On Saturday morning I finished posting my translation of “Le velours des vierge" (The Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg. Then I memorized the chorus of his “Classée X” (Rated X) and reworked some of my translation. This song is obviously about sex but he’s also playing with words that contain the letter “X”. It only has two verses and one chorus and it’s pretty simple so it shouldn’t take long to nail this one down.
In the late morning I headed out to pay for my phone service and then to go to the supermarket.
At Freedom Mobile I was told that I had to pay online. I said I don’t have a credit card. He asked if I had debit and I said I do. He inquired about my bank and I said Montreal. He thought a second and concluded that he thought they’d accept BMO. I was doubtful and I told him that I have exact change but he said, "That's not the reason." But then the guy next to him said it was okay and so I was able to pay in cash. This pandemic is getting more depressing every day.
At No Frills there were no grapes. I bought two bags of oranges, seven avocadoes, a big bag of onions, a pint of grape tomatoes, three jars of apple sauce and some shaving gel.
I had crackers, peanut butter and chocolate soy milk for lunch.
I read chapter 18 of Adam Bede by George Eliot. It wasn’t required reading but I'd already read chapter 17 three times and it seemed silly to have no sense what the hell the book is about. Adam the carpenter is in love with Hattie but she’s enamoured with a young lord named Arthur who has shown her some romantic attention. But Hattie is very disappointed that Arthur doesn’t show up for the funeral service for Adam’s father even though she dressed all in pink just for him.
I read Ulysses by Tennyson another time. It's interesting that Ulysses applies the word "good" to his son's governing of his kingdom but "noble" to his own adventures. He seems to recognize that the right thing to do is to serve as a king but it’s just more in his son's nature than his. To be fair, Tennyson wrote this poem about adventurous old age when he was in his twenties. It’s just the kind of "I will go out with a bang when I get old" dream that twenty year olds have. Mature poets don't write things like that. They write more about being perceptive and calm in their old age.
I read Robert Browning’s "Fro Lippo Lippi" for another time. He certainly was a funnier and more naughty writer than his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning. They probably got along fine. She died in his arms. One of the earliest Edison cylinder recordings in 1889 was made of Robert Browning. He seems so excited by the event that he forgets the words to his poem and just praises the wonderful invention.
I had a packet of organic beans with crackers and chocolate soy milk for dinner. These beans aren't as good as canned beans and canned beans aren't that great. I ate while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story Bee goes away to visit her aunt and leave Andy and Opie to fend for themselves. After Andy ruins their first meal his new girlfriend Peggy sweeps in to save the day. She cooks them a delicious meal and then she and Andy sing “Down in the Valley” together in harmony. But Floyd the barber starts to warn Andy that Peggy is trying to reel him in for marriage. Andy gets worried and tries to get by without Peggy’s help. But after a ruining another meal and having a boring evening together, the two bachelors are very happy when Peggy drops in to save them again and Andy swears he’s not going to listen to Floyd anymore.
Howard McNear, who plays Floyd kind of looks like Hitler.
On Thursday I was at Chris's place for 7:00. We moved his girlfriend Anna's sister's family to Clarkson. At lunch they had Kentucky Fried but I was fasting so I ate some oranges. We finished at 18:30 and Chris bolted through rush hour traffic faster than I've ever seen a tractor trailer go. He weaved around the construction markers on Yonge Street like he was dancing and got me from Clarkson to Wellesley and Yonge in forty minutes.
I walked up to 593 Yonge and Nancy was already there but the rental agency office was closed. We looked for a couple of places but we were late and the people had left. Nancy got frustrated and I became mad at her because of it, which made her break down. She shouldn't have expected everything to always fit into place.
On Friday morning I almost finished editing “Le velours des vierges” (The Velvet Virgins) on Christian’s Translations. I’ll finish posting it on Saturday on move on to the next of his songs.
I took a siesta at 12:15 and got up at 13:45.
I had my last can of beans with salsa and plantain chips for lunch.
I got an email from my TA in response to my explaining my assignment to him. He said that my explanation does make it clearer but if I wanted to have my mark changed I would have to insert the explanation into the assignment and resubmit it. He suggested that my writing is so good that I’m bound to do well in this course so I shouldn’t worry too much about this little assignment. He added that he thought my comment in tutorial comparing Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Curse For A Nation” to Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” was very astute. I responded that I think Hard Rain was more directly influenced by Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”. I also said that I think Ginsberg, Dylan and Browning were all influenced by William Blake.
I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. Coming home west along Queen the sun was directly in front of me and so glaring that I couldn’t even see the light change to green.
I finished reading the short story “Le passe muraille” (The Wall Phaser) by Marcel Aymé. This was the best of the stories from my dual language book so far. A boring lower level office worker discovers that he has the ability to pass through walls. He goes to a doctor who gives him some pills to take for his problem but he puts them in a drawer. He’s not very ambitious and does nothing with the power for a couple of years. But when he gets a boss that starts to treat him unfairly Dutilleul begins to use his power to drive his boss insane by poking his head through his office wall and shouting at him. After his boss is taken away to a mental hospital Dutilleul starts to become a master burglar who calls himself The Werewolf. He becomes famous and very popular. He allows himself to be captured because no one has any real cred in the underworld unless they have been in prison. He escapes every night but sometimes sticks around to give the guards kicks in the behind from nowhere. Sometimes he escapes and spends the night in the guest room at the warden’s home or steals books from the warden’s personal library. Finally he escapes for good and changes his appearance. One day he falls in love with a young woman who he learns is married to a cruel husband who locks her up behind several walls in their home. Dutilleul comes to her through the barriers and they begin a relationship. But one day Dutilleul gets a headache and absent mindedly takes two pills that he finds in his drawer, thinking they are aspirin. The next night becomes to his lover again but when he is leaving the pills take effect and he becomes trapped forever inside the outer wall of the house.
It has been adapted in French films a few times since 1951.
I found a dead mouse on my kitchen counter. I don’t know how it died. I certainly haven’t put any poison out. It was a tiny one and I have seen a bigger mouse running around.
I filled out a long online survey for U of T. It covered a lot of areas but one section on mental health didn’t have any intermediate choice between having been depressed “several times” and "not at all". So after inaccurately clicking "several times", before the next set of questions there was a page with a mental health help line. I guess that page might have appeared anyway but it seems odd that they wouldn’t have an option of "one or two times".
I read for a third time the required chapter 17 of George Elliott’s Adam Bede, but I decided to also read the chapter before it. It made a lot more sense because chapter 16 involves a breakfast with Pastor Irwine while chapter 17 has a comparison between Irwine and another rector. Chapter 16 gives a better account of Irwine’s personality so we can understand the comparison.
I had two potatoes with gravy for dinner while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story Mayberry has a new mayor who wants the sheriff’s office run by the book. He doesn’t like the fact that Mrs Ambrose drops off her baby at the jail to sleep in a cell while she’s shopping. He especially doesn’t like it that Andy lets moonshiner Jess Morgan go home in the middle of his sentence to harvest his crop so it doesn’t spoil. Andy assures the mayor that Jess will be back in three days but the mayor thinks Jess has skipped the county. When Jess is half an hour late returning the mayor insists on going after him. They drive out to Jess’s place only to find him in a tree. The mayor thinks he has climbed the tree to avoid capture and so he goes to climb the tree himself to get Jess down, only to find there is a bear at the foot of the tree. The mayor barely escapes the bear and ends up in the tree as well. Andy reminds the mayor that if he’d just let him do his job this wouldn’t have happened.
Mrs Ambrose was played by Janet Stewart who was on the SS Andrea Dorea in 1956 when it collided with the SS Stockholm. She was rescued obviously since this show aired in 1963.
Mrs Morgan was played by Helen Kleeb, who played Miss Mamie Baldwin on The Waltons.
Mayor Stoner was played by Parley Baer who was the voice of Ernie Keebler, of the Keebler cookie elves. He played Chester on the Gunsmoke radio series. He started out as a circus ringmaster and owner and that’s where he met his wife Ernestine Clark who was a bareback rider. They were together for 54 years. Her father was the first trapeze artist to do a triple somersault. He said radio was a perfect actor’s medium because if you play to five million listeners you are giving five million performances.
Nancy called me at 10:30 on Wednesday when I was still in bed and said she needed to know about rental agencies by noon. I stayed in bed for another half hour and when I got up I called Chris about getting a ride to work on Thursday. There was no answer and so I left a message.
I looked through the rentals and phoned a couple of agencies.
When Nancy phoned me back we decided to make an appointment for Thursday.
I had juice, fruit, soup and salad for breakfast and read the papers.
Nancy called again in the evening and now she was doubting the decision she'd made about the agency because she thought we might be able to find an apartment on our own. I didn't think we would have time for that since I was supposed to leave my place soon.
On Thursday morning I finished working out the chords for “Le velours des vierges" (The Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through it in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to start editing it for blog publication.
In the late morning I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor and on the way back I stopped at Freshco. The red grapes were very cheap at $2.19 a kilo but they were all too soft. The red globe grapes were sitting in the refrigerated fruit section with the red grape sign under them at the above price. I pointed it out to the guy stocking the fruit and vegetables and he told me it was a mistake and he took the sign down but since I’d seen that price they would have to honour it for me. He told me to tell the cashier that Jake told said it was okay. I grabbed seven bags of the globes, two pints of strawberries, two cans of peaches, dentil floss and Sunlight dishwashing liquid.
When I got to the express checkout the manager came over and told Catarina to honour the seedless red grape price for the red globes. Catarina commented as she has before that I really like red grapes. She told me again that she prefers the sour green ones. I said she must like white wine too but she said she doesn’t.
Before going home I went past my place to the Lucky Supermarket to buy plantain chips. There was a sign hanging from the ceiling just inside the store saying to leave bags and carts at the counter, but when I put my bag in front of her the woman at the counter told me I could take it inside. I got two large bags of the hot and spicy plantain chips. The place seems to have been under new ownership for the last year or so. The previous people in charge were friendly enough but this woman is exceptionally nice to everyone. At least one of the main male employees is Sikh so I wondered if it’s a Sikh owned business.
I had a can of British style baked beans with salsa and plantain chips for lunch.
I did a third reading of “The Natural History of German Life” by George Elliot. These observations of peasant life as being more communal compared to the individuality of the upper classes are still from outside. They smack of a “they all think alike” mentality. It’s not entirely untrue that there’s more group think among rural people who are deeply rooted in cultural traditions but it’s also true that some extremely independent thinkers, like for instance myself, come out of those kinds of cultures.
I had three potatoes with gravy for dinner while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story Andy has a new girlfriend named Peg and things are going great until Andy finds out Peg is rich. Barney tells him that he should dump her because the rich and poor are like oil and water. He suggests that when rich people come to a small town it’s because they’re bored and it’s like a kind of Roman holiday for them. Andy doesn’t listen but when he decides to take Peggy into Raleigh and treat her to a French restaurant, he feels out of place while she seems in her element. The thing is though that it was Andy’s idea to take her there and she would have been just as happy skipping stones by the lake. But after that date Andy begins avoiding Peg. She tries to call him but he doesn’t call her back. Finally she comes and reminds him that they have a date scheduled but he asks if they can postpone it. She angrily tells him not to put himself out. Andy feels bad and he goes out to the lake that night to think and skip stones. He finds Peg there and she confronts him. She tells him he’s a snob for not wanting to date her because she’s rich. She says that the night they spent together by the lake was better than any time she spent in Paris. Andy realizes he made a mistake to push Peg away and they come back together.
Peggy was played for four episodes by Joanna Moore. She had a rough childhood starting from the age of seven when her parents and sister died as a result of a car accident. She was under the care of her feeble grandmother for a while but then put up for adoption and was adopted by a wealthy family. She got married and divorced at sixteen, won a beauty contest in Georgia and then went to Hollywood. She got work on television and acted in film noirs and westerns. Her first co-starring role in an A picture was The Last Angry Man. She went deaf in the early sixties but an operation restored her hearing in one ear and she started working a lot in television. She married Ryan O’Neal in 1963 and gave birth to their daughter Tatum the same year. Joanna fell into alcohol and drug addiction after her divorce from O’Neal and Tatum, who was now financially successful, supported her.
I got home from work on Tuesday at around 2:00 and did some reading before I went to bed.
I got up at noon, cleaned up a bit, went out to the bank machine, bought some food and the papers. I had a salad for breakfast while reading the news.
I went to the Royal Bank at the Dufferin Mall and got a $40 money order for which I had to pay a $3 service charge. I used to the money order to make a payment on my phone bill, then I went home and read some more news.
I hadn't shaved or showered for a couple of days.
Nancy and I talked on the phone about meeting on Thursday at a rental agency. I was supposed to look for one and also find out how late I would be working that day.
I called the radio station a little after midnight and talked on the air about war and hatred.
On Wednesday morning I finished working out the chords to the first verse and the first chorus of “Mozart avec nous” (Mozart Is With Us) by Boris Vian and I started on the second verse, which has a different rhythm than the first but seems to use the same chords.
I worked out all the chords for “Le velours des vierges” (The Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg except for one instrumental break before the last verse.
At noon I logged on for my Brit Lit 2 tutorial.
Our TA Carson is writing his dissertation on depression in literature.
There is still no info on our second assignment even though we have less than two weeks to hand it in.
Some of the questions in this week’s reading quiz were ambiguous and so the professor will be bumping up the grades.
We spent the whole session on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Curse for a Nation.”
Browning lived from 1806-1861.
She was thirteen years old when she published her first volume of poetry.
Her father didn’t want any of his eleven children to get married. She lived in seclusion until the age of thirty nine when she eloped with Robert Browning and went to Italy. Her father was pissed off and they never reconciled.
The Victorian period is understood in a material way because of urbanization and land enclosure. Feudalism versus capitalism. Common lands were being bought for agricultural businesses, especially in this era. The poor were forced to sell their labour. Factories were always in danger of being bought out and so they were desperate and ruthless.
Curse for a Nation” was published in 1861, just before the US civil war.
The angel represents a higher moral necessity.
We each read a stanza of the curse and analyzed as we went along.
What is being branded and whipped is more than just bodies but souls.
I ask, when she says “Write” at the end of each stanza, is she urging herself on?
The task itself is a curse.
I said that she is pointing out the irony of the US at the time being considered as a beacon of freedom.
She mentions strangled martyrs and I wondered if she might refer to the hanging of Catholic priests but then doubted that because this is about slavery. Carson thought it might refer to John Brown’s hanging.
She may be also cursing the US for not speaking against the atrocities committed by England.
She addresses religious and learned hypocrisy.
I suggested that Bob Dylan’s final stanza in “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” in which he speaks of action as in “I’m going ,,,” may have been inspired by the final stanza of Curse for a Nation where she makes a call to action with “Go”.
I had crackers with peanut butter for lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride. It was very warm outside and there were lots of puddles from melted snow. But because it was so warm a lot of people that were outside seemed to have also come outside of themselves with relief. For example women were semi-flirtatiously looking at me more.
I got a notice that everyone had their mark bumped up for this week’s Brit Lit 2 reading quiz. So since I scored 7 out of 8, it was changed to 8 out of 8.
I sent an email to Carson to argue for a higher mark on my assignment:
Of my paragraph: “He understands that the power of the moment appears when one is unencumbered by angst over time and yet he apprehends the future and thereby curbs his enchantment (11-12).” Carson commented: “This is an interesting observation about the poem in general, but it's not yet clear how it relates to lines 11-12 in particular.”
I pointed out that in lines 11 and 12 of “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be” Keats says:
“Never have relish in the faery power
of unreflecting love …”
These lines show that “unreflecting love” which he recognizes to have “faery power” and therefore enchantment is the power of the moment. To be unreflecting is to be unencumbered by angst over time. He apprehends the future and curbs his enchantment when he declares “Never.”
I re-read “Our Casuarina Tree,” Toru Dutt a couple of times.
For dinner I added the rest of the bland coconut, carrot, cauliflower puree to a small can of baked beans and had it with two pieces of toast while watching the first episode of the third season of The Andy Griffith Show.
In this story Opie tells his father that he met a Mr McBeevee in the woods and that he lives in the trees, wears a silver hat, he jingles when he walks and he can make smoke come out of his ears. Andy thinks that McBeevee is an imaginary friend and he’s fine with that until Opie brings home a hatchet that he says McBeevee gave him. Andy thinks Opie must have gotten it from somewhere he shouldn't have and he makes him take it back. When Opie goes to the woods we see that Mr. McBeevee is real. He’s a line-man with a steel helmet and a tool belt holding tools that jingle when he walks. He also does a trick when he’s smoking to make it look like smoke comes out of his ear. McBeevee gives Opie a quarter for bringing him some berries but when Opie shows his father the quarter and insists that McBeevee gave it to him Andy begins to think Opie is turning into a liar. There’s a very dark moment when Andy sends Opie to his room and tells Bee that he has no choice but to give Opie a whipping. But when Andy tells Opie what is going to happen and that all he has to do to prevent it is to admit Mr McBeevee is make believe, Opie looks at his father sincerely and tells him that he can't say the man isn't real if he is. Andy says he believes him and walks away. He tells Barney that he doesn’t believe there's a Mr McBeevee but he believes in Opie. Andy goes to the woods to reflect on all this and when out of frustration he says the name, “Mr McBeevee” a voice in a tree above him answers. McBeevee climbs down and Andy is very glad to meet him. When later Andy tells Barney that he met Mr McBeevee and that he’s coming over for dinner, Barney tells him he’s been working too hard and calls the doctor. Then the phone rings and Mr McBeevee tells Barney to his shock to tell Andy he’ll be over for dinner.
Mr McBeevee was played with an Irish accent by Brooklyn born Karl Swenson who was known as “the man of a thousand voices." He played lumber mill owner Lars Hanson on “Little House On The Prairie."
Nancy went for a doctor's appointment on Monday morning. She called me later to tell me that she'd gotten some work for the week which would curb our plans for apartment hunting. She came by for some food before going to work.
I got up around noon and had the rest of the ratatouille and some salad for breakfast while reading some of the papers.
I left for work at 17:30 and got to 700 Bay at 18:30. We moved some stuff from there to 56 Wellesley and finished after midnight.
There would be no work for Tuesday.
I was way behind on my newspaper reading.
I'd been trying to get my income tax for the last three years done. That was my planned project starting next Sunday but I didn't know if I'd be getting T-forms for that year.
On Sunday Nancy called at around 8:30 and said that instead of me meeting her at Eaton Centre she would come over. She arrived at 9:30 when I was finishing up some sewing. Her parents drove us to Queen and Spadina and we walked with our two pillows up to 25 Huron for our first prenatal meeting. There were about ten couples there counting us. We basically talked about ourselves and asked questions. We did a relaxation exercise and that was it.
Nancy and I went to Eaton Centre and walked around for a while, then we sat and watched people. Nancy bought me some fruit. We went to Toby's and had the ratatouille but it wasn't as good as mine.
I'd forgotten my Metropass at my place and so Nancy paid my way home where I made my own ratatouille.
On Tuesday morning I’d worked out the chords for the first verse of “Mozart avec nous" (Mozart Is With Us) by Boris Vian and part of the chorus. I also worked out the chords for the chorus and part of the first verse of “Velours des vierges” (Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg.
Around midday I started doing my laundry and finished a little after 13:00.
I got a notice that my paragraph assignment had been marked and I got an A minus. Since the TAs were instructed to mark rigorously I’ll consider it an A. It's a relief to get an A minus after those two courses I took in the fall in which I had to fight to get a B. This is what Carson Hammond wrote:
This is a very strong reading of Keats' poem, particularly given its brevity. Throughout, you do great job of weaving together an analysis of the text's overall theme/"content" with that of its formal presentation. Given that Keats' speaker is fixated on the nature of time/temporality, moreover, it's fitting that the more "formal" aspects of your reading attend to things like the significance of punctuation (i.e. that em-dash) and the delayed resolution of those multiple "when"s. Except for one moment of slight disorientation (see marginal note), I have little to offer by way of criticism, as you managed to pack a great deal of insight into quite a short space. Well done; looking forward to your next!
So I basically hung the meaning of the poem on the punctuation and it worked.
For lunch I had kettle chips with salsa and some of that bland coconut, carrot and cauliflower puree.
I didn’t take a bike ride in the afternoon because I'd already ridden back and forth to the laundromat three times, which is a total of about fifteen blocks.
I re-read “The Cry of the Children” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and “To India” by Sarojini Naidu. The latter was written in 1943 and she was in prison from 1942 to 1943. Considering how conducive being cooped up is to writing I’m guessing this poem was written while she was incarcerated.
I re-read the introduction to Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species and since I'm ahead on my reading I decided to read the first chapter, even though it's not required. He just starts off by showing how natural selection works among domesticated species in order to set up how it works in the wild.
I boiled two potatoes and had them with gravy while watching the last episode of the second season of The Andy Griffith Show. I don’t call it the season finale because it was really just like any other episode with no sense of trying to close things down with a bang. That period of television in the early sixties didn’t really think in those terms. There were no story arcs like there are today in every sitcom. Most did not even have a series finale until Leave It To Beaver ended with reminiscences and an explanation of how Beaver got his name. The first major series finale happened in The Fugitive. Nobody seems to have done any research on when season finales started becoming a big deal.
This story begins on a Saturday morning with Andy and Barney coming to work but both having misplaced the keys to the sheriff’s office. Fortunately Otis has a key to let himself in to sleep off his Friday night drunk. They wake him up through the cell window and he unlocks his cell and opens the front door. Before Otis leaves they discover that there is a letter for him in the mail from his sister in law. She says that she and Otis’s brother Ralph are coming that day to visit him. Otis confesses that he has been writing her letters on the sheriff’s office stationary and she has gotten the impression that he is a deputy. Otis says Ralph has always been the successful member of the family and he is worried about what will happen if they realize he’s just a drunk. Andy decides to deputize Otis so he won’t be lying about working in the sheriff’s office. Since Otis swears to uphold the law he has to dump out the illegal alcohol he hides at home. His brother arrives but he doesn’t believe at first Otis is a deputy. Later Ralph disappears and then stumbles into the jailhouse drunk just like Otis usually does. Ralph lets himself into a cell and confesses to Otis that where he lives he is the town drunk. Similar stories about brothers that are supposed to be more successful but aren’t have been done hundreds of times in the history of television.
On Monday morning I finished memorizing “Velours des vierges” (Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg. I searched for the chords but no one had posted them. I worked out the first three chords of the chorus.
In the late morning I finished re-reading On Beauty by Zadie Smith. The ending didn’t makeany more sense the second time around. It seemed almost like a dream with Howard giving what is supposed to be a career defining lecture, after having forgotten his notes in the car. There is no indication that he speaks, but rather just clicks the power point from image to image while Kiki, the wife he’s cheated on twice sits in the audience smiling and he smiles at her.
I re-read “Curse for a Nation" by Elizabeth Browning a couple of times. Apparently this was scandalous at the time because they thought she was cursing England. It seems obvious that it’s an anti-slavery poem addressed to the United States.
For lunch I had chips with some of the coconut, carrot, cauliflower puree that I got frozen from the food bank back in the summer. It was incredibly bland by itself and so I added hot salsa to save it.
Even though there had been another snowfall this morning and the streets were very sloppy in the afternoon, I took a bike ride anyway. My ass was only a bit damp when I got home.
I re-read Elizabeth Browning’s “Cry of the Children” poem against child labour a couple of times.
I kept on checking to see if this week’s Brit Lit 2 lecture had been posted. It hadn’t by 17:15 and I felt sleepy again. I laid down for only fifteen minutes without sleeping but I had my energy back. I checked for the lecture and it was up.
The lecture was on the Victorian period. There were changes in the world and the arts adjusted. Especially in the Victorian period there was a sense of paradox like there is now. The major paradox was described by Thomas Carlyle in 1843: “England is full of wealth yet it is dying of inanition (hollowness). We have more riches than any nation has ever had but we have less good of them than any nation had before.”
What characterizes the Victorian period was that it was the high point of British imperialism, of its global reach when the British Empire covered a fourth of globe, there was tons of wealth and profit from industry and from the colonies. But there is also a moral bankruptcy and emptiness. A sense that transformations in communication lead to something empty and missing.
Britain was the first really industrial nation with North American nations right behind, but it was ahead. It had a grasp on sea trade and train travel, shrinking the nation and the globe. Voyage to North America became more regular and less dangerous. Urban life expanded while the old agricultural organizations shrank much like today. There was more industry and more urban life. There was access to goods and ideas of people from farther away. There were exhibits about the colonies bringing ideas from afar and changing thinking. Manufacturing was growing with faster access to goods made quicker but with less permanence like today's fast fashion.
There was an expanded sphere of influence for the average person in relation to distant places through newspapers. The sphere of influence made a difference that was not coincident with perception. One could perceive more people that one could not interact with. One could see up close like today all over the world. We know about the farmers in India, the power outage in Texas and the fires in Australia but our ability to affect these foreign problems is limited.
There was a rise of wage labour in a more urban setting. This impacts wealth as the wealthy are no longer holders of old land. This disrupts the traditional landowners of the aristocracy as they are no longer as powerful. Wealth comes from commerce and comes quicker and not by inheritance. People make money by risk such as sea voyages to other lands. This disrupts the aristocracy but labour becomes reduced to cash value. Working conditions are awful and dangerous with long hours. People are driven by quick money and there is a rise of risk but risk can go the other way. There is a more volatile economic system with people rising but more often falling. One or two strains of bad luck and one is poor. There is a backlash against the new wealthy without upbringing and manners. There is cultural tension between the old money culture and the new. The aristocracy now has less money but are still trying to maintain control.
How should literature represent this reality and the experience of the people? We will talk about realism next week. We see in Victorian literature an increase in critique. Shedding light on injustice and suffering and oppression. It did this in the past through satire but it takes on a new, more direct and explicit form in the Victorian era to critique industrial work camps and the creation of suffering, shedding light on social injustice with the rise of the social problem novel. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Elizabeth Gaskill’s Mary Barton and North and South and George Eliot’s Adam Bede. These were about exposing and changing opinions about social problems.
Elizabeth Browning’s “Cry of the Children” shed light on a socio economic problem. She was the main poet of the Victorian period. She uses her popularity and authority to take issues on in the way the poem makes its argumentative critique. He quotes the first stanza of the poem. There is a call and a reference to brothers. What is powerful about her is she implicates herself. She says we are doing wrong and are we going to help. She invokes natural images to emphasize what is unnatural. “In the country of the free” is used sardonically because people are being enslaved and oppressed. Many are not just labourers and slaves but kids. She emphasizes the unnature of this problem. In the last two stanzas there is a change of pronouns from “they” to “you”. Another tactic to make her argument is “Let them weep”. The suffering of the children makes them old without the benefit of growing and learning wisdom and calm but for kids early aging has no benefit. The change in the last line to “Let them weep”. They deserve tears because they have suffered but hearers of the poem deserve shame. The last stanza has rhetorical power where the poem becomes most direct. Children look up and curse the nation and their masters. The sense of moving the world on a child’s heart. There is a critique of the idea that wealth and progress are a measure of all things. The march to progress and wealth is tainted by blood on the hands and purple on the path and by atrocities in pursuit of wealth and progress. This is a curse. In the end the child’s sob is deeper than a strong man’s wrath. The legacy of suffering in England is tainted by the blood of children. The poem shows her direct, explicit effort to critique a social problem, a specific ill in her world. It is powerful because it makes its case on natural, personal and political grounds. There is a sense of implication. She’s not escaping herself. The curse affects all of us and we are implicated if we don't cry out.
"A Curse for a Nation" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and "To India" by Sarojini Naidu both take on the voice of the ancients or of religion for social critique. An angel tells Browning to write and Naidu invokes ancient India. She wants India to awaken and become powerful again. Women’s education was an ancient precedent. India as mother and empress of a sovereign past. Why sovereign past? There is a history of powerful women who trained the nation.
In “A Curse for a Nation" there is a reference to religion. We look at the prologue. There is an implicated speaker. She does not extract herself. But her implication is all the more reason why she must speak. The prologue structures around three objections to the angel. She can’t send a curse because she has family in the US and has family roots in the plantations. Her country also has sins like child labour. Her final argument is that woman is only good at sympathy. But for every excuse the angel says the excuse is why she should write the curse. You are implicated but can write because you see. Your ability as a woman makes you the right person to write this curse. Not man’s authority but emotion is the reason why.
A call and a curse are speech acts. A curse is a moral awakening and the curse is the poem itself. A speech act is when an utterance that performs an action as well as transmitting meaning. Curses, calls, promises, nominations, confirmations comprise a special set of speech acts called “performatives” in which the action of the speech act is enacted or performed by the utterance itself. When you make a promise the utterance of the promise does the promising for you. They can be, according to philosophers like J L Austin, happy or unhappy but not really true or false in a rigorous sense. A promise if one does not intend to keep it is an unhappy utterance. The promise is still enacted. They can't be true or false, they do what they need to do. The promise and utterance is the same thing for a curse or call. The two poems use the power of performative acts to make something happen. There is a growing sense in the Victorian era that literature has performative power and does something.
Charles Darwin helped bring about the other big Victorian change. There was a radical change of world view with Darwin at the centre though not necessarily the cause. It was not new but his way of articulating evolution becomes the centre. He ends the view of the world as ordered, intentional, total and teleological. We live in a world of change where mutability is the rule. Things are not defined by some permanent essence but by a dynamic process. The world is in flux and we are inside of the process. To imagine species as mutable is radical because most think it static. If we are searching for an unchanging idea of species like the raccoon that is false science. What we need to see is the world like a mechanical construct that is the sum of labour and mistakes.
Some of his metaphors get us in trouble. This difference from the divine world with no essence to define things. Science must work differently. Knowledge of the physical world is knowledge of interactions, processes and changes. Birth of ecological thinking on page 270, the world cannot be categorized on page 270, and the anti teleological on page 271. To understand humans this means to accept that you are not divinely special, you are more like everything else. Not only are you not perfect, you are not even finished. He says this is enabling on page 271-272. We understand things by how they interact with other things. He’s giving voice to ecological thinking. How we are connected must be understood through the connections. The world is not final but made of relations. Animals keep changing. Nature isn’t headed to an end. The process is accumulative not to an end. He sometimes talks as if there is an end and so it is confusing. It is hard to fathom how radical was this change. We are more like everything else than not. We are not perfect. Humans are still changing. We are in the middle of a non intentional process. People lost their minds dealing with this but he understands. He says it’s ennobling. He is saving us from animalism. We are the product of a long line.
The famous end. The most exotic object. He is saving wonder, glory and grandeur. Imagining humans arising out of all these blind possibilities is quite wonderful. He needs to do this. Natural selection caused mistakes and misunderstandings. He seems to undermine his own argument. He suggests that natural selection tends to perfection and so this suggests an end result. He doesn’t mean this. The metaphorical use of selection can imply an ultimate law or rule of usefulness. Use could imply profitability and that usefulness is better. We only see the end result. We are tricked to think there is a force to pick the best adaptations. In real time this is not true. His work shows it’s about mistakes as much as the best adaptation. The language of usefulness suggests that the changes are better or aiming at perfection. One trait over another not about better but about a set of indefinite complex relations. Darwin is sometimes misunderstood as saying there is an hierarchy of variations and that the best is picked. But his work shows that is not the case. There is random variation. New is not better but just different. A woodpecker’s beak is seen as the best adaptation for grabbing grubs but it could have been better. All change is random. The environment is causing change. Environmental change could wipe out more effective species while a less effective species survives. Victorian people responded to the new and he was showing changes as did Browning. Art reacts to these changes which are a key element in the Victorian period.
I finished listening to the lecture a little after 19:00 but it took me until after dinner to edit my typed notes.
I had three potatoes and gravy while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story Barney’s cousin Virgil comes from New Jersey and Barney wants Andy to let Virgil work for them. But everything Virgil touches seems to turn to a disaster. A roast ends up in Andy’s lap, Virgil backs the squad car through a wall, he breaks a glass cabinet while sweeping, he sands the cell keys trying to clean them but then the key no longer works. Otis can’t get out of his cell. Then Opie shows Andy a cowboy figure that Virgil carved expertly. Andy asks Virgil to explain how he can to such fine work when everything else he attempts falls apart. Virgil explains that he can’t do things while he's being watched. So Andy tells Virgil to get Otis out of his cell while he waits in the other room. He does it easily.
This doesn’t really make sense since Virgil was alone during most of the disasters he’d caused.
Virgil was played by Michael J. Pollard, who was in the same class as Marilyn Monroe at the Actors Studio. He made his theatrical debut on Broadway, He played Jerome Krebs, the cousin of Maynard G Krebs on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. He was meant to replace Bob Denver who got drafted but after Denver was disqualified for army service because of not being fit enough, Pollard's character was written out. He played Mister Mxyzptlk in Superboy in 1988. He was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role as C W Moss, the getaway driver in "Bonnie and Clyde". This led to his being nominated by a DJ for president and a song was written in which he asks "President of what?" The song stopped getting airplay because it mentions Robert Kennedy and then he was assassinated shortly after that. He played a psychopathic Billy the Kid in “Dirty Little Billy". The classic Traffic album "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" came from a phrase spoken by Pollard. Michael J Fox put the “J” in his initial inspired by Pollard. He considered himself to be a Hippy. In an episode of Lost In Space he played a boy who lives in the dimension behind all mirrors.
On Saturday I got to Arlene Berman's house at around nine. Dave brought the truck and I packed it. Arlane gave away all the food in her fridge and I walked away with two boxes full of health food. Dave dropped me off at King and Sherbourne and I struggled home with all that food. As soon as I got there I started eating. I had canned lentil soup and canned chick peas with salad dressing.
I worked on projects and my latest collage. I had gotten a whole bunch of magazines from Arlene's garbage, including Vanity Fair and Longevity, which I brought home for collage material. She'd also thrown out some film scripts that she'd read for her production job and so I took those as well to read.
That night the ground war began. The idiots! I shaved and showered and listened. They wouldn't even let the reporters in the field and I found that suspicious. I called the radio station and talked about it on the air but I didn't get the impression that anyone cared.
On Sunday morning I didn’t quite finish memorizing “Velours des vierges” (Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg. I had to recapture parts of the first and second verses and had all but the last two lines of the third verse nailed down before it was time to move on. I should have it all in my head on Monday.
In the late morning I re-read a chapter of On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I was too tired to read another and had too much energy to take an early siesta and so I decided to take an early bike ride. I went to Ossington and Bloor and then home along Queen.
I had toast with peanut butter for lunch.
After a siesta I re-read more of On Beauty and had thirty pages left by dinnertime.
I had beans and toast with a beer while watching Andy Griffith.
This story begins with Andy in Raleigh at the offices of a big shot newspaperman named J Howard Jackson. The receptionist says Mr Jackson doesn’t know him and he doesn't have an appointment and so inquires of his business. Andy says he's there to arrest him. It turns out that over two weeks before that Andy had stopped Jackson for speeding. Andy had let him go on the promise that he would appear in court in Mayberry in two weeks. Since he didn’t show Andy was there to deliver a summons. Jackson comes to Mayberry with his lawyer to appear before the justice of the peace, who is Andy. Jackson pleads guilty but when Andy charges him a $15 fine he us upset at having been dragged from the city just for this. He vows revenge. Jackson hires his reporter Jean Boswell to go to Mayberry, get dirt on Andy Taylor and destroy him. Jean poses as a college student writing a paper on small town administrations. Barney offers to show her around and she interviews him. As usual he begins to brag about how lax Andy is and how he would run a tighter ship if he was sheriff. He tells her how Andy used the sheriff’s vehicle to deliver groceries, allowed the town drunk to let himself in and out of jail and tore up jaywalking tickets. Shortly after Jean’s article appears in Jackson’s paper the state department relieves Andy of duty and puts him on trial for misconduct. At the trial Barney is surprised to be called as a witness. He is asked to confirm the things he said to Jean and he does so but when he is asked to step down he refuses. He says he should also be allowed to defend Andy and the judge allows it. He points out that Andy delivered groceries to Emma Watson because she was sick. He explains that this is a small town and everyone considers Andy to be their friend. He points out that Mayberry is crime free because of Andy. The judge reinstates Andy as sheriff and dismisses the case.
Jean was played by Ruta Lee, who was from Montreal. She was one of the brides in the movie “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". She was a frequent guest on several game shows such as Hollywood Squares and Match Game and a co-host of High Rollers.
The receptionist was played by Sally Mansfield, who played Vena Ray, the navigator and assistant on the rocket ships Orbit Jet and Silver Moon on the 1954 TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. She played Connie on Bachelor Father, performed with the Don Arden Dancers and was Miss Emmy of 1954.
I got up at around 13:30 on Friday. I ate peanuts and worked on some projects and a collage. I felt a bit sick to my stomach. Maybe it was sugar withdrawal or a reaction to grease.
Nancy called but she was preparing for Mia to come over for the weekend so she didn't talk long. She didn't want me to have my place sprayed for cockroaches because she was afraid the poison would harm the baby.
I pulled all my collage material off the shelves to look for images of shoulders.
I showered and shaved. The place was a mess but at least I was clean.
I was pretty horny but I was in a non-masturbatory mode.
There was nothing else to eat but peanuts, celery, honey and dressing.
I didn't go out.
On Saturday morning I memorized the second verse of “Velours des vierges” (Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg. I also found that the last two lines of the final chorus were different than the others. In looking for a translation of “roman-fleuve" I discovered that its actually a literary term used in English to describe a series of novels that explore the same group or family of characters. The direct translation would be “novel-stream”. It’s hard though to pin it down exactly, since trilogies like The Lord of the Rings or series like the Harry Potter books don't count. They have to be longer and each novel has to be complete but flow to the other while expanding its own history, like Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. So I learned a new word this morning.
Around midday I went to the supermarket. There were no grapes so I bought four bags of oranges. I also got three mangoes, some broccoli, a pack of white mushrooms, soy milk and paper towels.
For lunch I had sliced tomato on toast with salt and pepper.
I didn’t take a bike ride because I'd already been out and I didn't do any exercises in the afternoon because they are too time consuming when I’ve already taken up the time of having gone out to the supermarket.
I re-read another sixty five pages of On Beauty by Zadie Smith, taking me to almost three quarters of the way through.
I had beans and toast for dinner with a beer while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story Floyd the barber is so busy that when a retired barber named Bill Medwin comes and asks for a job, saying he’ll bring his own customers and a second chair, he jumps at the chance. But Andy becomes suspicious when some of Bill's customers show up every day in black sedans. Then Bee tells him that the town phone operator has been listening in on conversations about girls with names like Tiger Lil not coming home until ten to one, Brown Eyed Mary arriving at eight to five, but Lindy Lou having been supposed to go to his place but not showing at all. When Andy hears those kinds of names and the words “place" and "show" he realizes that Bill is using the barber shop to take bets on horse races. Andy tells Barney about this and says they can’t arrest them unless they catch them red handed. When Andy is out Barney decides to go under cover in drag as a little old lady and to try to place a bet with Bill and his men. But when Barney tries to dive for the satchel containing the bets they grab him. Barney is hitting them with his purse when Andy walks in and arrests Bill and his men.
On Thursday morning I worked downtown and so I only had to take the subway to Sherbourne, the bus to Gerrard and then walk to a townhouse two streets east and two doors north. The customer's name was Arlane Berman and it turned out that she'd had her baby delivered by Bridget, the midwife that Nancy and I had hired. She also said she'd done extensive research and told me that Nancy shouldn't worry about ultrasounds. She gave me a thing to carry babies in that was a kind of bed one hangs from the shoulder.
Jim Bylo, Paul from Speedy and I packed Arlane's stuff to get ready to move her the next Saturday. I screwed up while packing some glass tabletops and got the wrong end of the mirror carton on, so I had to pull it all out.
On Friday morning I memorized the first verse of “Velours des vierges” (Velvet Virgins) by Serge Gainsbourg and finished reworking my translation.
I had kettle chips and salsa with yogourt for lunch.
There had been another considerable snowfall overnight and so by afternoon there was too much slush along the sides of the streets for me to take an untroubled bike ride, so I didn’t go. Instead I did my exercises while listening to season four, episode 20 of The Goon Show from April 12, 1954:
Secombe: Only once in a hundred years is there the crime of the century. And what could be the crime of the twentieth century?
Eccles: The Goon Show?
Bloodnok: The Great Bank of England Robbery!
Moriarty: I'm arranging to burgle the Bank of England. My men are all ready. My plans are laid. Your instructions await you in a sealed samovar.
Secombe: The address?
Moriarty: In the street of a thousand dustbins.
Secombe: How do I get there?
Moriarty: Go to a railway station, buy a workman's cheap day return to an unknown destination.
Secombe: Within days I had arrived at the mysterious unknown destination. Grimsby.
The Bournemouth of the Orient.
Here on the dreaded eastern coast of Britain, Secombe groped his way through the fog that swirled across the eerie walls and lapis lazuli fish piers.
Secombe: Yes, by the dim light of an unlit candle, I finally found the street I sought,
Looking 'round, I saw beside me a tall, handsome, attractive cross-eyed man with eczema, a bald moustache, and wearing a mink vase.
Grytpype: You're from Moriarty.
Secombe: How did you know?
Grytpype: I listened to the start of this program.
Secombe: You mean we're being overheard?
Grytpype: Overheard? On the home service? Ha ha ha.
Now here is the first part of the plan. You go to London tomorrow evening. At midnight precisely. There will appear eight men in straw hats, alabaster feet, black faces, and carrying thirty Wurlitzer organs.
Secombe: What part do I play?
Grytpype: Second banjo. Now meanwhile, unobserved, a tram will be lowered from a helicopter through the glass roof of the London School of Economics. Inside will be Major Bloodnok and two accomplices.
Got everything clear in your mind?
Secombe: Yes.
Grytpype: Very well. Shall we dance?
Secombe: Of course!
Max Geldray performs "Hot Toddy"
Bloodnok: Midnight and that blasted Secombe hasn't turned up!
Secombe: It's me, Secombe!
Bloodnok: Where the devil are you?
Secombe: I'm inside the pillar box! It's locked!
Bloodnok: What time's the next collection?
Secombe: Ten minutes ago.
Bloodnok: You mean to tell me you didn't get out when the postman opened the thing?
Secombe: I couldn't see him, I'm in a brown paper parcel.
Bloodnok: But why didn't the postman collect the parcel?
Secombe: I'm insufficiently stamped.
Eccles: I got a key.
Bloodnok: Bravo. Open it up then, get inside and give Secombe a shove-up.
Eccles goes in but locks himself inside.
Secombe: Eccles!
Eccles: Oh, Mr. Secombe.
Secombe: Help, we can't get out!
Bloodnok: Wait a minute, I'm throwing a length of rope through the aperture. Grab on and I'll pull you through. You blasted idiots! Now we're all in it!
Secombe: Listen! It's the postman. As soon as he opens that door everyone make a sound like a registered letter. He'll collect us, and put us in his sack. Then we can cut our way out.
Eccles: Well, didn't work, did it?
Secombe: Of course not! Some idiot was making a sound like an unstamped postcard.
Greenslade: Nine bitter months later.
Bloodnok: We've got to get out of here! We've eaten all the food parcels, and all the brandy's gone.
Eccles: There's one parcel left from a fellow who signs himself "Jack."
Bloodnok: What's in it?
Eccles: A rubber dinghy.
Secombe: A rubber dinghy? We're saved! Now we can sail out of here.
Bloodnok: But we haven't got any water.
Secombe: Eccles, any parcels of water?
Eccles: No, I drunk the last one.
Secombe: Then we'll have to dig for it. They don't call me an idiot for nothing.
Bloodnok: You mean you pay them?
Secombe: Only by cheque.
Secombe: Quick! Hand me that pneumatic drill!
Eccles: I haven't got a new one.
Secombe: Then hand me that old-matic drill.
Announcer: For the benefit of listeners without radio sets, it should be explained that although they are unaware of the fact, Major Bloodnok and his confederates are drilling for water straight through the base of the pillar box, down to the bed of one of London's famous underground rivers, the Wallbrook.
Ray Ellington performs "Such a Night"
Announcer: Bloodnok and his men soon found themselves on the upper reaches of the underground river and directly beneath the Bank of England.
Bloodnok: Now we must proceed up this secret tunnel. It leads straight to the vaults, but remember, for the next fifty yards, not a sound.
FX: Long silence
Eccles: Looks like the end of the tunnel!
Secombe: I've got Moriarty's instructions on me.
Bloodnok: Gad, strike a light.
Secombe: I can't, we've lost all our matches.
Bloodnok: So have Arsenal.
Secombe: Moriarty cunningly foresaw this exact situation. He's made a two-sided, short playing gramophone record of the entire plan.
Eccles, prepare the hand-wound phonograph.
Record: Polynesian Bells, played by London Regimental Band.
Bloodnok: You fool, you put on the wrong record.
Secombe: It must be on the other side.
Bloodnok: But it's an old cylindrical record.
Secombe: Then we must play it inside out. I have here a reversible, unilateral, bamboo, high-fidelity, boot-pointed needle made especially for this purpose.
Moriarty: Here are your instructions. Have you reached the end of the tunnel?
Secombe: Yes!
Moriarty: Good! Now, I've got some notes written here, so strike a match.
Secombe: We haven't got any.
Moriarty: Never mind, I'll nip out and get some.
GRAMS: End of record skips
Secombe: We've come to the end of the record and he's gone! How can we get him back again?
Bloodnok: Play it backwards!
Secombe: How do you play the inside of a cylindrical record backwards?
Bloodnok: Put it on in the opposite direction, going away from you, but only the other way.
Secombe: The swine was speaking backwards! Ahh, how can we get in touch with him now?
FX: Phone rings
Secombe: Hello?
Moriarty: You fools!
Secombe: Moriarty, where are you?
Moriarty: In hospital, badly scratched. You were using a blunt needle!
Secombe: The next step is to dynamite our way through the ceiling into the gold vault. Now, where's my trusted man? (calls) Bluebottle!
Bluebottle: It is I, Bert Show-us-ya-weasel Bluebottle. What do you want my lovely capitan? As if I did not know...
Secombe: Plug these sticks of dynamite into the chandelier, and I'll detonate them merely by turning on the switch.
Bluebottle: You will not switch on while I'm there, will you?
Secombe: Of course not.
Bluebottle: I will do it. Strips to waist, as done by young starlet in search of free publicity. Exits up ladder. I'm up here my capitan, and I'm plugging in the dreaded dynamite piece by piece. It's not easy work for one so fragile. It's jolly dark up here...
Secombe: Dark? Oh, then I'll switch on the lights.
Bluebottle: No, don't!
GRAMS: Loud explosion.
FX: Phone ringing
Secombe: Hello?
Bluebottle: You rotten swine, you have deaded me. Picks up badly singed earholes, three teeth, bent legs, and weasel. Reverses phone charge, and exits left to YMC restroom.
Secombe: Look, it's blown a hole, round, narrow hole in the ceiling!
Eccles: Quick, up the ladder! Watch your head, up we go again. Ooo, it's dark up here! Ooo, what's this?
Bloodnok: Take your filthy hands off me, you oaf!
Secombe: Bloodnok, what are you doing here?
Bloodnok: I'm waiting for the next collection, we're all back in the blasted pillar box again!
I re-read another eighty pages of On Beauty by Zadie Smith, taking me to the halfway point.
I had two boiled potatoes with gravy for dinner while watching Andy Griffith.
In this story there is a new actor playing the same county nurse, Mary Simpson who appeared just a few episodes before. Andy is clearly trying to spend some time alone with Mary and it’s fairly certain that she feels the same way about him. But Barney is not picking up on that and thinks that if Andy’s going over to Mary's place they should turn it into a get together with either him and Thelma Lou or just him added on. Finally Andy tries to break it to Barney that he wants to just be with Mary so he can say some things to her. Barney misinterprets this as Andy planning to propose to Mary and he begins to tell everyone that Andy and Mary are getting married. He plans a big surprise party for them and crash the moment when they are about to kiss under the moonlight. A party takes place around them while they kiss, oblivious to everyone thinking they are engaged.
Mary is played this time by Sue Ane Langdon, who put on a pretty authentic sounding southern US accent for someone from New Jersey. After college she started her performance career as a singer at Radio City Music Hall and then performed on Broadway. She was the third actor to play Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. She won a Golden Globe for her co-starring role on the sitcom Arnie. She briefly had her own sitcom called “When the Whistle Blows”.
