Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for August 14, 2008

I. Your next desktop pattern?

II. Your favorite president—rendered in hair. Is Franklin "Pelano" Roosevelt a beautiful typo?! (Via MUG)

III. Poetry update:

A) Dzyd Carla on memoirs by Manguso and Lavinia Greenlaw.

B) BoingBoing picks up on R. Kikuo Johnson's "Poem as Comic Strip" take on A.E. Stalling's "Recitative"—perfect for summer! Although it's actually not that hot out here these days...

IV. Terry Teachout on Richard Stark, in Commentary—Stark is being republished by University of Chicago Press:

The Hunter” (208 pp., $14 paper), “The Man with the Getaway Face” (224 pp., $14 paper) and “The Outfit” (224 pp., $14 paper) can and should be read in sequence as a trilogy–I would have published them in an omnibus volume–rather than separately.

I read "The Outfit" first, not knowing these three were linked, and there was a chapter of recapping that made me think I'd made the wrong decision...but then it was on with the show!

As I read on in admiration, I formed some mental connections....reading "outfit" in a clothing sense...this was one well-fitting outfit...which reminded me of Sasha Frere-Jones's New Yorker piece on Spoon, and their song "Fitted Shirt"...Though I slightly misremembered SFJ's conclusion ("Daniel is not about to tell jokes or put on a lampshade, and if this makes the band’s performances predictable the effect is balanced by the dignity that comes from self-control")—the dignity/self-control part is certainly true, though The Outfit is pretty unpredictable, especially the rather radical (and exciting!) messing with chronology...a precursor to Pulp Fiction...