Trivia Quizzes: "Quote...Unquote"

Nigel Rees. Quote...Unquote (1980) We like trivia. Maybe because every now and then some trivial fact turns out to matter. It may link some new fact to our store of knowledge, thus reassuring us the universe has a meaningful pattern. Or it may become the significant bit needed to solve a puzzle, or reveal some secret, or lead us to some deeper insight. All this helps explain why collections of trivia sell. Like this one. It’s an amusing selection of semi-esoteric quotations. Most are presented in quizzes, thus flattering the reader in its expectation that they will recognise most of the quotations. Taken as a whole, they make up a pointillist portrait of the 19th and 20th centuries.
     One of the quizzes asks the reader to amend such misquotes such as “Money is the root of all evil”, “ I knew him well, Horatio”, “Play it again, Sam”, etc. Misquotes like these are an example of our tendency to recall meanings but not the words used to express them.
     Cheeky illustrations by ffolkes. Fun, recommended if you can find a copy. **½

Anon. Chivalry, The Path of Love (1994)

     Anon. Chivalry, The Path of Love (1994) This is one of those little gift books that are assembled, not written, a scrapbook of lore that one gives to people when one doesn’t know what else to give them. It contains a number of nicely chosen and well-printed illustrations and a potted history of the Code of Chivalry and Courtly Love. It alludes to the darker side of gender relations in the Middle Ages, and gives a quick once-over of the evolution of what was essentially a convention of fiction and poetry into a code of manners and eventually an ideal that people still admire and which underpins our present-day notions of secular virtues. It does hint at the more complex meanings coded into courtly love poetry, and so may well trigger an urge to research this rather curious feature of our civilisation. The only author credit is for the introduction, by Jeremy Catto, Fellow of Oriel College. It’s better made than most such gift books, both as a physical object and as a source of information. **½

Jack Kapica. Shocked and Appalled (1985)

     Jack Kapica. Shocked and Appalled (1985) “A Century of Letters to The Globe and Mail”, and a fun collection it is. Kapica adds the occasional biographical note, but makes no editorial comments. We are left to form our own impression of the Globe’s readership and its worries and opinions.
     Canadians early on chafed at being colonials, but the British connection remained strong well into the second half of the 20th century. Veiled and not so veiled religious and racial intolerance shows up here and there. But what impressed me most was that the letter writers often wrote more in a spirit of fun and wit. Pedantry was a game, as was politics. It’s unclear how many of the writers on scientific topics knew they misunderstood the theories of their time; I prefer to think that most of them deliberately pretended to  confusion and ignorance for the sake of humour and satire. Or maybe it’s Kapica’s taste that creates the impression of generally friendly and genial, but occasionally caustic, and always well-read readers delighting in sharing good conversation via the Editor’s pages.
     I could have marked many passages, but I’ll quote just one: J. E H. MacDonald, responding to an unkind (and apparently obtuse) criticism of his The Tangled Garden quotes Goethe: a genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, because it suggests a deficiency in the spectator. See an image of the painting here. ***

The Quotable Dad (2003)

     Nick and Tony Lyons The Quotable Dad (2003) A gift. The title suggests that the quotations are by dads, but in fact they are about dads. As such they range from the sentimental to the mildly cynical. Lots of good stuff, opening at random I find:
     Never fret for an only son. The idea of failure will never occur to him. - George Bernard Shaw
     The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. - Theodore Hesburgh
     How children survive being brought up amazes me. -Malcolm S. Forbes.
And one that should remind us that nothing fundamental ever changes:
     Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
     That was said 2500 years ago by Socrates.
     A nice collection, good source of quotations. ***

Philip J. Davis. The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn (1989)

     Philip J. Davis The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn (1989) A charming book, telling how the author, a mathematician, became curious about Pafnuty, the first name of his hero, Pafnuty Lvovitch Tschebyscheff, a pioneer in the mathematics of approximation. Approximation has become a central motif of computing, since every computer can calculate only to some finite number of decimal places. It was the rounding off the 17th digit to display a 16-digit result that led to the discovery of chaos theory. That tiny difference of a few parts in 100 quadrillion made all the difference when the result was fed back into the equations for a second run of a weather prediction model.
     But I digress. Which is what Davis does. Some of his digressions are personal, some technical, some historical. But he leads us down these byways so gracefully that we hardly notice that we are moving further and further away from the ostensible theme of the book: whare does the name Pafnuty come from? Davis brings the thread of his narrative back to this question several times, and finally gives us the answer: it derives from an Egyptian god’s name.
     Along the way, Davis instructs us in all manner of interesting facts. He illustrates one of my dicta: There is no such thing as useless knowledge; at the very least, a fact will serve to link two others. I’ll now add another corollary: and usually, this linkage satisfies our thirst for order and meaning. For order and meaning are fancy words for linkages.
     This is the second time I've read the book, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time. ****

The Merry Heart (1997)

     Robertson Davies The Merry Heart (1997) A collection of speeches plus a couple of pieces written for publication, and a fragment of autobiography. Because Davies spoke many times on the same themes, there is some repetition of ideas and of even of whole sentences, but that doesn’t disturb the reader unduly. Anyone who has heard Davies, even if only on TV, can read these pieces with his voice in mind, and that certainly adds to their charm. But I think what comes through most strongly is Davies’ wisdom, which is not a heavy freight of solemnly declared platitudes, but a cheerful apprehension of the way life is, passed on to us with a twinkle in the eyes and the occasional sigh. Davies knows his and our darknesses, but he does not dwell on them and dislikes those writers who present us with horrors merely to fascinate. His insistence that fiction is a necessary grace in our lives, and his belief that the imagination serves to help us understand ourselves, may be suspect but still is necessary in our country, which looks on the arts as mere frills, and prides itself on a realistic approach to the difficulties of life. But Davies is right.
     A good book; but like all collections of occasional pieces a single reading suffices. It’s worth keeping on the shelf for possible quotation, though. *** (2002)

We Are Still Married (1989)

     Garrison Keillor We Are Still Married (1989) Collection of occasional pieces, mostly written for The New Yorker. Keillor’s wry and melancholy persona drifts through these pieces like smoke through the bush. He has the knack of making you feel that you, too, lived the life he lived. This book contains the famous Young Lutheran’s Guide to the Orchestra, and several of his poems. There is a streak of rage in Keillor that he rarely lets show, but there are hints of it here and there, like lightning on the far horizon. Some of the essays have little intrinsic interest, but matter as items in Keillor’s list of works. Varies from *** to ****.

Conrad Black on Gregg & Company (TVO)

Conrad Black on Alan Gregg (TVO, 18 September 2011)

     Last night (17 September 2011) I watched Alan Gregg's interview with Conrad Black. It was recorded some time before Black returned to prison. It left me with mixed impressions. There is no question that Black is a very intelligent man, and accustomed to deference. He interrupted Gregg several times, which Gregg tolerated with good grace. Watching such a program, we have to remember that it is edited: which camera angles to show is decided after the taping, the display of facial expressions is the director's decision, and we don't see or hear a continuous, uninterrupted flow of conversation, because the interview has to fit into the 30 minute time frame. On the other hand, it is impossible to fake the connection between interviewee and guest that is Gregg's strength. This time, Gregg seemed to be more on his guard than Black.
    Clearly, Black is still outraged at what was done to him. He blames both the "prosecutorial culture" of the US justice system and the "corporate governance zealots" for his woes, apparently convinced that in Canada or Britain there would have either been no charges brought against him, or else he would have been acquitted. He refuses to accept any guilt or culpability for actions that many people could and did consider as unethical at least, and possibly criminal at worst. He knows that many other people don't accept his principles, but he's convinced they're wrong and he's right. This kind of moral and ethical absolutism is either disingenuous, or else Black has not yet achieved the level of humility that he claimed at the end of the interview, when Gregg asked him how his experiences have changed him. On the other hand, I believe Black when he says he had been unaware of how what he calls "sociological conditions" result in injustice. He seems to have made a good impression on his fellow inmates, 36 of whom took the trouble to write letters of support when he appealed his sentence. Whether his insights into how poverty is a systemic effect of mercantile capitalism will prompt him to advocate for economic or political changes remains to be seen.
     There is a good deal of truth to Black's observations about how the US justice system is focussed on convictions. Prosecutors are for the most part elected. Incumbents run on their record of successful convictions, and challengers win by promising to be even harsher. The result is an incarceration rate six to fourteen times that of any developed country. As Black points out, it is unlikely that Americans are six to fourteen times more inclined to crime than other people. But it's a bit of a jump from that to agreeing that Black's own case is one of wrongful conviction.
     Black's expressions were interesting. When he listened to a question, he showed a stony and somewhat hostile face: he seemed to be assessing whether the question was a trap, or whether he could safely answer its substance. When answering, his face was more mobile, but he never showed the kind of spontaneous enthusiasm that many of Gregg's guests have shown when they talked of principles they upheld. The only time I thought I saw genuine emotion was when Black referred to the graduates of the GED program in which he tutored fellow inmates in English. He seemed to be embarrassed that he was moved by the event, and his high praise for how the Florida Bureau of Prisons handled it seemed to me to be an attempt to hide his emotions. By praising them, he could distance himself from what he himself felt as he witnessed it.
     That's when, on reflection, I realised that Black is a very private person. His vocabulary is abstract, his sentences well formed, often with multiple dependencies, and when he referred to himself, the tone was as dryly factual as he could make it. Even his outrage was couched in terms of an abstract attack on the US justice system, and an expression of hope that others, who might not have the resources he had, would find his account of use. It's as if he were thinking about himself in the third person, with only the exigencies of English grammar requiring him to use "I".
     Overall, the interview seemed to me a carefully constructed performance. Black is a skilled actor. I doubt he would do someone else's script as well as he does his own, however.

Update 2020 08 25: President Trump pardoned Conrad Black on May 19, 2019, following assiduous fundament osculation by Black, who praised Trump's astounding superior qualities during the 2016 election, and has become ever more separated from objective reality since then.

 

Book Review: The Loch Ness Story (Mitchell)

Mitchell, Nicholas The Loch Ness Story (1974) A “revised” edition published by Penguin, this book contains a typically credulous account of the creatures supposed to live in Loch Ness. In the 60s and 70s several people used the best available underwater technology they could afford in order to find Nessie, and of course came up empty. There’s no question IMO in that Nessie is a compound of hoax, wishful thinking, and carefully ambiguous publicity aimed at tourists. Tourist pamphlets from before the first world war do not mention Nessie, which I think is evidence enough that she’s a very recent “discovery”.

Mitchell’s tone is that of a believer: any possible fact turns into reality within a sentence or two. He makes snide remarks about the skeptics and critics, often identified with a shadowy scientific establishment of some sort, who have closed their minds against this most momentous discovery. I read about halfway through the book, by which time Mitchell is referring to Nessie as a prehistoric animal, possibly a saurian, that has somehow survived for millions of years. Notions such a minimum sustainable population, of geological and climatic changes that would reduce the odds of survival, etc, appear to be beyond him. Grainy photos, out of focus blobs in the middle of out of focus snapshots, eye-witness accounts of things seen in the gloaming or against a background of sun-glistering water (there’s a photo of one of these sightings) – all these are for him irrefutable evidence, not only that Nessie is real, but that (s)he’s a reptile of some sort.

A wonderful, often amusing, but finally tedious read, like so many of these books, it will merely confirm both the believer and the skeptic in their opposing beliefs. The pictures are the usual ones, often reprinted, and to my skeptical eye are utterly unconvincing. The fact that they are badly printed doesn’t help. **

Update 2020-03-03: The most recent research has found a great deal of eel DNA in the Loch. No trace of saurians. This BBC link is one of many you'll find if you search on "eel DNA on Loch Ness." The BBC uses the standard (faked) photos of Nessie.