Wharton and James (back seat) on a motoring tour in 1904.

THERE ARE THOSE OF US who spent a not insignificant amount of time in grad school reading the works of Henry James. We trolled through The Ambassadors; we wondered when the golden bowl would finally break, and whether, through the thick of the prose, we had missed the breaking itself; we searched for classmates on the basement level of the library, at hours previously designated for sleep and/or pub-going, all in an attempt to find out exactly what Maisie knew, who married whom, and why these facts were important.

As it turns out, we can thank our lucky stars that we never went on a motoring tour with him, got hopelessly lost, and subsequently had to stop and ask for directions. This did, however, happen to Edith Wharton during one of her trips through England. Nothing can add to her account of this Monty Pythonesque exchange, which she later recounted in her autobiography, A Backward Glance, as it’s transcribed below:

The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. […] While I was hesitating and peering out into the darkness James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze at us. ‘Wait a moment, my dear—I’ll ask him where we are’; and leaning out he signalled to the spectator.

‘My good man, if you’ll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer—so,’ and as the old man came up: ‘My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.’

I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: ‘In short’ (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), ‘in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right) where are we now in relation to…’

‘Oh, please,’ I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, ‘do ask him where the King’s Road is.’

‘Ah—? The King’s Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King’s Road exactly is?’

‘Ye’re in it’, said the aged face at the window.

–Matthew Goulish, 39 Microlectures.

Edina Monsoon: Darling, every troop didn’t have to contain Yasmine Le Bon, the generals didn’t require big hugs after every maneuver, and the whole operation did not have to be co-ordinated to rap and Japanese avant-garde pipe music because, you know, Darling, I think if it had, the outcome might have been rather different, don’t you?

–Absolutely Fabulous.

WITH COURSEWORK COMPLETED in Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Egyptology, Creative Writing, Ceramics, Behavioral Biology, and Archeology, it seems that I’ve created the perfect storm of over-education, thereby allowing me to figure out the ending to the show. This is not a joke. What Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry was to William Blake’s poetry, or John Irwin’s Doubling and Incest, Repetition and Revenge was to William Faulkner’s oeuvre, I’m certain these posts will be to the popular television series Lost.

For instance, though some may be able to tell you that the clock from Lost (pictured above) resets to the Middle Egyptian verb “to cause death” by looking in the cloth-bolt section of Raymond Faulkner’s useful though rather basic Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, how many people would be able to tell you that this s-causative verb swd3, written with a stick-determinative at the end, adds the nuance, “to cause the death of one’s enemy/nemesis”, or would be able to provide a specific reference to this interpretation in the Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache (of Doom!) (IV Band, p. 78-81, for those who wish to examine this information more closely)? Or that the i comes before the e in hieroglyphs? Or that hieroglyph is, in fact, the correct noun form, not hieroglyphics? Not many, I can tell you that.

And if I knew all that about one silly, little Middle Egyptian s-causative verb, just imagine how much I know about Anubis and temples and mysterious vapors, not to even mention what they have to do with 4 8 15 16 23 42!

This post quite naturally leads to a series of meta-questions : Is there a significance to the inclusion of Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry in the list of books I mentioned in the first paragraph? Why is it the only book that’s hyperlinked? Further, does this hyperlinked mention have something to do with William Blake? Northrop Frye? An entity that is fearful and/or symmetric? And why did I choose to publish this post (quite obviously written well in advance of this evening’s episode) at 9:03, as indicated in the little time stamp one sees when one looks up and to the left? Why not at 9:00 on the dot? Or 9:04? Or tomorrow morning? Or not at all?

Such questions and meta-questions (and meta-meta-questions, if you want to go there, which you don’t) could haunt a man till his dying day! If only somebody knew the answers to them!! Oh, right… me.

And so, in my own time and given the correct site-metric numbers, I’ll provide a speculative reading of the popular television show—the word speculative being academic-speak for, “I am undoubtedly correct.” (I always knew that the overabundance of esoteric degrees would come in handy one day!)

1989 R. BARR Roseanne (1990) I. i. 6 She wore overalls and chewed tobacky, which in the early 1950′s in Salt Lake City meant that she was something of a social misfit.

And here I thought that the scholars in charge of the English language’s most comprehensive compendium were lexicographers of the Full House/Caroline in the City variety! Thank you, online OED’s quotations box, for clearing this matter up!

Some people in Chicago were wrong about most everything; indeed, everyone wants everything but nobody fully understands Shakespeare; we won’t know anything about Justice Sotomayor until we know something about her; art stopped existing after February 22, 1987; and fiction containing the phrase, “By the time the group assembles in the bar of  the mountain hotel.”

Ad: Big Love premieres on January 10.

The distinctions between life and death, third-world political parties, and the genders do not exist as we know them—largely because of racism, though somewhat to do with sports named “football.” Story by Don Dellilo.

Comedy relies heavily on the layering principle, meaning that when you take one normal activity or object, and layer it with several more, the layers could potentially lead to a comical situation. A Marx Brothers film brought intrinsic comic layering, with at least three of the five siblings (Zeppo being optional, Gummo never appearing onscreen), the prerequisite harp solo from Harpo, a piano solo from Chico, and the studio-mandated romantic interlude between whatever pair of twenty-somethings happened to be on the MGM lot that day. (See the GB,HR. Guide to the Marxes)

Take a look at the cabin sequence from the Marx Brothers’ 1935 film A Night at the Opera. Please note that being on a boat isn’t funny, having a large trunk isn’t funny, stewards aren’t funny, ordering room service isn’t funny, having the floor mopped isn’t funny, sleeping isn’t funny, getting a manicure isn’t funny, and looking for one’s aunt isn’t funny. But, add all of these elements together, and, voila:

Now, back when the Jackass films first came to cinemas, I was bombarded with tersely worded e-mails expressing disapproval and outright dismay that I—a holder of calligraphied degrees from American institutions of higher learning—would not only pay for a ticket, but would also have a strong desire to go see these films. So why do I like the Jackass films so much? Because the Jackass boys took this layering principle and broke new ground by synergistically combining it with something I like to call the “things your mother told you never to do” principle (previously a staple of the Our Gang television series, and mainly exploited by child and juvenile comic actors against their adult counterparts, harping on the juxtaposition between adult and child-like judgment.)

Remember when you were a kid? What did your mother tell you not to do? She told you not to walk on tightropes. And if you were to walk on a tightrope, not to walk on a tightrope over an alligator pit. And if you were to walk on a tightrope over an alligator pit, not to do so while wearing a jockstrap. And if you were to walk on a tightrope over an alligator pit while wearing a jockstrap, make sure you don’t do so with raw chicken strapped to your person.

Though I’ve already written about the Marx Brothers’ 1935 film Duck Soup, I was re-watching it last week, and realized that, of all the Marx Brothers films, this one might be the closest they came to celluloid perfection. Though some may point to A Night at the Opera as being the Marx Brothers’ best film – to be sure, it is insanely, hysterically funny – it never feels too far off from Vaudevillian stage traditions. (Indeed, the Marx Brothers perfected Opera by taking it on the road as a stage show. Don’t see much of that these days.)

Throughout the film, the Marx Brothers remain a force of willful chaos directed against the old guard, with Groucho delivering a barrage of one-liners, any one of which could power the USS 30 Rock from here to Timbuktu. The big musical number, “We’re going to War!” would best be described as a cross between yodeling, line-dancing, tongues-speaking, head-standing and xylophone playing, capped off with the four brothers singing the spiritual song “All God’s Children Got Wings,” the lyrics aptly changed to, “All God’s Children Got Guns.”

The seditious mayhem continues, with the Brothers dressed in full powdered wigs and long coats as part of a Revolutionary War tableau vivant. Harpo, on horseback, sets off in a full gallop re-enactment of Paul Revere’s ride, but gets side-tracked when he meets a pretty young blond along the way. One problem: back then, films couldn’t show a man and a woman in bed together. The Marxian solution? The girl sleeps in one bed, while Harpo shares another — with the horse.

Groucho – wearing a beefeater’s uniform, a boy scout’s uniform or a Davey Crocket outfit, depending on when you look – directs this Caucus Race of a war, his cry of “Help is on the way!” cutting to stock footage of a fire brigade, cops on motorcycles, a running race, a rowing race, a swimming race, a stampede of baboons, a stampede of elephants, and a stampeding school of dolphins – in that order. And who can’t help but see some good, old fashioned governmental oversight in Groucho’s wartime declaration, “There isn’t time to dig trenches! We’ll have to buy ‘em ready made!” – he forks over a wad of cash – “Here, run out and get some trenches!”

What four better people to run a country?

The use of color in landscape and setting is a curious, dangerous, oftentimes inaccurate tool. When used incorrectly, these passages read like one of those kiddy menus they hand out at restaurants — sloppily crayoned in by a four-year-old, gummed at the edges, and smattered with marinara sauce. Let me be clear that by no means do I excuse myself from these sins. I am as guilty as any four-year-old out there, and am in frequent need of re-tooling my inner spectrometer. Whenever I do, I look at the following passage, the opening paragraph of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night.

I’ve marked up the passage to list the colors as I see them, though please note that my definition of “color” varies greatly from those found in dictionaries. The list of colors (or, “colors”) follows directly after the passage.

The Passage:

On the pleasant shore (1) of the French Riviera, about half-way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-coloured (2) hotel. Deferential palms (3) cool its flushed façade (4), and before it stretches a short dazzling beach (5). Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted (6) after its English clientele went north in April. Now, many bungalows cluster near it, but when this story begins only the cupolas of a dozen old villas rotted like water-lilies (7) among the massed pines (8) between Gausse’s Hôtel des Étrangers and Cannes, five miles away (9).

The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one (10). In the early morning the distant image of Cannes (11), the pink (12) and cream (13) of old fortifications (14), the purple Alps (15) that bounded Italy, were cast across the water (16) and lay quavering in the ripples (17) and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows (18).

List of Colors:

1. Shore
2. Rose
3. Bright palms
4. Palms-shaded rose
5. Bright beach
6. Dusty beach
7. Rotted water-lily
8. Pine
9. Distant pine
10. Hotel and beach Tan (Expansive tan)
11. Hazy Cannes
12. Pink
13. Cream
14. Fortification Pink and Cream
15. Alpine Purple
16. Pink and Cream and Purple Water
17. Pink and Cream and Purple Ripples-in-Water
18. Sea Plant through Pink and Cream and Purple Ripples-in-Water

The image at the top of the page is from a digital atlas observed with the Fourier Transform Spectrometer at the McMath-Pierce Solar Facility at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and may be found here.