Food on the shirt

On his most recent trip to New York, the always dapper Levi Stahl bought a copy of Balzac's Treatise on Elegant Living. Here's a bit from Levi's recent post:

It's a lovely little edition, whose translator, Napoleon Jeffries, acknowledges right off the bat one's immediate objection: that Balzac, as evidenced by the photo below, was no dandy. I think there is food on his shirt!--and that's far from the worst of his sins against fashion in this photo!



As Jeffries explains in his brief but solid introduction:

Even those familiar with Balzac's novels may be initially taken off guard by the notion of that giant presenting himself as an expert on elegance--let alone a self-proclaimed originator of, to use his own coinage, the new science of "elegantology." Even more surprising may be the fact that Balzac considered himself something of a practitioner of the science. He was an odd manifestation of early French dandyism: taking his cues in dress from friends such as Eugene Sue and Lautour-Mezeray (both of whom make appearances in this treatise), Balzac proved to be more of a part-time dandy. The dandy memorialist Captain Gronow provided a particularly amusing assessment of the man's elegance in practice: "The great enchanter was one of the oiliest and commonest looking mortals I ever beheld; being short and corpulent, with a broad florid face, a cascade of double chins, and straight greasy hair . . . [he] dressed in the worst possible taste, wore sparkling jewels on a dirty shirt front, and diamond rings on unwashed fingers."

UPDATE: More Balzac (in Nicholson Baker's letter to John Updike, ca. 1985):

Your complete literary man writes all the time. It wakes him in the morning to write, it exercises him to write, it rests him to write. Writing is to him a visit from a friend, a cup of tea, a game of cards, a walk in the country, a warm bath, an after-dinner nap, a hot Scotch before bed, and the sleep that follows it. Your complete literary chap is a writing animal; and when he dies he leaves a cocoon as large as a haystack, in which every breath he has drawn is recorded in writing.

(“Balzac,” quoted in Richard B. Hovey, John Jay Chapman)

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(OK, this is Ed again.) Speaking of things that should be in block quotes: The passage from Devin McKinney's Magic Circles that ends my LAT review of Matt Kindt's Revolver should be set off from my own words. It's still messed up on the website. Which is to say, this passage is pure McKinney:

"Revolver" is multicolored music in a black-and-white wrapper, terse pop songs of dream, escape, cynicism, forebodings… By its exploratory nature an affirmation of life and possibility, a bold and radical advance upon the new horizon, the album was at the same time fourteen kinds of oblivion served on a Top 40 platter: nostalgic about what had been, and paranoid about what it saw coming.

Ampersand after ampersand

1. Over at Weekend Stubble, Dizzyhead Paul posts some bonus material for his article on Leo Guild, author of The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman, The Loves of Liberace, Street of Ho's, et al. (At the PTSNBN, the proper spelling was 'ho; the style guide asked, "Does this make any sense? 'No.") Guild writes:

I forgot to mention that werewolves are very strong. Their diet includes such things as animal blood, ailing grandmothers and rancid chicken fat. And they also thrive in the night air.

2. And Dizzyhead Martin's co-blogger Kevin C translates some Anglo-Saxon:

755. Here Cynewulf and the West-Saxon council deprived Sigebryht of his kingdom for wrongful deeds, except for Hampshire, and he had that until he slew that earl who had long lived by him. And then Cynewulf drove him off at the Weald, and there wounded him until a swineherd stabbed him on Privet channel; and he avenged the earl Cumbran. And Cynewulf often fought great fights with the Welsh. And 31 winters after he had had the kingdom, he wanted to drive off a prince who was called Cyneheard; and Cyneheard was the brother of Sigebryht. And then the prince learned of the king being with a small host in the company of women at Merton, and he surrounded him there and attacked the chamber from outside, before the men discovered him who were with the king. And then the king perceived that, and he went to the door, and then bravely defended himself, until he saw the prince, and then he rushed upon him and wounded him greatly; and all were fighting against the king, until they had slain him.

And he notes: "This is one of the earliest prose artifacts in the history of our language. Isn’t it something? Look at that Estilo! It’s like a rhinoceros! Consider how reliant our author was on the word 'and' to get a sentence or clause rolling. Homeboy uses it 17 times."

3. And here's an excellent New Yorker piece alert: Larissa Macfarquhar's piece on a man who tracks down counterfeiters. (Abstract online.) Loads of great details. I especially love the way it begins—several paragraphs in which someone is talking. Pure quotation—she doesn't even identify the speaker. You're carried along solely by his colorful speech and the interesting things he's saying.

4. And isn't it time for some Faye Wong?

5. And in the NYTBR, David Kamp reviews Jonathan Lethem's You Don't Love Me Yet, a Dizzies obsession: "As they’d say in the rock magazines, this new release is worthwhile for the Lethem completist, but perhaps not for the first-time buyer." And a group called The Night Time "covers" the song "Monster Eyes" on their Myspace page—an original song featured in the novel (via CDTMIP).

6. And this is from the TLS via the Light Reader, on Balzac

... his Herculean labours were taking their toll. His hair was turning white and falling out “by the handful”. He was suffering from back pains and dizzy spells. Sometimes he fell into a stupor, and even his special blend of coffee failed to reactivate his brain.