Helen DeWitt's Blog, page 2

Randall Collins has a blog, how could I not know

 Collins published The Credential Society in 1979, when his publishers took so tepid an interest in the book they refused to publish a paperback edition.  It's now a classic, took on new life with increased concern over escalating costs of university education and student debt in the US.

Turns out, he has a blog, The Sociological Eye - a blog I know I will never find again if I bookmark it.  So I link to it here.

Rejection of Proust by Gallimard

 Short segment on Radio France on Proust's rejection by Gallimard, account of the many revisions Proust made to the MS once accepted for publication and typeset (he apparently made significant changes to FIVE galleys).  The text originally submitted to Gallimard was a "dactylograph" which did not have the now famous first line (Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heur.) - instead there was a rather long and not very interesting sentence setting the scene. It sounds as though the famous line did appear, but was written in as an interlinear note on the dactylograph.

The whole thing here.

Shaker pencil post bed (full), $300, greater DC area

 My mother has been having medical problems (not always crises but sometimes) for the last 10 years, so I've had to come and help out from time to time. 

She's always been grateful, but she is also VERY attached to the décor she has achieved in her home; she likes the guest bedroom to be in harmony with the rest of the house, a harmony which would be ruined if it were changed to a place where I could work. So there's nowhere to work. (Money would be less of a worry minus this inelasticity, but there you go.)  Anyway, after months of procrastination I have put ads for the Shaker pencil post bed on Craigslist, Nextdoor, and FB. Pretty sure most followers are nowhere near DC, but if anybody happens to be looking for a bed the ad is here
 A reader who would like to remain anonymous has responded to a Twitter thread: X has very generously offered to buy the Shaker pencil post bed for a single mother in need of a bed, thereby giving me space to write and the recipient a terrific bed. So if you happen to know of someone in the DC/Maryland suburban area who could be helped by this offer, perhaps you could let them know. 

 

Lives of Astronomers

In summer 1997 I went to Oxford to do research on a character I thought should be an astronomer.  I went to the Radcliffe Science Library and began reading journals, increasingly aware of how ill-equipped I was to create a fictional astronomer: I should probably spend several months getting a better understanding of the kind of research he might do.

My agent, Stephanie Cabot, had said in June 1996 that with 6 chapters she could get me money to finish the book; somewhere along the line she seemed to have forgotten this, so it was not easy to know how to do justice to this astronomer.  In the meantime I went on looking at journals in the few days I had managed to take off work.  I came upon the Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, which includes a splendid feature: each issue included a brief autobiography by a distinguished astronomer or astrophysicist.

I don't think any of these were used in the book, but I offer a couple of examples, mainly as a reminder of how much better it would be if all academic journals offered this kind of feature:



From Evry Schatzmann's autobiographical entry, Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 1996

THE WAY TO ASTROPHYSICS

Saving My Life

July 1, 1943: I was joining the Observatory of Haute-Provence. I was full of emotions and feelings, which certainly had, in a very subtle way, an influence on my scientific life. It was the beginning of an illegal life. I had a complete set of papers (false papers), identity card, food card, and most important the Carte du Service du Travail Obligatoire (the government of Pierre Laval in Vichy had negotiated an agreement with the German Government: boys born between1920 and 1922 had to go to work in Germany), with the notation “trente-quatre mois de captivité.”2When I went to Digne a few days later to meet my young wife Ruth who was coming from Nice, these papers demonstrated their validity.Just as I got off the bus, I had an identity check by a gendarme3and he let me go without any problem. I learned much later (after the liberation) that the gendarmerie in this part of France was closely connected with the resistance movement. Did the gendarme simply feel comfortable seeing a young man,who was of an age to work in Germany, carrying the proof that he was exempted from this kind of constraint, or was he connected with the resistance movement and supporting illegal activities? I shall never know.

the rest here

From Lawrence H. Aller's autobiographical entry, Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 1995

AN ASTRONOMICAL RESCUE

After school, on the dreary afternoon of November 22, 1928, I went down to the Seattle Public Library to seek some forbidden books, i.e. books on astronomy. There I found the second volume of Russell-Dugan-Stewart Astronomy, with the tantalizing title of "Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy." I checked it out and read it with great enthusiasm; the text was always fascinating if not always intelligible to a high school sophomore. My elders were annoyed, so I had to read it surreptitiously, at school or at home. From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to do in life but did not yet appreciate the obstacles that were to be cast in my way. There was no surer road to ruin than to have followed the advice of my elders, particularly that of my worthless old man. 

In the autumn of 1928, I was living in Seattle with my oldest brother, Leeon. The old man had parked my mother and me there until he deemed me old enough to work as a slave laborer on his crackpot mining venture.

 the rest here

 While I was in Oxford I made a call to Stephanie, who had been trying to set up a meeting with Philip Gwyn Jones, then at Flamingo: he had read two chapters of the book early on and loved them, and I assumed the point of the meeting was to push through a deal.  He had in fact offered an appointment later in the week. It seemed to me that I could do much better by this astronomer if I could take more than a few days off work, so I went back to London for the meeting.  Gwyn Jones seemed embarrassed and awkward, said there was a lot in the book that one wanted to skip (Greek, Japanese, quotations ...), said it needed a lot of work.  (It seemed to me that it is in the nature of an unfinished book that it needs work; money would permit the book to benefit from the undivided attention of its author. I kept my inevitable reflections to myself.)  He said he wasn't sure what to suggest, perhaps if he sat down with the MS over a weekend ...  I mentioned that Stephanie had said she could get money so I could concentrate on finishing the book.  He seemed somewhat surprised. I still don't know what Stephanie thought to achieve with this meeting.

I can't persuade myself that I ever came up with an astronomer to match the extraordinary contributors to the Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, but that's all the more reason, of course, that these pieces should be known to a wider public.

[There's also a wide-ranging interview of Aller here, including this:

Of course, I first became aware of the existence of atomic physics from reading Russell—Dugan—Stewart, but I learned these things in physics courses, and sometimes by reading books like Pauling and Wilson (Quantum Mechanics, 1935, Mc—Graw Hill). Alas, my background in physics was built up in a very spotty and haphazard way, Sometimes I did not get adequate advice from my mentors, but also some of the important physics courses were given at barbaric hours, as far as a practicing astronomer was concerned. To do classical astronomy what you really had to know was mechanics and a few elementary things about optics. The realization that you had to know electromagnetic theory as thoroughly as mechanics had not appeared. Thermodynamics was something chemists did and physical optics was a lot of fun but it did not have much to do with measuring star positions. These views seem so archaic now but you must realize we are recalling a generation of astronomers who were versed in orbit theory and astronometry pretty much to the exclusion of “speculative” topics. My physics teachers were mostly very good. Harvey White let me read his “Introduction to Atomic Spectra” 1934 McGraw—Hill in manuscript form in his office. I got interested in all kinds of spectroscopic problems. I recall the very first observations I ever got of a planetary nebula.]

Continent cut off

Am writing on my sister's laptop, as mine is on the fritz and I can't even find out whether it can be fixed because Maryland is under lockdown.  Tried to leave a comment on my last post (ON MY OWN BLOG) and Google would not let me do it (despite the fact that I am, as you see, signed in as me and allowed to publish new posts). 

It wasn't much of a comment, but anyway, Andrew! Such a great post! 

It may be some time before I post again, as the Governor of Maryland is having trouble keeping order in class.  He has now announced that if people don't cut down their visits to grocery stores he may keep us inside until September. 

Interview of Hadley Wickham (woot)

The real purpose of this blog, you may not have realised, is to have a place to put things where I can conveniently find them again.  Am in the middle of an interview of Hadley Wickham by Will Chase, an interview in which HW (we are not worthy) says:

So I think for a long time there was this big pool of people that could potentially be contributing, but they were really put off by R-help (note: R-help is a notoriously hostile mailing list and was the only way to get help with R in the early days). And then the timing was lucky enough that there were two significant changes that allowed the community to reinvent itself to some degree.

The first of those was StackOverflow. It seems hard to imagine now, but at the time, StackOverflow was so incredibly welcoming and friendly. And I think part of that was that in contrast to R-help, anything would seem welcoming and friendly, 

This made me laugh, because I had spent countless hours trawling through installments of the R-help mailing list, and the principal contributors of answers (Brian Ripley, Uwe Ligges, Duncan Murdoch, Peter Dalgaard, others I could once have named without thinking) were often very severe. But after one had trawled through HUNDREDS of installments one couldn't help but be struck by the generosity of contributors who kept answering question after question for months, years on end.  To this day I feel an affection for Ripley, Ligges and all (the mere name Uwe Ligges has only to come to mind to make me smile), an affection yet to be inspired by professional contacts who are EXTREMELY friendly and dodge questions like so many bullets. 

The whole thing here (this is, of course, the link I want in a convenient place).

Jewish, of course

Year ago David Levene (my ex) went to a talk about how you know whether someone mentioned in the Jewish Chronicle is Jewish or not.  I've sometimes picked up Jewish papers in the US, and it's never been clear whether they followed this kind of code, so I can't tell whether this is what I love about Judaism, or whether it's what I love about Anglo-Judaism  (I converted in the UK, and never feel at home going to services in the US). [This is an extract from my diary]

D called. He had been to a talk on linguistic markers in the Jewish Chronicle: how are Jews and non-Jews identified?  Sometimes context is enough: John Smith has been appointed Court Recorder. If the name is Jewish, and the person is Jewish, this need not be specified. If the person is famous, it's assumed readers know - Frankie Vaughan performed at such-and-such a charity event.  What if the person is famous, but not that famous?  "Michael Tilton-Thomas (whose grandfather was the Yiddish scholar Tomashevsky) . . ." Suppose there's a long piece about a woman and her family; at the end it says "Mrs So-and-So, her parents and children are members of the West London Synagogue."  This is to indicate that her husband is not Jewish.  Or this: "Mr Aarons, the pro-Israel writer . . ." -- it would not be specified that a Jew was pro-Israel. Sporting event: "AB came fourth in the tennis singles, losing to CD. EF won the event."  AB is the only Jew (that's why the person who came fourth is mentioned first in the article.)  Oh - one brought up earlier.  A piece about Seinfeld.  Everyone knows Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish.  But what if it mentions Seinfeld and George (Jason Alexander)?  People may not know Jason Alexander is Jewish.  "Jerry Seinfeld and Jason Alexander (born Jason Greenspan) . . ."

(Surely I cannot be alone in being enchanted by the grandfather who was the Yiddish scholar Tomaschevsky. )

I'm really putting up a post, though, because there's a piece in the Guardian about divorce (here), and I wanted to put forward a different point of view, and I thought I'd do this on Twitter and wanted to link to a post HERE about the talk in which the Yiddish scholar Tomashevsky was a case in point.

Perhaps I should write a post later about divorce, but hey.

Interestingly, I was asked for a bio by my editor at PRH a few years back, when they decided to reissue The Last Samurai, and I was initially baffled - what could people possibly want to know?  I then realized that, while most biographical details would be no interest to anyone, the Jewish Chronicle and its readers would DEFINITELY be interested in the conversion to Judaism.  (I have no idea how the Jewish Chronicle would convey the fact that I had merely converted to Reform, in the eye of many Judaism-lite, but this is exactly the kind of thing we suddenly realize we would very much like to know.).  Sadly, my editor thought this was TMI, so, hm, but also wtf?  Are we all not enchanted by the JC?  But OK, OK, OK.

brave new babies, Glover revisited

Was reading Jonathan Glover's website and came across this video (70s? early 80s?) on genetic engineering, with contributions from his two young sons, enchanting:

http://www.jonathanglover.org/genetic-ethics/brave-new-babies

Vermont, wood, silver lining

Earlier this year I joined ANUFF Wood, a loose group of people in Windham County (VT) who turn up at each other's houses to cut/split/stack firewood.  The idea is roughly that if you turn up for 4 or 5 you can ask them to come to you, though I don't think this is very strictly enforced, and the core members seem to turn up for many more sessions than they possibly "redeem."

I've been to a fair number (wd go to more if I had a car), and recently asked the organizer, Michael, whether it might be possible to have three dying beech trees at the edge of my clearing felled etc.  Someone had told me years ago that I should have them down, and had then left the business, and each year I had meant to do something and left it too late.  And I'm not confident enough of my chain saw skills to fell trees, especially if alone on the hill in a place with no cell phone access.

Michael came about a week ago to have a look, and said the trees were manageable, and a session is now planned for Sunday.  On Monday I managed to reach Mark Russ, a local workman with a pickup truck, who agreed to get some palettes for stacking (for which he thought $10 was a reasonable fee). Today I rode my bike to the supermarket 4 miles up the road to pick up provisions, and when I got home Michael's car turned up in the road - he had decided to fell the trees early to make sure there were no problems.  He headed off to the edge of the clearning.  Meanwhile Mark Russ arrived in his pickup truck with the palettes, courtesy of Ron's Husqvarna.  He said Ron had said he expected to have more palettes and offered to bring more if needed.  We shook hands on this (that is, I did not have change for a $20, and cd definitely use more palettes for other things). 

Mark headed out.  Meanwhile Michael finished felling (or rather dropping) the three trees.  The last, with a wedge in its trunk, refused to fall, so he went out in front to pull at various long branches, which eventually worked. (Timber!)

No one reading this is going to understand - I was so happy!  I had meanwhile received an email from a foreign rights agent at the agency that did not work out, declining to provide a contract template for a deal they had declined to see through on the basis that it was proprietorial.  This is the agency that managed to take over a year to handle paperwork for a French publisher who had been publishing an illegal reissue of Le dernier samouraï - I should have known better than to approach anyone who worked there, because they were all toxic and it had taken months to get maybe 70% of the nastiness out of my system.

So the fabulous thing about ANUFF Wood (ANUFF = A Neighborhood Uniting For Fuel) is that everyone is so generous with their time, so happy to turn up on a weekend morning to help out, and by the end of a couple of hours two or three cords of woods have been stacked.  Something has been ACCOMPLISHED.  Within, maybe, a week or so of the beneficiary putting in a request.  And now someone has actually come to my place and solved a problem!  And the whole thing will be sorted out by Sunday pm!

Of course, from a professional point of view, it would be better if my neighbors took a Not my circus, not my monkey approach to their fellow man, while someone who has actually agreed to represent me is a miraculous of competence and efficiency AND anxious to help.  Also from a professional point of view, it's in some ways a handicap to have Vermonters as a point of comparison when dealing with the biz.  Perhaps I am not really, in the long term, better off knowing that 15 minutes is about the time it takes to drop three trees.  But for now, no, this was the highlight of the year.  It is my substitute for the highlight of yore, which was visiting Best Dentist in the World (Roz Tritton has now retired).

They warned me

I was recently interviewed by Jeremy Kitchen and Michael Sack for Eye 94 Radio (105.5 FM in Chicago), Lumpen Radio's books and literature program. Shortly before the interview began I got a call from someone at the studio to run through things that should not be said on air (basically various bad words, which would be tricky to bleep out).  This helpful person reminded me that this would be a live show, not a podcast.

If I had been writing my replies for an email interview, for example, I would probably have edited them down for brevity and coherence, but instead (in my memory, at least) I babbled madly on.  I've now been sent a link to a recording; needless to say, I can't bring myself to listen to it.  Still, what's done is done.  YOU can listen to it here.