Anatomies

From two books picked up and dipped into over the weekend:

I.

It needed an effort to obey his signal, but she did it. He closed the French window, drew down the blind again, and–

"Oh, don't let's," said Elfrida.

"Nonsense," said Edred; "there's nothing to be frightened of. It's just like our rooms at home."

It was. They went all over the house, and it certainly was. Some of the upper rooms were very bare, but all the furniture was of the same kind as Aunt Edith's, and there were the same kind of pictures. Only the library was different. It was a very large room, and there were no pictures at all. Nothing but books and books and books, bound in yellowy leather. Books from ceiling to floor, shelves of books between the windows and over the mantelpiece–hundreds and thousands of books. Even Edred's spirits sank. "It's no go. It will take us years to look in them all," he said.

"We may as well look at some of them," said Elfrida, always less daring, but more persevering than her brother. She sat down on the worn carpet. and began to read the names on the backs of the books nearest to her. "Burton's Atomy of Melon something," she read, and "Locke on Understanding," and many other dull and wearying titles. But none of the books seemed at all likely to contain a spell for finding treasure. "Burgess on the Precious Metals" beguiled her for a moment, but she saw at once that there was no room in its closely-printed, brown-spotted pages for anything so interesting as a spell. Time passed by. The sunlight that came through the blinds had quite changed its place on the carpet, and still Elfrida persevered. Edred grew more and more restless. —E. Nesbit, The House of Arden

II.

"After I talked to him, what's his name, Mott, I went down to the Malibu Library and checked out that book of yours, Anatomy of Terrorism."

"Anatomy of Terror," Stallings said, unable to resist the correction.

"Yeah. Right. Well, I read it. Most of it, in fact, but then I quit about three-quarters through. Want to know why?"

"Not really."

"Because I couldn't figure out whose side you were on."

"Good," said Stallings.

—Ross Thomas, Out on the Rim

PERSONAL DAYS IS HERE!

I. Publication day for Personal Days! See if your local bookstore has it! If not, ask to talk to the manager!

U.S. shoppers, this is the cover you'll be looking for (a paperback original that slips easily into satchel or purse for maximum commute/boring-meeting accessibility):



And U.K. shoppers, get ready to lay down some "quid" for this riot of color...excuse me, "colour"!:


(It's a nice thumpable hardback.)

II. Self-promotion day continues!

The second installment of "The Oblivion Arms" is up at Five Chapters. Here's the introduction by editor Dave Daley:

Dear friends,

This week on FiveChapters.com we'll serialize a new story—actually more like a novella—by Ed Park, "The Oblivion Arms." I could describe it as being about two parents who write Broadway musicals searching for their child-actor son, but that would hardly capture this wild and imaginative story or the insane genius of musicals based on Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," Ed's take on TV culture, the crazy front desk clerks, agents who start their phone calls with an ad for the cell phone company in exchange for a discount...

I could go on, but part one is on the site now and you can read for yourself. Hope you enjoy it.

You may know Ed as one of the editors of The Believer, the mind behind New-York Ghost and an esteemed book critic. He's also the author of a very funny new novel, "Personal Days" (Random House). We'll give five of them away this week; drop a note [to editor@fivechapters.com] if you'd like one.

Thanks again for reading, David

(So: You can win a copy of Personal Days! You can also buy it, online or in a store.)

III. Over at ed-park.com, more quotes from recent reviews—including another blazingly smart one from Stop Smiling, the esteemed "magazine for highminded lowlifes."

The Joie of Guy, or To the Lighthouse

"I would love to be a poet, but it’s not in me, so I’m this other thing, whatever that is." —Guy Maddin

On the spur of the moment I caught Guy Maddin's epic Brand Upon the Brain! last night, as narrated by Joie Lee. It was great! She did an amazing job! Maddin uses as many exclamation points as Keeler!

I would write down some choice quotes but I had only two-thirds of one side of one sheet of paper and a small dull golf pencil = I can't read anything!

It's set on an island where "Guy Maddin"'s very strange parents run a mom-and-pop orphanage...in a lighthouse...and their charges have mysterious marks on the backs of their heads...and the harp-playing Wendy Hale, part of a brother-sister detective team, is investigating...all of this done with hysterical (often three exclamation points) title cards...and live sound effects: a heap of unspooled cassette tape simulated the wind through long grass, egg cartons and celery were put to creative use, the doors were done with a door...

Poetry nuts will want to hear John Ashbery's narration tomorrow at 7, though something tells me tickets will be scarce. (Last night's later show, with Crispin Glover, was sold out.) Next best thing is to read "Plenty of Sublimated Rin Tin Tin," the Jdawg's excellent interview with Guy about Ashbery, over at the Poetry Foundation site.

If we're talking Ashbery, I found the texture of much of the Brand! text sort of Nest of Ninnies/Girls on the Run–ish. And if we're talking other things, there's a dollop of Feuillade (one of the detectives always "goes formal!" when s/he's doing undercover work) and a bit of eXistenZ (weird orifice stuff). But first and foremost it's...Guy Maddin!

(For further reading/links, here's an earlier Maddining post.)

UPDATE: From the PTSNBN...back in the glory days of D. Lim's editorship...here's GM's "production diary" from The Saddest Music in the World:

For years, I've been meaning to put into practice my Anatomy of Melancholy approach to directing. And now I finally get to! Having already copied out on index cards various descriptions of depression gleaned from Burton's ancient tomes, as well as some 40 synonyms for sadness culled from a thesaurus, I now start each day by dealing out all 52 cards, face down, on the breakfast table full of actors who are to work that day. Each performer has a different, sometimes fuzzy idea of a word's meaning—for instance, lugubrious or throboxyc, which is sadder? Actors love restrictions, and why not restrict them in the only fair way possible: with a lottery windfall of commands drawn randomly from a reference book?

This Pope's No Turkey — Burtonology — More Ukes — Cormac McDrama

Note recounting dream, ca. summer 2006:

"[We were] praising Alexander Pope—that guy nailed suburbia!"

(Wish I could remember more—sounds like a great dream.)

* * *

After reading about "contagious gunfire" in the Times (the piece compared its spread to that of germs, laughter, fear), I opened The Anatomy of Melancholy (for a piece I was working on—I don't just spend my days dissecting the Anatomy!) and my agéd peepers fell on this line:

"Why does one man's yawning make another man yawn?"

* * *

69 Love Songs: The uke circle closes...opens...closes...

* * *

Termite Artist James has a stellar post about Cormac McCarthy's play, The Sunset Limited.

I asked some other Termiters what "getting off the schneid" meant — I assumed it was something like "getting on the stick" — here is what Dizzies team members Matt and R.E.S. said:

Matt: "Off the schneid" is a baseball term—means finally getting a hit after going on a bad stint of 0 for whatever.

R.E.S.: Getting "off the schneid" means ending a run of bad luck (it's used a lot in sports when players end a hitless streak and such). No one ever says they're "on the schneid", they're always getting off it.

More in depth, from Sports Illustrated:

The term comes from gin rummy. In that game, a "schneider" or "schneid" is when one prevents an opponent from scoring a point in a game or match. In sports, the "schneid" has become a general term for being scoreless, winless, hitless or other unsavory "-less" states. Thus when one achieves that first run, point, win, hit, etc., one is said to have "gotten off the schneid." The actual word originates from the German and Yiddish term schneider, for one who cuts cloth, i.e. a tailor.

Curiously, the same day I read James's take on the Cormac, I started a Friedrich Dürrenmatt novel in which the murder victim's name is...Schneid.

Under the Sign of Sontag (4-6)

4.
"Thinking, writing are ultimately questions of stamina. The melancholic, who feels he lacks will, may feel that he needs all the destructive energies he can muster." —Susan Sontag, "Under the Sign of Saturn"

5.
"The compulsive nature of his character shows plainly in his style and method, wholly apart from the violence of his diatribes and the fury of his onslaughts. He seems compelled by some irresistible urge to pile up adjectives, to accumulate synonyms, to follow every theory and describe every cure, even those he despises. He cannot let any idea go until he, it, the reader, and the language are exhausted." —B. Evans, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ROBERT BURTON

6. "...I will adventure through the midst of these perplexities, and, led by the clue or thread of the best writers, extricate myself out of a labyrinth of doubts and errors..." —Burton, THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, pt 1, sec 1, mem 3, subs 4