Miscellany

To the Editor:

In a recent letter to the editor, Romain Gary asserts that I took the name "Genghis Cohen" from a novel of his to use in a novel of mine, "The Crying of Lot 49." Mr. Gary is totally in error. I took the name Genghis Cohen from the name of Genghis Khan (1162-1227), the well-known Mongol warrior and statesman. If Mr. Gary really believes himself to be the only writer at present able to arrive at a play on words this trivial, that is another problem entirely, perhaps more psychiatric than literary, and I certainly hope he works it out.

Thomas Pynchon,

New York City.

Thomas Pynchon, “Letter to the Editor”, The New York Times Book Review, 17 July 1966, pp. 24, 26.

There are only two places in the world where I want to live—Bombay and Brattleboro.

Probably the only recorded instance of this sentence being said?

Rudyard Kipling, remark to Mary Cabot on leaving Vermont in 1896, quoted in Charles Fish, “Vermont and Vermonters in Kipling’s Day”, Kipling Journal, no. 355 (July 2014), p. 27.

I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.

HDT nails the fate of the gentleman who writes about pauses in paddling for melon-side pontifications:

While lying thus on our oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the day, our boat held by an osier put through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons, which are a fruit of the East, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of contemplation and dwelling-places of the ruminant nations.

Henry David Thoreau, journal, 28 October 1853; and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (James Munroe, 1849), “Monday.”

Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. . . . God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wishwash. Exterminate them, slime.

D. H. Lawrence, letter to Edward Garnett, 3 July 1912, in The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 1: September 1901–May 1913, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 420–422.

I don’t know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

Alan Kay, excerpt on Dijkstra from “The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet,” OOPSLA keynote (1997).

Scientific Thought, as I understand it, derives its effectiveness from our willingness to acknowledge the smallness of our heads: instead of trying to cope with a complex, inarticulate problem in a single sweep, scientific thought tries to extract all the relevant aspects of the problem, and then to deal with them in turn in depth and in isolation…

Dealing with some aspect of a complex problem “in depth and in isolation” implies two things. “In isolation” means that you are (temporarily) ignoring most other aspects of the original total problem, “in depth” means that you are willing to generalize the aspect under consideration, are willing to investigate variations that are needed for a proper understanding, but are in themselves of no significance within the original problem statement. The true integralist becomes impatient and annoyed at what he feels to be “games”; by his mental make-up he is compelled to remain constantly aware of the whole chain, when asked to focus his attention upon a single link. (When being shown the derivation of a correct program he will interrupt: “But how do you know that the compiler is correct?”.) The rigorous separation of concerns evokes his resistance because all the time he feels that you are not solving “the real problem”.

Edsger W. Dijkstra, “On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides”, EWD 611 (1977), E. W. Dijkstra Archive, University of Texas at Austin.

Hetty Green / Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab / You know what I mean

Cannot think of a more egregiously silly lyric that I reliably sing along to with total seriousness. One of my favorite things about Meloy is that he has a way of keeping you guessing if he's in on his own joke. He must have a sense of humor about this, surely. But then he makes the music video Eschaton? In a different life, I like to imagine Meloy would have been perfectly happy reciting Spenser with immaculate diction to an auditorium of undergraduates. But since we don't do that any more, we are all treated to pretty whistles wrestling thistles undone.

The Decemberists, “Calamity Song,” written by Colin Meloy, The King Is Dead (Capitol Records, 2011).

Went to see the magnetic sleep & saw the wonder.

Emerson after attending a demonstration by Charles Poyen in Boston on January 13, 1837.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Journal C,” 13 January 1837, in The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 5: 1835–1838, ed. Merton M. Sealts Jr. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965). Original journal in Houghton Library, MS Am 1280H.

Why regret Byron’s lost memoirs? To hell with them; thank God they are lost. He confessed in poetry, involuntarily, swept away by poetic rapture. In cold prose he would have lied and dissembled, displaying sincerity or blackening his enemies. He would have been exposed, as Rousseau was, and malice and slander would have triumphed again. Leave curiosity to the crowd; side with Genius. Moore’s deed is better than his Lalla Rookh—poetically speaking. We know Byron well enough: enthroned in fame, suffering a great soul’s torments, and entombed amid resurgent Greece. Why see him in the dock?

The crowd devours confessions and memoirs because its baseness delights in the humiliation of the lofty and the weaknesses of the mighty. Every disclosed vileness transports it: “He is petty like us, vile like us!” You lie, scoundrels: he is petty and vile—but not like you; differently.

Writing one’s memoirs is tempting and pleasant. No one is so loved or known by you as yourself; the subject is inexhaustible. But it is hard. Not lying is possible; sincerity is physically impossible. The pen sometimes halts before an abyss at something a stranger would read with indifference. Defying others’ judgment is easy; defying your own is impossible.

Good letter from Gospodin Pushkin.

A. S. Pushkin, “To P. A. Vyazemsky,” letter 227, second half of November 1825, in Complete Works in 16 Volumes, vol. 13: Correspondence, 1815–1827 (USSR Academy of Sciences, 1937), pp. 243–244. Russian text.