Humour in the New Yorker: An historical anthology

     David Remnick & Henry Finder. Fierce Pajamas (2001) A representative selection of humourous New Yorker writing. I read my way through it over a couple of weeks, and there are precious few knee-slappers. There are however many pieces that will raise a smile, or annoy, or please, or engage, or interest, or trigger any other of the responses to what we read. The writers use all modes and genres, sometimes as targets, sometimes a means of humour or satire.
     I enjoyed it more than I expected. I also absorbed some unexpected history of humourous writing from the chronological and thematic arrangement: Spoofs, for example, and the War Between Men and Women, or The Writing Life, as well as Words of Advice, and several others, ending with a selection of verse that proves that writing “light verse” is a serious an occupation as any other.
      The tropes of humour and satire are governed by fashion: we learn of the difficulties of love and marriage through stereotypes that change over time. The overbearing wife and the meek husband (represented by Thurber’s Walter Mitty) don’t ring true anymore, but the mutual incomprehension does. There are satires on several kinds of ignorance that no longer resonate. But the self-satisfaction of the overweening ignoramus does. We even have a name for it now, it’s the Dunning-Kruger effect. The perils of celebrity, both for idol and adulator, are well explored in the section The Frenzy of Renown, the title itself making the main point.
     A good gift for anyone who likes reading miscellaneous short writing. I was going to give it away, but I will keep it for the pleasures of rereading. ***

"Let's Talk About Biden and Oil Jobs...." (link)

Title of a talk by Beau, was sent to me by email. I think Beau's blunt talk is worth a listen. Click here.

 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is gone

 

Trump left the White House an hour or two ago. So he's gone.

The Wizard of Oz ends with the assurance that once the Wizard is exposed as a fraud, the world will be set to rights. Eventually, everything will be as it was supposed to be. Dorothy will get back home.

But this wizard has left behind a mass of Munchkins that still believe there's a Wizard behind the curtain. What would L. Frank Baum make of this awkward reality?

Two Songs

 I occasionally write song lyrics.  My Friend Lois Jones has set some of them to music.  In December 2020, her group Women in Song released their first album.  Two of the songs use my lyrics:

The Prairie's an Ocean, and True Love Waltz.

Enjoy!

Funny Boy (2020): Growing up queer in Sri Lanka

Funny Boy (2020) [D: Deepa Mehta. Arush Nand, Brandon Ingram, Agam Darshi et al] Arjun is a Tamil boy who realises he’s gay in a country that criminalises people like him. The movie follows his life from childhood to young manhood, set in Sri Lanka during the ethnic war that resulted in somewhere around 100,000 deaths and about a million Tamils migrating to India, Canada, and other countries.
     Arjun’s Aunt Radh helps him accept his differences despite his father’s urging him to give up “girly” things. He later falls in love with a Sinhalese classmate. The ethnic violence peaks, and the family emigrates to Canada, where Radh has moved after a marriage arranged by her family to prevent her marrying a Sinhalese man. That marriage has failed, but Radh is happy to welcome her family to Toronto.
     The movie’s adapted from a novel by Shyam Selvadurai, The story is one damn thing after another. From time to time, we see the older Arjun in place of the boy, and later on, the boy instead of the man. I suppose this is intended to show how Arjun’s memories make his life cohere into a story. Real life isn’t a neat story, however. The messiness, almost incoherence of the script, mimics this, but also distances us from the characters, who become objects moved around by events that they don’t and can’t control. This is clearest at the crisis of the film, when rioting Sinhalese almost discover Arjun’s family hiding in a Sinhalese neighbour’s storage room, and go on to break into Arjun’s home and destroy it. Arjun’s decision to yield to his attraction to Shean doesn’t free either of them. It’s at best a brief time of mutual joy which can neither resist nor protect from the politics surrounding it.
     A knowledge of the Tamil-Sinhalese war helps provide context. The acting is uniformly very good, helping us Westerners understand a culture so different and yet so similar to our own. I get the impression that Mehta had a clear vision of what she wanted, and it wasn’t a neatly structured plot tied up with a neat bow of a resolution. I think she also wanted to show how avoiding politics is no defence. The movie was engaging despite itself, the kind that tosses up half-recalled scenes when you least expect them. Worth watching, even if only to get a vague notion of what it’s like to live in a different society than your own. Recommended. *** [Posted on IMDB with redactions]
      Footnote: The majority of posts on IMDB were whinges by people with a political axe to grind. In particular, they were annoyed that non-Tamils were hired to act the Tamil roles, and apparently they spoke Tamil badly. I can’t judge that, I can only judge the acting as I viewed it.

Bridges and how to model them

 

Jeff Wilson. Bridges & Trestles Vol. 2 (2012) Another of Kalmbach’s compilation of articles from past issues of Model Railroader. Well illustrated, with captions that supply sufficient guidance for the seasoned scratch-builder, and text that guides the novice. The first chapter gives a good grounding in the basics of bridge design for those who hesitate to decide on what to build. The book fills a need. I’ve seen too many poorly conceived or modelled bridges on otherwise well done layouts. This book shows how to build a variety of bridges, trestles and culverts.
     A bridge is a complex object. The exigencies of geology, traffic, and available capital combine to ensure that no two are identical, despite efforts at standardisation. The available models are of limited variety. The most common ones, intended to fit sectional track, exhibit dubious engineering. But modellers need and want bridges. Building a good model bridge is a daunting prospect. This book will reassure the reader that building a good model is possible, enjoyable, and affordable. Recommended. ***

Christmas Wishes

 

The Winter Solstice has been marked in the Northern Hemisphere throughout human history, and certainly before. The feast celebrates the return of the Light, the victory over the darkness.

 Whatever tradition  guides your celebrations, I wish you all possible comfort and joy. My the Light that shines in each of us vanquish fear and give you hope.

Update to Mathematics in the News

I've added an update to Mathematics in the News.

Bridges around Edmonton: Rivers and Rails

 

     Alan Vanterpool. Rivers & Rails (2014) A survey of bridges on the former Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific Railways, as well as the CPR’s High Level Bridge, and couple of road bridges within the city. The selection criterion was “Edmonton and district”, with a bit of stretch on the “district” part.
     Basically, a catalogue raisonnée, with a diagram, statistics, and dates for each bridge, and whatever other data (location maps, photographs, news reports, etc) that Vanterpool was able to find. The photographs are generally too small, and at best adequately printed. The information seems to be as complete as Vanterpool could make it, with records of personal visits to some of the sites. The deeply-cut river valleys of the prairies required large bridges, which extended the technology of the time to its limits. Several were for a short time the longest and/or highest in the world. In short, they were pioneering efforts at spanning large valleys. A general essay introducing the book could have stressed this and other aspects of the history of bridge-building in western Canada.
     Occasional Paper No. 1 of the Edmonton & District Historical Society. Worth having as data. **½

Banks Solves a Cold Case

 

Peter Robinson. In A Dry Season (1999) Banks’s career is in bad shape, his marriage has just about fallen apart. Supt Riddle gives him the job of solving a very cold case when an imaginative boy seeking the Talisman finds a skeleton in the remains of a village long submerged under water but revealed when the reservoir dries up. Banks is assigned DS Annie Cabbot to assist him. The skeleton dates from the second World War, and bears signs of violence. Discovering the killer depends on the usual combination of carefully sifted and collated data, a couple of lucky breaks, and the imaginative empathic insight that Banks relies on to give him the necessary feel of the relationship between victim and killer.
     The book is structured as a parallel narrative: one of the participants in those long-ago events has written a memoir-novel, which provides us, and eventually Banks and Cabbot, with part of the solution. The usual niggling details lead to the rest, justice is done, and some of the damage is healed.
     An interesting experiment, this structure works reasonably well. I found the wartime story more than readable. I recall a few details of the last year of the war in Austria, and much more than a few details of post-war England, where we lived and visited between 1945 and 1954. That made Robinson’s evocation of war-time England more than a little engaging.
     A well done novel, recommended. ***

Banks and Gristhorpe hunt a psychopath.

Peter Robinson. Wednesday’s Child (1996) An early DCI Banks tale. A child goes missing, a gruesomely killed corpse is found above the town, DCI Banks and Supt Gristhorpe split the load, but the two cases converge (of course). The perp is a text-book psychopath. Robinson’s plotting is near immaculate.
     I find these books a good read. Robinson’s ability to invest even secondary characters with enough suggestive detail for realism, and his leisurely but steady narrative pace make for a better than average entertainment. He keeps the gore to a minimum, sets the scenes well, and traces the twisting and turning and occasionally dead-ended path of the investigation clearly. Recommended, as is the TV series. ***

Rumpole's Swan Song

 

 John Mortimer. Rumpole and the Primrose Path (2003) The last collection of short stories. Rumpole has recovered from his heart attack, but it takes some time for his career to restart. These tales show him in all his glory, objecting to and fighting against the inevitable miscarriages of justice caused by police tunnel vision and occasional corruption, presumptions of guilt by respectable lawyers who should be assuming the opposite, and biased judges. The impression that Mortimer is using Rumpole to vent his flustration at the misnamed justice system is stronger than ever. I won’t spoil you pleasure by recounting any of the tales. Buy or borrow the book, and enjoy finding out for yourself. For more information, check Wikipedia. Four novels were published after this last series of short stories.

Recommended ****

Spike Milligan at War

 

 

Spike Milligan. Adolf Hitler, My Part in His Downfall (1971), Rommel: Gunner Who? (1975), Monty, His Part in My Victory (1976), Mussolini, His Part in My Downfall (1978). Milligan’s “war biography”. There were three more books, which I haven’t found yet. Milligan was drafted into the Royal Artillery, rose to the rank of Lance Bombardier (corporal), and in Italy was demoted by a career martinet of a Major. He also suffered shell shock. The last book ends with his spending time in a psychiatric ward.
     The first volume has a good deal of The Goon Show in it, but as time and the war progress the tone becomes more realistic and darker. Milligan still attempts humour, but it feels more and more like a defence against the madness that surrounds him and that begins to affect his psyche. He suffered from bipolar disorder for the rest of his life; there is some evidence that the war either triggered or worsened it.
As records of how the war felt to a fighting soldier, these books are priceless. I read them compulsively. My uncle served with the Warwickshire Mounted Infantry in North Africa. Milligan’s book gave me some taste of what it was like for him, too. Recommended. ****