January 2006
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In my experience, film memories are generally sharper than book memories. Film images crowd out the words. An exception is The Caine Mutiny. I remembered the novel very well, and I was astonished that the film version, which I saw last night and must have seen in 1954 or thereabouts, had almost completely evaporated from my…
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In 1951, Herman Wouk won a Pulitzer prize for The Caine Mutiny. The novel itself was a giant best-seller and along with it came the movie with Humphrey Bogart and also a Broadway play. It was a big 1950s literary event. It's almost exactly fifty years since I last read the book, and it's obvious why…
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Sheldon: Hey, look what the cat dragged in. Arnie: Well as I live and breathe. Sheldon: You know what? Arnie: What. Sheldon: That's what. Mel: Big shot. Sheldon: Who died and made you king? Mel: Ask a stupid question and get a stupid answer. Sheldon: Where were you when the brains were passed out? Arnie: Yeah, eat…
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My daughter continues to urge me to write something autobiographical. To which I reply, it’s all autobiographical. But since she wants hard news, not indirect revelation, I offer this account of my grandmother, born Sonia Chafetz, later, by marriage, Sonia Usilewski and finally, after a legal name change, Sonia Green. She was born in 1884…
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There's a small mystery in Tolstoi's Sebastopol in 1855. An officer drives "a telyezhka, which [says Tolstoi] stands halfway between a Jewish britchka, a Russian travelling-cart, and a basket-wagon." How in the arithmetical world can any object be "half-way" between three different kinds of wagons? A translation problem, let's hope. Moreover, the word "telyezhka" doesn't appear…
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My positions: 1) NO DOGS WITHIN CITY LIMITS. Rationale: fatal and near-fatal dog attacks, dog bites, barking dogs, whining dogs, ubiquitous dog "waste," dogs annoying citizens in parks and open space, the indulgence of dog owners. But what about seeing-eye dogs? Slippery slope, that. Sorry, no dogs (except for purposes of vivisection). 2) NO CHRISTMAS…
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The caprice of phrasal verbs (formerly called verb-adverb combinations) came to my conscious attention sometime in the 1950s, when I first read Mansfield Park. Fanny Price, the heroine, is lying on a couch; her sailor brother William cries, "Poor Fanny!… how soon she is knocked up! Why, the sport is but just begun. I hope…
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In the narrowest definition, a "replacement child" is a being who is intentionally conceived because an older sibling has recently died. Such substitutes must endure the lifetime burden of competing with a lost and often idealized child. Because it is almost impossible for them to please their parents, they easily become confused and frustrated, or…
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Call me prescriptive, but the all too common phrase "one of the only" offends both ear and logic. What does it mean to say that "the $11 billion Crusader artillery rocket system is one of the only weapons systems canceled by the Bush administration?" If it's the "only" cancellation, say so. If it's "one of…