessable [Ace Double 76096] SF & Fantasy
1030 10/14/23 Tim F. LaHaye Revelation, Illustrated and Made Plain Spirituality

 

I’ve spoken before of just how great a writer Daniel Pinkwater is. (See the book list for the last hundred and my quick note about his novel Wingman.) But I was blown away once more by just how well Mr. Pinkwater crafts that most delicate and difficult work, the short young adult novel. Sure, we have series galore and werewolf vs. vampire romance fantasies that we aim like a flamethrower at the potential readers in middle school nowadays, but those kids who fell in love with Judy Blume or Robert Cormier or Scott O’Dell can attest to a love of reading books that didn’t talk down to them while also speaking directly to them, a love which often translated into a lifelong love of the written word. And Daniel Pinkwater can work this same magic, though he is much, much less dark than those other expert writers. In The Last Guru, Pinkwater weaves a truly transcendental tale and creates an almost perfectly enlightened book. Words fail me, and I simply cannot express how tremendous, staggering, amazing … well, words fail me. There are things that some will take issue with, but this tale of spiritual power is super, in spite of a strange animadversion to Iceland.

Sociology? History? Something entirely new? Gil Elliot calls The 20th Century Book Of The Dead a ‘necrology’ of the macro-violent deaths of the 20th Century. And this little book is very sobering, even moreso when you realize that this book covers the murder machine of modern life only up to 1972. This bold investigator hammers home just how staggeringly big was the modern invention of mass death techniques, and asks some perhaps unanswerable questions about how and what and wherefore. I found even his more questionable points worthy of note, in this thoughtful and thought-provoking book.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1031 10/16/23 Daniel Pinkwater The Last Guru Children’s
1032 10/21/23 Steve Paulson & Pam Paulson Church Signs Across America Humor
1033 10/22/23 Fritz Leiber The Swords Of Lankhmar SF & Fantasy
1034 10/23/23 Roald Dahl Matilda Children’s
1035 10/23/23 Jerry Patton Satan’s Angel Pornography
1036 10/23/23 R. A. Montgomery Mystery Of The Maya Children’s
1037 10/25/23 John Scalzi The Ghost Brigades SF & Fantasy
1038 10/28/23 Eugene Zamiatin We Fiction
1039 10/29/23 Robert Aiken The Mind Of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics Spirituality
10/31/23 Hergé The Seven Crystal Balls Comics
1040 10/31/23 Gil Elliot The 20th Century Book Of The Dead History

 

Like many of the John Le Carré novels about his hero-not-hero George Smiley, The Honourable Schoolboy fills page after page (after page, it’s a long book) with taut dialogue and lush description and a sense of sad truth that is likely the biggest lie that either of these two spies, one fictional and one pseudononymous, ever created. The frankly melancholy tale of underworld betrayal and misplaced love in Southeast Asia takes the reader on dizzying descent into world now long gone, a world where Englishmen and Americans vied in the Orient with the Chinese and the former ruled people of the farflung British Empire. Set in the dying days of the Vietnam War, the spy tome serves as an interesting counterpoint to this reader’s view of that shameful yet most American of wars. When Le Carré is on, he’s on, and he’s at his best in this somewhat lugubrious tale.

There were many good books out of this tenth of a century, among them Helen Waddell’s fine book of background and (mostly) sayings of The Desert Fathers, the writings and hagiography and wisdom words passed down from some of the first self-abnegating Christians, the monks and seekers who went into the harsh deserts of northern Egypt region to find a closer relationship with Christ along about the 3rd and 4th Centuries. These tales ring sometimes strange to our modern ears, analguous in some instances with the riddles of ancient Zen. Waddell of course bends the material to her own design, but that bent is towards a more lyrical, more humane wisdom than some of the harshest toils of the desert path. Her rapture (and ours) over the tale of St. Pelagia the Harlot is worthy of the entire book.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1041 11/4/23 Helen Waddell The Desert Fathers Religion & Spirituality
1042 11/8/23 Anne Hillerman Cave Of Bones Mystery
1043 11/16/23 William Gibson Zero History SF & Fantasy
1044 11/18/23 William Gibson Pattern Recognition SF & Fantasy
11/19/23 Hergé Prisoners Of The Sun Comics
1045 11/20/23 Robert Van Gulik The Chinese Gold Murders Mystery
1046 11/22/23 Bernard Glassman & Rick Fields Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters Religion & Spirituality
1047 11/23/23 Åke Edwardson Frozen Tracks Mystery
1048 11/25/23 John Le Carré The Honourable Schoolboy Mystery
1049 11/25/23 John D. MacDonald The Quick Red Fox Mystery
11/26/23* Anant Pai, ed. Harischandra: The Story of the Mythological King Whose Name is Synonymous With Truth Comics
11/26/23 Lakshmi Lal Jakata Tales: Elephant Stories Comics
11/28/23 Mike Baron Badger #7 [First] Comics
1050 11/28/23 Robert Nordan Death Beneath the Christmas Tree Mystery

* Read a second time; first read 5/18/2016
 

Now this was a book I found myself liking in spite of the fact that I had absolutely no earthly reason to like it. I mean, it’s exactly the kind of book I usually hate, a throw-away mystery full of conincidences and arch inside jokes about single ladies’ life in the Big Apple, and yet …. I really, really liked it. I mean, like “I want to write to the author and tell her how much I liked this book” liked it. Seriously, Sparkle Hayter (and that cannot be a real name, can it?) created a real gem with Revenge Of The Cootie Girls. Did I say ‘like’? No, it was love. I really found myself really really loving this book. Even though this is exactly the sort of fare that I usually (as in always) detest and blame for the downfall of … well, something. But this book was so well-constructed—in spite of ludicrous plot elements and a few deus ex machina—that I found myself just falling in love with the whole thing, and the mystery-not-a-mystery story of Robin Hudson. Sure, you get a lot of “Hey, wait a second!” tingles throughout the first half, but … no, seriously, it’s just very very well done. Maybe I will write the author.

Now I really wanted to tell you how much I’m starting to get into the adventures of The Saint, by Leslie Charteris (which I first came to love through the Vincent Price radio show (not the Roger Moore TV episodes, which are … okay I guess)). But my copy of The Saint Wanted For Murder doesn’t have a dust jacket, and the pic I made of the boards doesn’t ‘pop’, even with the cute logo of The Saint on the green background. So instead I’ll tell you about a beautifully illustrated version of The Book Of Common Prayer that I completed during this particular slice of ten books. The text, of course, is as near to set in stone as anything can be—save for daily devotionals of course. But it’s lavishly illustrated and nicely organized and just has that heft that make for a good book. Which is a good thing, even for those books that are only Good Book adjacent.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
11/29/23 Mike Baron Badger #8 [First] Comics
1051 11/30/23 Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights Fiction
1052 11/30/23 Eric Schlosser Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market Sociology
1053 12/2/23 Sparkle Hayter Revenge Of The Cootie Girls Mystery
1054 12/5/23 Leslie Charteris The Saint Wanted For Murder (Wanted for Murder / The Saint and Mr. Teal) Mystery
1055 12/6/23 Piers Anthony Split Infinity SF & Fantasy
1056 12/7/23 Daniel M. Pinkwater Yobgorgle Children’s
1057 12/8/23 John Dickson Carr The Mad Hatter Mystery Mystery
1058 12/9/23 Piers Anthony A Spell For Chameleon SF & Fantasy
1059 12/9/23 Thomas Cleary, trans. The Original Face: An Anthology of Rinzai Zen Religion & Spirituality
1060 12/9/23 The Book Of Common Prayer Religion & Spirituality

 

And here I really must say something about Albert Campion, the self-effacing, somewhat unattractive and not very brash detector-type person who is the protagonist of Margery Allingham’s delightful very British mysteries. I started reading his exploits right about this time, having found a trove at the local library book sale (paperbacks are 25¢ each, so I find myself unable to resist). And I just loved him from the very first time I met him in The Crime At Black Dudley. Some of the charms of Ms. Allingham’s series are also failings, as in a certain grotesquerie which certainly pervades this strangely violent yet oh-so-British plot. And though some of the novel’s details and characters are not entirely to my liking, Mr. Campion emerges as a fully realized wonder, someone I could not wait to read more about.

Fortunately I was able to gratify this desire almost immediately, and my liking for the quite silly Mr. Campion continued, in spite of the bizarre nature of many of the Richard Hannay sorts of plots he found himself enmeshed in, and the silly enemies Campion faces, the Huns and that ilk. In Sweet Danger, we start with Campion posing on the French Riviera as a king (or prince, I forget) of some farflung and forgotten principality (which I guess would make him a prince, wouldn’t it?) in the Carpathians, only to give up this ridiculousness and return to England for further and different ridiculousness including the summoning of a demon. It’s delightful, and perhaps this is my favorite I’ve read in the series so far.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1061 12/10/23 Margery Allingham The Crime At Black Dudley Mystery
1062 12/12/23 Margery Allingham The Gyrth Chalice Mystery [orig. Look To The Lady Mystery
1063 12/15/23 Margaret Frazer The Prioress’ Tale [sic] Mystery
1064 12/23/23 Gérard de Nerval Selected Writings Fiction
1065 12/24/23 Boris Akunin The Death Of Achilles Mystery
1066 12/28/23 Margery Allingham Police At The Funeral Mystery
1067 12/30/23 A. F. Price & Wong Mou-lam, trans. The Diamond Sutra and The Sutra of Hui-neng Religion & Spirituality
1068 12/30/23 Margery Allingham Sweet Danger Mystery
1069 12/31/23 Andrew Mollo To The Death’s Head True
1070 1/2/24 George Breitman, Norman Porter, & Baxter Smith The Assassination Of Malcolm X Conspiracy

 

Many ways exist, of course, to judge books of sweeping history. And doubtless this particular book—a textbook of my mother’s in the ’50s and a revision of a work from the beginning of the 20th Century—has had many of its facts and arguments superseded by new research and (more likely) new ideas concerning the period we no longer call The Dark Ages (and they’re not called that here, either). But the book itself is extremely well-written, and covers this huge swathe of time in an engaging and informative manner. One might quibble with this or that emphasis (well, I might), but the authors keep up a steady pace in this work spanning, after all, over a millennium. About those authors: the original writer, Joseph R. Strayer, wrote the ur-version of this book in 1921. After another’s revision, it was up to Dana Carleton Munro to update the book, completely revising it and bringing the work’s study up to the 15th Century. (The original work by Strayer had ended at 1270, for quite sound pedagogical reasons, I’m sure.) The end result, The Middle Ages 395–1500, is a wonderful synthesis of the earlier scholarship and a highly readable work of history, even for a casual reader like myself. If I’m being entirely honest, part of my plaudits for this book are directed at the 9 fold-out maps which add materially to the information of the text, and which are just fun to fold out and to peruse. More fold-out maps, please!

I was going to highlight The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus here, but find that I neglected to scan its cover. So I’ll mention instead another favorite from this set of ten books, Ian Fleming’s 9th book of the adventures of James Bond, Thunderball. The movie (the 4th) is one of my faves, and the theme song is my favorite; I’ve a soft spot for Tom Jones, despite the strong contenders such as Shirley Bassey and Paul McCartney & Wings. The book itself seems to be better than many in the series, perhaps because its plot is kept on track because it began life as a prospective screenplay co-written by Fleming with four others. (The co-credit in my version—“based on a screen treatment by K. McClarthy, J. Whittingham and the author”—is apparently the outcome of a court battle.) Whatever the cause, the plot is more sensible than most, though of course SPECTRE continues to be ridiculous as a criminal conspiracy. Still, it doesn’t suffer from Fleming’s main problem, which is that he seems to have very little idea just what a secret agent superspy might actually do.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1071 1/14/24 Joseph R. Strayer & Dana Carleton Munro The Middle Ages 395–1500 History
1072 1/15/24 Agatha Christie The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd Mystery
1073 1/18/24 Michael Jecks The Last Templar Mystery
1074 1/18/24 T. W. Rhys Davids, trans. Buddhist Suttas Religion & Spirituality
1075 1/19/24 Margery Allingham Death Of A Ghost Mystery
1076 1/20/24 Sax Rohmer Daughter Of Fu Manchu Mystery
1077 1/25/24 Ian Fleming Thunderball Mystery
1078 1/28/24 Agatha Christie Poirot’s Early Cases Mystery
1079 1/30/24 C. J. Sansom Dissolution Mystery
1080 2/2/24 John Franklin Bardin The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus Mystery

 

Re-reading Frank Herbert’s Dune for the first time in decades reminded me of what a staggering accomplishment his magnum opus was. One can say it was ahead of its time—and be referring to its supposed focus upon ecology, oil, or psychedelics. Or one can compare and contrast with the movies that came after (not the William Hurt one, tho’)—and debate the different roles of women, religion, or politics in this or that version. But these points underline the book’s true greatness: almost 60 years after publication (the first half of the book actually appeared in Analog magazine starting in 1963!), Herbert’s work still manages to provide more and more interpretations, and new generations seem able to still find further nuance (and its opposite) within these densely packed pages. Coming back to the original source, I found the feudal medievalism of the political scenes striking, and realized how greatly my memories of the printed word had been subtly altered by Lynch’s staggering film. But Frank Herbert’s greatest triumph is in world-building at a level practically unheard of, at least in the science fiction genre. There are depths upon depths here, though in reading the appendices and the history of the Orange Catholic Bible and the Butlerian Jihad, we can also see that some of these enormous remote buildings may just be painted over wood and paper backdrops.

One great re-read deserves another, and returning to The Crying Of Lot 49 was like sitting in the Brady family’s living room with old friends and passing the bong around while discussing conspiracy theories. Even this most accesible of Thomas Pynchon’s work (I keep seeing people advising new readers of Pynchon to start with Vineland or even—*choke*—Against The Day, and I ask myself why they hate these people so much?) has sentences that challenge the attention and may actually be not best read while stoned. Most of the parallel history and doings of the demimonde (constant themes of Pynchon) will be quite well known nowadays, at least were to me, though I did find myself going down a few rabbit holes looking up the visit of the Russian Navy to San Francisco during the Civil War and trying to pinpoint that reference made to Motley’s magisterial Rise Of The Dutch Republic, and the Jacobean play at the center of Lot 49 made me go out and read right away The Tragedy of The Duchess of Malfi. But Pynchon manages to pack into these 138 pages (in my edition) so much much more than most authors uncover in their entire oeuvre. Like Against The Day, there are unresolved unanswered questions here, but … well, the worlds of the squares and the hip in America are not separate countries, but somehow manage to co-exist simultaneously, in all their contradictory glory. That Mr. Pynchon manages to put Heisenberg’s United States into this small a box is a testament to his incredible genius.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1081 2/4/24 Michael Bonner, ed. Uncut Magazine August 2023 Music
1082 2/5/24 Jean de Brunhoff Les Aventures de Babar Foreign Language
1083 2/7/24 Frank Herbert Dune SF & Fantasy
1084 2/10/24 Margery Allingham Flowers For The Judge [aka Legacy In Blood] Mystery
1085 2/14/24 H. P. Lovecraft At The Mountains Of Madness and Other Tales of Terror Horror
1086 2/17/24 Margery Allingham Dancers In Mourning Mystery
1087 2/20/24 Thomas Pynchon The Crying Of Lot 49 Fiction
2/20/24 Meera Ugra The Hidden Treasure: A Jakata Tale Comics
1088 2/21/24 Margery Allingham Mr. Campion: Criminologist Mystery
2/22/24 Meera Ugra Jakata Tales: The magic chant and other stories Comics
1089 2/23/24 Ross Macdonald The Drowning Pool Mystery
1090 2/24/24 Bob Murphy Desert Shadows: A True Story of the Charles Manson Family in Death Valley True Crime

 

I’ve been working through my comics lately, approaching them from both ends—meaning Amar Chitra Katha and Badger at one pole, and of course Zap Comix at the other. This particular issue, Zap Comix #1, was pretty much an all R. Crumb production, though interestingly (according to Mister Wikipedia) was not originally supposed to be the first issue, indeed, was not even extant, as the original strips by Crumb were apparently stolen or at least taken out of the country by a Philadelphia publisher. There’s lots of good stuff here, and it is condign that Mr. Natural has pride of place on the cover. Later issues would showcase other fantastic artists of the underground ‘comix’ movement, and issue #4 of Zap gives me all sorts of … funny feelings, perhaps more appropriate for the pages of Young Lust.

Ah! The joys of Little Libraries! A while back—last Christmastime—I found a whole passel of the Penguin Modern Poets series just sitting in a Little Library near my home, and I selfishly grabbed the lot. I am working my way slowly through the books (I’ve just started the third poet in the third volume), but I was quite blown away by that first trio of poets in the first volume pictured here; well, two-thirds of them at least. The Lawrence Durrell was a revelation, in that I had no idea the author of the Alexandria Quartet also wrote very good poetry. The R. S. Thomas was also a revelation, though likely only to such a one as I who has no idea about such things, for Mr. Thomas was a quite well known Welsh poet for decades and decades. I loved so much of his verse in the Penguin collection that I’ve taken to searching for him in every used bookstore I spend time in. (No luck so far, but I need more books like the proverbial you-know-what.) His “Cynddylan on a Tractor” I loved so much that I added it to my personal anthology of the poems I love best.

 

# Read Author Title Genre
1091 2/25/24 CALL (Center for Army Lessons Learned) Operation Enduring Freedom III Militaria
2/25/24 Mike Baron Badger #9 Comics
1092 2/26/24 Ruth Fenisong The Wench Is Dead … Mystery
2/26/24 R. Crumb, et al. Zap Comix #4 Comics
1093 2/27/24 Erle Stanley Gardner The Case Of The Turning Tide Mystery
2/27/24 R. Crumb, et al. Zap Comix #2 Comics
2/28/24 R. Crumb Zap Comix #1 Comics
1094 2/28/24 John Webster The Tragedy of The Duchess of Malfi Drama
1095 2/29/24 Lawrence Durrell, Elizabeth Jennings, & R. S. Thomas Penguin Modern Poets 1: Durrell Jennings Thomas Poetry
1096 2/29/24 Scott F. Crider Office Of Assertion: An Art Of Rhetoric For Academic Essay Reference
1097 3/1/24 Iain Pears Death And Restoration Mystery
1098 3/3/24 Jane Langon The Fact On The Wall Mystery
1099 3/5/24 Josephine Tey A Shiling For Candles Mystery
1100 3/6/24 Isaac Asimov The Sensuous Dirty Old Man Humor

 

So I did manage to find that John Franklin Bardin book; I hadn’t put it away with the other already-read books just yet. And though I won’t bore you (further) with a description of its three excellent (well, some parts are quasi-excellent) tales, I’ll leave the image here for you to comtemplate like a mandala of murder. I see that turning back on the spigot of the Mysteries genre in this last set of a hundred books led once more to their overwhelming predominance, with over a third of my top-rated books in that category. (Second most winning group were the Comic Books, which of course I’ve said elsewhere don’t really count.) That emphasis seems likely to endure into the next hundred books, where almost a third of the 60 books I’ve already read since the 1100th book above are in that genre as well. This, no doubt, is because I take these to read at work during my lunch break etc., as a serious inquisition into the role of the concept of Free Will in the development of mid-17th-Century Capitalism can be hard to follow with constant interruptions for this or that service call. Ah, well. So seems I’ll be talking to you about Books #s 1101 – 1200 in the not too far distant future. Until then, happy reading!

 

The lists of previously read books may be found by following the links:

Friday Vocabulary

1. censor — to remove or suppress objectionable content from work to be published or promulgated

Still, the easiest way for the occupying government to repress these renascent ideas of nationalism was to encourage these artists to censor themselves, whether from fear of paperwork or of financial loss.

 

2. sprezzatura — [Italian] studied nonchalance, art of making quite difficult work seem effortless

He tried just a smidge too hard to affect an air of sprezzatura in his writing, but often this careful carelessness came off more as a disinclination to proofread his own work.

 

3. dreck — useless stuff; garbage

He wrote thousands of words every NaNoWriMo, but it was always just fifty thousand words of dreck.

 

4. ligyrophobia — fear of loud noises

The doctors agreed that this was not a symptom of PTSD, that his ligyrophobia had some other cause, given that he’d been a headbanger and metalhead up until last Thursday.

 

5. tabouret (also taboret) — small stool

He sat upon the pale pink leather tabouret so as to be close to her, but found it impossible to rise for dinner later without making quite ungentlemanly contortions.

 

6. orography — scientific study of mountains; mountain features of a region

Of course, the orography of an area will inluence its hydrography, though the converse is not always true.

 

7. potter — [British] to busy oneself in a desultory manner to little or no effect; to waste time

When she had pottered about with the index cards for a while, Alice might finally be able to think about the import of the secret she had learned that morning.

 

8. avernal (also Avernian) — of or related to Lake Avernus, Italian lake famed for its noxious fumes and thought to be an entrance to Hell; hellish

For days we made our weary way through the fetid swamp, until I feared that the avernal fumes would leave me with permanent debility even after we should ever leave this pestilential quagmire.

 

9. breasthook — [nautical] shaped horizontal timber spanning the bow between decks of a ship

The use of breasthooks greatly increased the stability of His Majesty’s vessels, and of course provided support when ramming operations were required.

 

10. unhouseled — [obsolete] in the condition of not having received the Eucharist

Is not such a foul deed, assassination in the dark, leaving the victim unshriven and unhouseled, is not this the worst of crimes?

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. sennit (also sinnet) — braided straw or grass used for small crafts or hats

Soon he replaced this rude headgear with a wide sennit hat shaped much like the latest fashions he’d seen in London, although with a wider brim.

 

2. cit — derogatory term for citizen or city folk

We tried not to laugh at all the silly questions of this cit, since some said it was his daughter that the captain had ideas of courting.

 

3. revetment — external layer of hard material supporting an embankment or wall

Perhaps the rock revetment made the shoreline promenade less ‘pretty’, as Susie had complained, but it protected this fine construction against the ravages of the waves and tides, and was the reason why St. Lugons could still boast of its walkway upon the beach, while the new construction at Pelleret was already beginning to crumble.

 

4. Urschleim — primordial soup

And from this Urschleim emerged the various organisms, formed of the ‘vesicles’ which—according to the professor—comprised this ur-slime.

 

5. puerperium — [biology] month-long period after childbirth

She devoted herself to these exercises during her puerperium, aiding the restoration of the pelvic wall.

 

6. neurasthenic — person suffering from a nervous breakdown

He had the pallor habitual to the neurasthenic, as well as a tendency to tire easily, even in mere polite conversation.

 

7. maven — expert, aficionado

Gerald was quite the maven of old nautical knotwork, and consequently looked down upon the paracord craze, short-lived though it was.

 

8. compeer — person of equal rank or ability, peer

Though Reggie felt he had no compeers in his department, in truth he was a merely average worker, no better nor not much worse than his fellows.

 

9. demimondaine — promiscuous woman, woman belonging to the demimonde; prostitute, courtesan

Once acquired, she discovered, a reputation as a demimondaine was not easily lost without obtaining somehow an entirely new identity.

 

10. misdoubt — [archaic] to doubt, to disbelieve; to suspect

I misdoubt ’twill be so easy a conquest as Sir Richard promises.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(Latin)

sacer vates — sacred poet

Believing that a prophet is scorned by his own country, Trevalian left for the continent to pursue what he conceived of as his calling to be a sacer vates, divinely inspired to bring the truth to an uncaring world, and he thought true in the last part of this conception, for uncaring was his reception everywhere he traveled.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. ferine — feral, untamed, of or related to the state of animals existing in nature

Not all ferine creatures exhibit such maternal love, but many do.

 

2. latitudinarian — tolerant, allowing great latitude in attitude (esp. of religious principles); lax, lacking necessary rigidity in views

Of course, the allowances of these latitudinarian directives may stem as much from confusion about the policies of the new politburo as much as any real change in official policy.

 

3. faintified — [idiom] feeling faint, evincing propensity towards fainting

She had pretensions of being a true old-fashioned Southern belle, though her models tended to be the sighing type, wistful and faintified, instead of the hardscrabble women who could change a flat tire in the mud and pouring rain if need be.

 

4. majority — adulthood, legal age

He had founded and sold two companies before he had even reached his majority.

 

5. snooter — [informal] snooty person, snob

“Why you should bend over backwards for that bunch of snooters is more than I can understand.”

 

6. misgive — [archaic] to make doubtful or fearful; to suspect, to fear

Still these unadmitted assignations misgive me and daily my mind plagues itself with foul thoughts and worse suspicion.

 

7. limn — to draw, to depict; to describe, to delineate

And though he tried endlessly to limn the supposedly unearthly beauty of his new girlfriend’s features, going so far as to expound for a half hour upon the wonders of her nostrils, all we could see was that Gerald was very much smitten by her.

 

8. dotard — [archaic] old senescent person

“Look here, you dotard! I’ve been trying for an hour now and mayhaps you just can understand how to work the remote!”

 

9. bottomry — [nautical] shipping contract wherein the vessel is used as collateral to raise money financing a commercial voyage

The law was quite clear that even a markedly poor return had first to go to the lender, as only the actual loss of the ship itself released the borrower from the obligations imposed by bottomry.

 

10. videlicet — [Latin] to wit, namely, that is to say

By this agreement Mr. Porter granted the usufruct of his mother’s old homestead, videlicet the cottage known locally as ‘The March of Kent’, to one James Dinwoodie, currently resident in Shropshire.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

potman (also pot man) — pub worker who picks up empty glasses

Blackie found work as a potman at The Palky Gander, but was hard put to keep even that unchallenging position.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. pongo — [British slang] soldier; [obsolete] large ape, as an orangutan or gorilla

“I’m not about to let some bloody pongo wheedle his way into Lucy’s affections!”

 

2. perennial — perpetual, enduring; [biology] of a plant with a life cycle lasting over two years; recurrent

Usually Garland found the perennial vigor and enthusiasm of campus life brought about a concomitant rise in his own spirit, but somehow during this visit the brisk vibrancy of the students around him induced only a nostalgic sadness, a soughing sigh of regret for ancient partings.

 

3. alicorn — horn of a unicorn, esp. as medicinal ingredient

Though some say the merest touch of an alicorn is sufficient to erase poison from the body, the best sources teach that it is the powdered form, ingested or mixed into a poultice, that have the famous ameliorative effect.

 

4. gloze — gloss over, make excuses, palliate; flatter

I mean to gloze her in her office, allow her to hurl her abuse at my head, and fawn and nod and agree, until she calms and allows us one more chance.

 

5. analogion — lectern, esp. in Greek Orthodox Church

Here at the Ruthenian mission the devotees kissed the crucifix standing upon the analogion before the altar, kneeling in the aisles (for the pews were already full) to hear the passionate words of the celebrant.

 

6. aibohphobia — fear of palindromes

One can only assume they named her ‘Hanna’ due to the presence of aibohphobia amongst the family.

 

7. peccant — sinful; wrong, faulty

Try as they might, the community was unable to rid themselves of this peccant priest.

 

8. squalid — foul, filthy; depraved

We found him in an SRO down by the river, lying facedown upon a bed made squalid by the many not-quite empty bottles and cans surrounding him, as well as his own exudate and excreta.

 

9. adminicle — document attesting to existence or contents of another document

The uses here are nuanced, as (for instance) one can allow an adminicle in lieu of the actual certificate of marriage, but the same cannot be said in matters of probate if no legal will can be found.

 

10. dun — to importune for payment of a debt; to persistently demand or ask

Though he could easily afford to pay, Larry hated to be dunned for outstanding bills, and the smaller the amount the more obstinate he became in ignoring the creditor.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(British)

wrong-foot (also wrongfoot) — to cause an sports opponent to mistake intentions by making an unexpected action; to catch someone off guard, to surprise someone and take them at a disadvantage

They tried to wrong-foot me by filing the paperwork that very day, but I expected some sort of maneuver and had had a man at the clerk’s office ready with the rejoinder documents.

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. choler — anger, ire, irritability

Nothing could raise Ira’s choler so much as the suavity of robots.

 

2. cat — [UK slang] to vomit

“Sorry I almost catted back there,” Timothy said in his oh-so-serious voice, “but the news took me somewhat by surprise.”

 

3. cannikin (also canikin or canakin) — small cup or can for drinking

“Grab us a couple of cannikins of ale and I’ll grab us a table.”

 

4. subjacent — at a lower level, underlying, situated beneath something else

But in addition to the high moral principles and noble ideals, there was another motivating force, subjacent and unstated, but understood nevertheless by those members of the establishment whose job it was, after all, to ensure the preservation not only of the republic, but also their own privileges.

 

5. apocope — loss, omission, or suppression of final letter, syllable, or sound of a word

Though he tried to start a new trend by insisting upon ordering a ‘hamburg’ or a ‘cheeseburg’, these apocopes never caught on.

 

6. chiropodist — foot doctor

Her chiropodist recommended changing shoes, but her agent put a kibosh on the idea.

 

7. zendado — sendal, light cloth of silk; veil made of such cloth

He tried to hold his breath lest it betray him as he saw her pull aside her zendado to drink from the ladle, revealing her fine features to his eyes for the first time.

 

8. esurient — ravenously hungry

So esurient a nature could naturally never be satisfied, and thus by stages Walter was led away from the path of righteousness, until he became nothing better than a common thief.

 

9. mingy — miserly, stingy

Adam looked at his mingy slice of pizza, with its single pepperoni, and wondered once again just what he was doing here.

 

10. anticlinal — sloping downwards to both sides of a central axis or ridge

I looked left and right at the anticlinal scree and realized that I’d never be able to turn the truck and trailer around; I had to go forward, come what might.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK slang)

cough drop — obnoxious person; fellow, ‘character’ or ‘card’

“You’re quite the cough drop, ain’t you? Well, best keep on the good side of me.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. trotter — animal that trots; foot of an animal (esp. sheep or pig) used as food

Harqma, a spicy stew of lamb trotters, is a delicious Ramadan dish.

 

2. taphonomy — study of processes affecting living tissues after death, esp. with regards to fossilization

Shriver was an expert in forensic taphonomy, and had studied six months at ARISTA, the Amsterdam ‘body farm’ which was the first of its kind in Europe.

 

3. ophiophilist — snake lover, ophiophile

The presence of the python at the crime scene made the police suspect Cecile, as she was a known ophiophilist.

 

4. squassation — variant of strappado in which heavy weights are bound to the victim’s ankles and instead of merely being lifted by the arms bound behind the back the victim is jerked up repeatedly

If the prisoner did not confess his heresy after two or three sessions of squassation, water torture was used and was almost always effective in eliciting the desired confession.

 

5. plausive — praiseworthy

Though he struts like a cockerel in plumed cap, he has most plausive manner, giving due consideration to all men as befits their worth, as did his grandfather, the old Lord.

 

6. cemeterian — caretaker of a cemetery

In 1967 the national trade group for cemeterians lodged a formal complaint against the funeral directors’ association for restraint of trade, or, as some wags had it, for not sharing a big enough piece of their pie.

 

7. bewray — to reveal, to disclose

But Ficklegrew held the baby before him, between his precious self and the assassin’s gun, bewraying his true character to everyone present, including his would-be killer, who dropped his pistol to the ground and dropped to his knees, shaking his head at the man who wanted to be a world leader.

 

8. catechumen — person receiving instruction before Christian confirmation or baptism

As is often the case, our new catechumen had a much better idea of our group’s history than the rest of us old-timers, and Jorge was able to recite from memory a dozen or more important dates in the life of Horst Wessel.

 

9. dissensus — widespread disagreement or dissension

Thus the nation entered a period of what may be called holographic dissensus, in which what had previously been only schism between the two major parties devolved into controversy between an endless series of smaller and more divisive factions, as if the political will had been shattered into disparate shards of fractal kaleidoscopic opinions from which no consensus could ever be constructed.

 

10. nether — lower, under; lying beneath the earth’s surface, infernal, underworldly

And that’s how I caught a shotgun blast with my nether regions and saved the preppy princess from having her plaid skirt ruined.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(UK slang)

lose one’s rag — to lose one’s temper, to go apeshit, to blow one’s top

“They kept pushing me and pushing me, until I finally lost my rag, and then I sort of just blurted it out.”

 

Friday Vocabulary

1. undulate — to move in a wavelike manner; to look like a wave

Keith dropped to the dance floor to do The Worm, and proceeded to undulate as if he had never seen Dune, Part Two.

 

2. thermotaxic — of or related to biological heat regulation

Petey shivered in thermotaxic response to the cold dew on the grass which was chilling his bare feet.

 

3. glabrous — smooth as a baby’s bottom

The chortling eunuch’s glabrous rolls of fat both fascinated and repelled Lady Donica.

 

4. azonic — not local, not of any particular region

But existential angst and paranoia is an azonic condition found in all times and—almost—every culture.

 

5. perdue — hopeless, lost

So once again we found ourselves in a situation perdue, but, having come through all right the other two times, I started to believe that maybe we might just squeak through this one as well.

 

6. cartulary — bound collection of original documents, charters, etc.; register of transcriptions of important papers; person in charge of records or public papers

The associate professor had made his reputation on the discovery of a previously unknown Benedictine cartulary hidden away in the mouldering papers of the third Earl of Dunwesson.

 

7. pomatumed — pomaded; with ointment applied

Darby bowed his head, wearing his best powdered and pomatumed wig in honor of the special occasion, and tried to exude an air of calm self-satisfaction.

 

8. valedictory — of or related to farewells or to saying goodbye

Jackson turned to us and started to speak but we urged him to hurry aboard, there being no time for valedictory sentiment.

 

9. desquamate — to come off in scales; to shed, to peel

Around the injection site was an ugly oozing red zone, where the epidermis had desquamated in reaction to the potent drug.

 

10. bine — stem of a climbing plant; woodbine

Caught in the bines covering the trellis was a thin scarlet ribbon.

 

Bonus Vocabulary

(slang)

mouse — black eye

“Where’d you get that mouse, then? Was it Willie who give it to you?”