Portrait of H.S. Keeler

In a mystery novel from the 1940s* by the Chicago paper-blackener Harry Stephen Keeler (1890–1967), the greedy children of an eccentric moneybags receive instructions to light a candle and contemplate, for twenty minutes, a hideous self-portrait in the sitting room. One by one they pay the required visit, but finding the demand preposterous and the painting unsettling, each blows out the candle and leaves long before the requisite span. The sole exception—the one child with enough filial piety to hang out for a bit and attempt to commune with the spattered canvas—is rewarded. For at twenty minutes, the wax of the candle has melted enough to reveal a cylinder, in which reposes the codicil of a will. Our persevering viewer inherits everything....

Read the next exciting paragraph at The Chiseler!

Pathos-tinged humour

I like how short everything on The Chiseler is.

On language — January 2011 edition

I. From the glossary to Maxwell Bodenheim's novel Naked on Roller Skates:

acecray outcray: putting the ace on the bottom of the deck, where the dealer can abstract it

bah-bah: negligible object

cake-slashing: assault and mayhem

century: hundred dollars

chippy: dissolute girl

chivvy: unpleasant odor

clip your tongue: be silent

cram the paper: cheat at cards

cut your chops: mind your own business

(As discovered by Louis Phillips at The Chiseler; Bodenheim also has a cameo in Jason Boog's Believer piece from Sept. 2010.)

II.

Mr. Ai has come to see his escalating conflict with government officials over the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule as performance art. In November, he spread the word that he was throwing a river crab feast at the studio to protest the destruction order. The word for river crab, hexie, sounds nearly identical to the word for harmony, which the Communist Party claims to promote; the party’s critics like to say censors are “harmonizing” the Internet and other forms of media.—NYT

III.

Children pick up about 10 new words a day until, by the time they leave high school, they know around 60,000 words. Chaser [a border collie] learned words more slowly but faced a harder task: Each sound was new and she had nothing to relate it to, whereas children learn words in a context that makes them easier to remember. For example, knives, forks and spoons are found together.

Dr. Pilley does not know how large a vocabulary Chaser could have mastered. When she reached 1,000 items, he grew tired of teaching words and moved to more interesting topics like grammar. —NYT

(Via Jane)

I like when this happens

"She’s ugly-beautiful, which is better than beautiful. Especially today, with our screens lousy with beauty. What is the point of Jessica Alba, anyway?"

*

I was admiring that line, from a piece called "Farewell My Porcupine: Notes on Glenda Farrell" (title of the year?), in the delightful new online periodical The Chiseler. I skimmed to the end and saw that the piece was written by none other than...David Cairns, of Shadowplay fame!