Otto-da-Fe

2005-02-14T19:16:00.000-05:00

2004-12-23T14:04:00.000-05:00

In case one was wondering...

Recently the flow of posts here has slowed to a mere trickle. I am sorry to announce that it must be stanched entirely for about a month.

Merry Christmas, and be seeing you.

Remove the stone of shame. Attach the stone of triumph!

2004-12-17T09:17:00.000-05:00

Cubans endure ritual suffering in honor of revered saint

HAVANA - (KRT) - Construction worker Enrique Pluma spent the day Thursday crawling through the grime and soot of Havana's crumbling streets with a huge rock attached to his ankle.

"When I was young, I couldn't walk. I asked St. Lazarus for help, and I got it. So now, every year, I give him thanks," said the 48-year-old man, sprawled bloody and weary on the ground during his torturous 11-mile journey to a religious sanctuary on the outskirts of Havana.

More...

The morganatic the merrier

2004-12-16T16:27:00.000-05:00

The Telegraph suggests a morganatic marriage for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles. That's sensible. You'd be surprised how many problems morganatic marriage can solve. Or maybe you wouldn't, if you read this blog often.

Via Dappled Things.

Can you spot a bogus baronet?

2004-12-14T15:56:00.000-05:00

Allow the Earl of Bradford to help you. He will tell you that you cannot "Become a Lord for £29.99," as this Reuters piece advertises.

LONDON (Reuters) - The British aristocracy has long been an exclusive club [Could have fooled me. --Ed.] but now anyone can become a Lord or Lady -- for as little as 30 pounds ($58).

A raft of British Web sites are offering one square foot of the Glencairn Estate in northeast Scotland and, with it, access to the prestigious-sounding title of Lord/Laird and Lady of Glencairn.

Buyagift.co.uk is offering the "fun" title as the "ideal gift for anyone who aspires to greatness" for 29.99 pounds, which includes a deed of ownership, a map of the Glencairn estate and a card which proves their title.

Lastminute.co.uk and thanksdarling.com are also offering shoppers the chance to lord it up as a Glencairn, which is believed to be nothing more than a small plot of croft land with the title invented for it.

This story comes courtesy of frequent commenter Frederica Holstein, who remarked, "All the best titles are fake anyway."

A perfectly reasonable explanation

2004-12-14T13:47:00.000-05:00

From the preface to "The Hunting of the Snark":

If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in Fit the Second)
"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes."
In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmetical principles so cautiously inculcated in it, or to its noble teachings in Natural History--I will take the more prosaic course of simply explaining how it happened.

The Bellman, who was almost morbidly sensitive about appearances, used to have the bowsprit unshipped once or twice a week to be revarnished, and it more than once happened, when the time came for replacing it, that no one on board could remember which end of the ship it belonged to. They knew it was not of the slightest use to appeal to the Bellman about it--he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand--so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, "No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm," had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words "and the Man at the Helm shall speak to no one." So remonstrance was impossible, and no steering could be done till the next varnishing day. During these bewildering intervals the ship usually sailed backwards.

Sadly, I have been affiliated with several organizations that operate in this manner.

2004-12-08T08:49:00.000-05:00

Posting will remain spotty. I am quite busy. Why, with the weather getting colder, I find I am increasingly obliged to keep an eye on Cratchit, who is eyeing my coal-box with growing persistence.

Fitz and Starts

2004-12-06T09:49:00.000-05:00

Actually, it's Fitz and endings. Fitz was good while it lasted.

Another one for the Sic Transit file.

A Bullingdon Brannigan?

2004-12-03T08:28:00.000-05:00

On the Bollinger Club, from Decline and Fall:

Mr Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr Sniggs' room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College. From the rooms of Sir Alastair Digby-Vane-Trumpington, two staircases away, came a confused roaring and breaking of glass. They alone of the senior members of Scone were at home that evening, for it was the night of the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club. The others were all scattered over Boar's Hill and North Oxford at gay, contentious little parties, or at other senior common-rooms, or at the meetings of learned societies, for the annual Bollinger dinner is a difficult time for those in authority.

Today's Telegraph on what may have been a gathering of the Bullingdon Club, on which Waugh based the Bollinger:

When landlord Ian Rogers welcomed the well-spoken and immaculately dressed young men to his 15th century inn, he felt he could not have asked for more impressive clientele.

All wore expensive suits and ties. They showed impeccable manners as they were guided through the restaurant to the private dining area they had booked.

Apparently keen to be as little trouble as possible, the 14 mostly Oxford undergraduates, ordered the same starter and main course of salmon salads and fillet steaks. The house wines would be fine, they added in clipped accents.

Unfortunately somewhere between the salmon and the steak, all hell broke loose at the White Hart, in Fyfield, a village near Oxford.

The apparently perfect diners turned nasty, inexplicably smashing everything within their grasp and grappling with each other until wine and blood were running down the walls of the converted cellar.

Sounds exhilarating enough, but at least my circle confined its havoc to campus. And sometimes only to certain college-owned musical instruments.

Martini on the rocks

2004-12-02T15:53:00.000-05:00

No, not that type of rock.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Drinkers might want to keep a clear head when ordering a martini at New York's historic Algonquin Hotel or they might pay $10,000 for that cold sip.

The landmark hotel, where famed wit Dorothy Parker and fellow literary lights at the Round Table imbibed, offers a $10,000 martini, complete with a loose diamond at the bottom.

How tacky. This will attract all the wrong people, and repel all the right ones.

I used to like the Algonquin. Sic transit, etc.

Update: Mr. Beck has found more gimmicky horrors at the Algonquin.

Your papers, please

2004-11-30T13:52:00.000-05:00

Piles of Yale Free Press swiped

From the Yale Daily News:

[YFP Editor-in-Chief Diana] Feygin and her staff said they were horrified at the theft of this month's issues, which Feygin said was particularly ironic as the issue addressed academic freedom at Yale.

So much for dialogue. Although campus right-wingers can't be made to disappear (until they try for tenure), their paper is quite another story.

Club Dread

2004-11-26T08:04:00.000-05:00

The New York Sun reports on the Yale Club's long march into tacky territory. It contains an indispensable description of a model club:

Throughout the club's floors, one can find black-and-white photos of the club's grand history and design. They recall an era when a club was a man's castle, as Cleveland Amory wrote in his book "Who Killed Society?":

"Here he had the best of his well-bred friends, the most comfortable of his well-stuffed chairs, the best of food, drink and cigars from his well-stocked larders and cellars, the least irritating of reading material from a well-censored library, and the best of games from well-mannered losers."

Also note this apt observation:

Traditionalists who oppose the design changes may hear again the word "bygone" in their school song "Bright College Years":

How bright will seem through mem'ry's haze
Those happy golden bygone days.

That about sums up the matter. Actually, it sums up most matters. [To hear "Bright College Years," why not visit the Old Oligarch?]

The piece from the Sun also quotes this "bilious Web log" (an accurate description) and our friend Mr. Panero, who has posted a (not at all disagreeable) encapsulation of the ideal club.

Over the ravine and through the woods

2004-11-25T23:14:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving at Schloss Hiss was wonderful. Until that ill-fated after-dinner motor-trip. Astonishingly, only uncle Fritz was injured; somehow he swallowed his insignia for the Order of the Red Eagle.

Happy Thanksgiving, and drive (or be driven) safely.

2004-11-24T13:17:00.000-05:00

Today's Statshot at the Onion:

Leading Causes of Nightclub Brawls

16% Phonies

11% Poor lighting

23% Hip-hop clothing-line rivalry

19% Argument over legitimacy of Hanoverian succession

21% "Tear This Sh*t Up (Nightclub Brawl Remix)"

10% Bar out of Veuve Clicquot

Reasons 4 and 6 are quite serious.

I wonder whether the Onion has been following this blog? Thanks to Mr. B. for the tip.

2004-11-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

If only Reed Irvine were around to see this.

2004-11-23T12:49:00.000-05:00

Continuing in the spirit of Ottoammergau...
A commenter named "Number 6" writes, "I just have one question. Who is Number 1? And if you can't tell us that, maybe you can say what your name is an anagram of?"

I reply: First, those are two questions. Second, "Questions are a burden on others; answers, a prison for oneself."

Flying the too-friendly skies

2004-11-23T10:20:00.000-05:00

From the NY Times, on airport frisking:

Several women interviewed said that male colleagues had scoffed at their complaints, saying that a physical pat-down was a small price to pay for security.

"I laugh when men tell me that," said Betty Spence, president of the National Association for Female Executives, who says she has been selected for pat-downs several times in the last month on trips from New York to Chicago, Washington and Miami on various airlines. "Men don't know how offensive it is to be touched by anyone when you don't want to be touched."

Why wouldn't we know such a thing? (And haven't we been over this endlessly?) My years of living and working in New York have not inured me to the pokings and proddings one routinely receives here. I am not greatly reassured when the pokings and proddings are administered at length by an agent of the federal government.

This is not to say we should get rid of the security searches; the alternatives are scandalous x-rays, death at the hands of terrorists, or allowing all passengers to carry handguns. I find the last of these attractive (who would attempt to hijack a plane full of gun-toting Americans?) but unlikely to occur in my lifetime--and no great help in the interval between the shouting of "Allahu Akbar" and the detonation of plastique undergarments. So the choices are pat-downs, naked x-rays, and (potentially) death. I choose pat-downs.

I should also note that I am not a completely disinterested party. Screeners always pull me out of line for special searches. Every single time I fly. It could be my hats that attract their attention (not a pickelhaube when I'm traveling; just a modest homburg); or maybe it is that look on my face that says, "If you touch me I shall have to bathe in lye again tonight." It is a bonus to the screeners that I am clearly, except in matters of taste and style, not a member of any discernible minority; therefore no one could accuse security of racial profiling. Except me, of course.

But so be it. I try not to allow my face to take on a murderous aspect while someone fumbles about in my pockets and other passengers gawk at the spectacle of a man stripped to his waistcoat. It's a barbaric exercise, but that's what barbarism drives us to. But perhaps Ms. Spence prefers existing as smithereens.

Noble rot

2004-11-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

From the Independent:

Prince Ernst August of Hanover, a Euroroyal bad boy who happens to be the Queen's cousin, is to appear in court this week in a grievous bodily harm case that could land him in jail for the next decade.

A German and British citizen who is 35th in line to the British throne, "Prince Punchy", as he is dubbed in Germany, is appealing against a January 2002 conviction for two assaults. ...

Ernst August, who broke protocol by kissing the Queen at a state banquet in Berlin this month, was fined €10,000 last year for another contretemps, this time in Austria. Other troubles include a bust-up with the mass-circulation tabloid Bild, which published pictures of him urinating against the Turkish Pavilion at the 2000 World-Expo in Hanover - hence Ernst August's other tabloid title, "The Peeing Prince".

The court saga is just the latest lurid episode to embroil Germany's increasingly redundant aristocracy. Ernst August's brother, Prince Heinrich of Hanover, has had an equally poisonous relationship with the media since his affair several years ago with a former religious education teacher turned cabaret artist. And Prince Ferfried von Hohenzollern, 62, has just dumped his wife to shack up with 33-year-old Tatjana Gsell, a surgically enhanced B-list celebrity. Unsurprisingly, Prince Friedrich Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, the Kaiser's great-grandson, stresses that Ferfried is "from a different strand of the family".

One would hope so. It seems like many of the problems of the German aristocracy could be solved by judicious use of the term "morganatic," and all the practices associated therewith.

Prince Punchy's maternal Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg genes must be recessive. And far from being "35th in line for the British throne," the Act of Settlement says the Prince's marriage to the Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco renders him ineligible. (Of course, good Jacobites don't give a fig, or any other small fruit, for the Act of Settlement--or the Hanovers, for that matter. And good Jacobites have a point.)

2004-11-21T19:12:00.000-05:00

"Well, I say let Harvard have its football and academics. Yale will always
be first in gentlemanly club life."
--C.M. Burns

Or will it?

Hound unemployment set to skyrocket

2004-11-20T01:59:00.000-05:00

Hunting ban forced through as new law

Legal challenge against hunt ban begins

Telegraph: Labour gets its ban - but forfeits all respect (courtesy of the great and powerful Z)

Why not send a small Christmas present to the Countryside Alliance? Or perhaps participate in its Online Auction. (One may bid on, among other things, a "luxury alpine apartment near Gstaad.") Or just buy something smaller from the Alliance's On-Line Shop.

What a terrible precedent. I have been following this fiasco for some time, and am ready to conclude that the Mother of Parliaments is an unfit parent.

One Year of Otto-da-Fe

2004-11-19T06:21:00.000-05:00

I might not have realized it, had not old Willi remembered my anniversary. Below is his telegram of congratulations, slightly censored.

[I have been promising for some time to allow the Kaiser to come out of exile for another round of prognostications. Soon enough.]

Update: Irish Elk offers a generous tribute, for which I am most grateful.

Prince Snarls

2004-11-18T10:47:00.000-05:00

Bully for the Prince of Wales. On the heels of his admirable campaign for mutton [please stop snickering], HRH gets another gold star in my book, reversing a decades-long streak of black marks.

The Scotsman's headline reads: "Prince's blast at people who get above their station."
An excerpt from HRH's memo on a troublesome employee who, in effect, requested a promotion:

"What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centred system which admits no failure. People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability. This is the result of social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially engineered to contradict the lessons of history."

The memo concludes, "What on earth am I to tell [the employee in question]? She is so PC it frightens me rigid."

I do not mean to question the employee's accusation of harassment against someone else in Prince Charles's employ. But I can hardly take seriously an employee who complains that her workplace is, according to the Scotsman, "'hierarchical and elitist', an institution run in an 'Edwardian fashion' where everyone knew their place and those who did not were punished." How can a workplace where no one knows his place and no transgressions are punished, well, work?

I look forward to more of HRH's observations of what is wrong with society. However, I may be setting myself up for disappointment if I judge those observations against the high standard set by the fourteenth Earl of Gurney: "Young ladies are showing their ankles and bosoms in public and saying rude things about the Queen!" Indeed, and worse.

"My kingdom for a web domain!" Or is it "My web domain for a kingdom"?

2004-11-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

A message from Prince Regent Nguyen Phuc Buu Chanh of Viet-Nam .

I was surprised to receive this; somehow I have found myself on the mailing list of the Vietnamese Constitutional Monarchist League.

Mighty Manhattan, with spires...

2004-11-16T14:35:00.000-05:00

City Journal:Reimagining the Far West Side

The rebuilding of the World Trade Center site has gotten everyone talking about architecture, but so far it's a one-sided conversation, as if the only question worth discussing is: What kind of modernism do we want? The graceless modernism of Daniel Libeskind's brutal and exhibitionistic "master plan"? The suave modernism of David Childs's valiant (but hopeless) effort to transform that plan's tallest building into a silk purse? But since we've now had 50 years of modernism here in New York, and only a half-dozen good buildings among hundreds of awful ones to show for it, maybe what we really want now is . . . not modernism.

Think of modernism and you think Houston, maybe, or office parks from Cherry Hill to Cupertino. But not New York. Gotham is the city of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, New York trademarks, emblazoning the T-shirts that tourists take home from the Times Square souvenir shops. New York is the Plaza Hotel, the Flatiron Building, the old Bankers Trust and Equitable towers, the RCA Victor Building soaring over Saint Bartholomew's Church, the Sherry-Netherland, the San Remo. If Chicago takes the palm for inventing the skyscraper, New York can claim to have brought it to full flower. The classical skyscraper is one of Gotham's gifts to the world, the urbane expression of its technical genius, wealth, and confident cosmopolitanism.

More...

How refreshing to see a vision for New York that isn't post-apocalyptic.

Via Mr. Cusack.

2004-11-16T13:52:00.000-05:00

1,540 Pounds of Cocaine Found Hidden in Squid

LIMA - Peruvian anti-drug agents seized almost 1,540 pounds of cocaine destined for the Mexico that was hidden inside of a shipment of squid, police said Monday. ...

National police officials said the drugs were wrapped in plastic, coated with pepper and packed in 25 tons of squid fillets to mask the smell.

What a disappointment. I was hoping that all that cocaine had been found in one giant squid.

A mutton's work is never done

2004-11-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

Andrew Stuttaford expresses some nostalgia for mutton, noting Prince Charles's campaign for the much-neglected meat. HRH remarked,

"I remembered that when I was growing up that mutton was one of my favourite dishes, but that it had all but disappeared over the last 30 or 40 years," he said.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, if we could help to boost the incomes of our hill farmers by encouraging a mutton renaissance?"

Yes. Yes, it would.

It may not help the hill farmers of England, but I know of one New York restaurant that serves a "legendary" (according to the menu) mutton chop: Keen's. Perhaps the legend has not yet reached my readers. A pity. Keen's mutton chop is quite tasty, and it is to Keen's great credit that the accompanying mint jelly, unlike that of all but a few restaurants, does not emit an ominous, radioactive green glow. (Dining before a late flight, I once had to refuse some mint jelly at the Oak Room because I feared it would set off Geiger counters at the airport.)

Afraid of mutton? Never mind. There are many other reasons to visit Keen's, one of my favorite haunts. The rest of the menu will not disappoint. And Keen's collection of memorabilia is not limited to the thousands of clay pipes (some smoked by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt) lining the ceilings and display cases. It also keeps on display the program of "Our American Cousin" that President Lincoln was holding when he was shot--a relic or a trophy, depending on one's view of Lincoln. But that's neither here nor there. One final point: visitors with overly delicate sensibilities might find the nude portrait of "Mrs. Keen" hanging over the bar startling. No reason to avoid the bar, of course.

Is the pope waxwork?

2004-11-12T11:02:00.000-05:00

From the NY Times:

Up for sale was "The Ninth Hour," the [Maurizio Cattelan's] well-known room-size work depicting a realistic life-size wax figure of Pope John Paul II in white robes, felled by a meteorite that has crashed through a skylight. The piece had been sold in 2001 at Christie's, where Pierre Huber, the Geneva dealer, bought it for $886,000. Last night Phillips estimated it would bring $1.5 million to $2 million. Three people tried to buy the work, which sold to an unidentified telephone bidder for $3 million.

If I wasted $3 million on that thing, I would want to remain anonymous, too.

Tuscan village to open truffle museum

2004-11-12T10:33:00.000-05:00

AP reports that Enzo Francini, head of finances for the medieval town of 950 people, says, "It's going to be more than a museum, it's going to be an assault on the senses." I agree, but is that a selling point?

This breaking news just in: Yasser Arafat is still dead

2004-11-11T08:29:00.000-05:00

(Yes, I've been saving this line for a while.)

Schiavo and Arafat Trade Places

2004-11-11T07:42:00.000-05:00

Satire by Me[di]a Culpa, inspired by Dawn Eden:

Terri's parents were doubtful when the swap was first proposed by Palestinian officials on Tuesday.

"This would mean that my daughter's life would be in the hands of terrorists and an atheistic French government," said Bob Schindler. "On the other hand, these are terrorists and atheists who have demonstrated more commitment to life in one week than Michael Schiavo has in 14 years. I mean, they actually went so far as to rule out euthanasia! It came down to who do I trust my daughter with more -- terrorists and atheists or Michael Schiavo and the Florida Supreme Court? When you think of it like that, it's not a hard decision."

More...

Padre Pistolas

2004-11-09T10:01:00.000-05:00

Parishioners Lock Church to Back Gun-Toting Priest

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Angry parishioners chained shut a church in central Mexico on Friday in protest at the firing of their priest, whose habit of tucking a gun under his robes has earned him fame and the nickname "Padre Pistolas."

Hundreds of people from the town of Chucandiro demonstrated outside the cathedral in the city of Morelia after Catholic church leaders there defrocked their gunslinging priest, Alfredo Gallegos, local media reported.

"We have closed the church with chains and that's how it will stay until Father Alfredo comes back," protester Gilberto Moron was quoting as saying, adding that locals would accept no other priest.

Gallegos is wildly popular with parishioners but has angered his Catholic superiors with his habit of wearing a shiny pistol beneath his robes, despite strict laws in Mexico banning private citizens from carrying guns.

Also known for his love of cowboy boots and country music, Gallegos says he only carries a gun for protection, noting several of his friends have been killed over the years.

Locals say he has brought them huge social benefits, helping the marginalized and raising money for roads and hospital projects. "He has united us as a people," said Moron.

Church leaders gave no reason for sacking the priest.

Shades of St. Gabriel Possenti.

A twist in the Lord Lucan cocktail

2004-11-09T08:40:00.000-05:00

A Channel 4 documentary will air new information about the case of Lord Lucan:

In the Channel 4 documentary, George Bingham, Lord Lucan's son, reveals that he does not believe that his father killed Mrs Rivett or attacked Lady Lucan, who survived. He blames a burglar - possibly someone paid by Lord Lucan as part of an "insurance fraud" - for the attacks.

Mr Bingham, 36, accuses Scotland Yard of jumping to the wrong conclusion and thinks that his mother, Lady Lucan, who was concussed and under medication, was mistaken about her attacker's identity. "I certainly don't believe he [Lord Lucan] struck the blows," Mr Bingham says in the programme. He believes that his father was waiting outside the family home and went in to investigate when he suspected the burglary had gone wrong.

Lady Lucan, until now considered the intended target of the bludgeoning, was not pleased:

Lady Lucan, who refused to be interviewed for the documentary, criticised her only son this weekend. "I think my son is an absolute disgrace. I don't know why he is doing this," she said. "If my son had not done this, the anniversary might have passed with barely a whimper."

Her Ladyship's other comments are puzzling:

Lady Lucan, who is now estranged from her three adult children, is convinced that her husband is dead. She believes that, the day after the murder, he took his own life during a Channel crossing by stepping off a ferry "like the nobleman he was".

A compliment to the man who supposedly meant to kill her? Incidentally, Taki knew "Lucky," and also thinks the old boy drowned himself.

That doesn't necessarily mean I'll skip my trip to Africa. I've already packed my bitters, canoe, and cleft sticks.

Thanks to the the good folks at CaNN News for the tip.

TV-B-Gone

2004-11-08T13:50:00.000-05:00

Tiny TV-B-Gone turns off most any boob tube
As Raymond Shaw put it, "There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off." This little gadget allows one secretly to turn televisions off wherever one goes--bars, for instance, or the Yale Club's Grill Room (now equipped with several flat-screened monstrosities). This will make a fine stocking-stuffer.

Club Flub

2004-11-08T10:51:00.000-05:00

Mr. Panero's complaints about the Yale Club are spot on:

Well, like Gatsby, the recent history of this Club has been tragic. Wedding parties, business meetings, and conferences now invade every nook of the clubhouse. Good luck finding a quiet afternoon the library. The Grill Room has recently been stripped of its smoky, hunting-lodge feel. And now, in the past two weeks, an even graver injury has befallen the clubhouse. In order to make the second-floor lounge more convertible to conferences and weddings, the old lounge furniture, long newspaper table, and rugs have been replaced with seconds from a Holiday Inn--with lighting by way of Versace. And what of the castoffs? Sold at auction for pennies.

Pennies, indeed. I managed to pick up a few pieces at the silent auction. I have added them to my collection of relics of better times at the Club, which includes a chandelier and a few other pieces I acquired when the Club gutted its grill room last year.

When I caught a glimpse of the new furniture in the lounge, I needed to brace myself against a column and a double bourbon. The room previously had a simple, visually unobtrusive, masculine feel. Its arrangement is now mindless, its color scheme garish, and its design feminine. One could only conclude that the Club's house committee must be populated by blind men, the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and a few batty old women with too many mail-order catalogues within close reach. The most inexcusable additions are a few large brass torchères with speckled glass bowls, which could only have come from the Target 1920s collection. The coffee tables resemble distressed Pottery Barn items. And then there are the orange "leather" sofas: I am told they are temporary, but I will believe that when all that remains of them is the lingering odor of new naugehyde.

I was recently at the Century Club, and the contrast nearly caused me to weep.

On a whim--one I may or may not regret later--I have sent the above comments about the mangled lounge, along with a few other complaints, to the Yale Club's house committee and president. I would tell them to stuff it in their pipes and smoke it, but smoking isn't allowed in the Club anymore.

Somewhat in the spirit of Rufus T. Firefly, I have long entertained the idea of starting my own club and perhaps beating a few over the head with it when it becomes appropriately established. Hesitant as I am to mimic the upstart J.P. Morgan, one has to admit that his pariahdom resulted in something worthwhile in Stanford White's Metropolitan Club. (There is a modest commercial townhouse for sale on East 43rd Street--right next to Club Row, and home to a few lovely clubs of its own. It might just be suitable--any takers?)

Selective reality at Yale

2004-11-05T09:47:00.000-05:00

A letter in the Yale Daily News:

To the Editor:

Must you always refer to President Bush as "Bush '68"?

I mean, it's bad enough that he's going to be president for another four years without you rubbing salt into the wound by reminding us that he was admitted to Yale without any special accomplishments -- not academic, athletic, musical, dramatic or anything else, other than family name and money.

Joel Rosenbaum

Nov. 3, 2004

The writer is a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

What a petty request, and one that neatly encapsulates the Democratic Party's recent history: when reality is unpleasant, deny it. Hardly a way to run a newspaper or a country.

All over America people were waking up, queasy and hopeful.

2004-11-03T16:51:00.000-05:00

Breakfast this morning at Schloss Hiss

I assume I am not the only one who found himself the worse for wear after a long night of election-watching.

I see that the good folks at Armavirmque have posted photographs of last night’s Fitz gathering (as always, highly recommended). Though I was there, I am not to be found in the snapshots—-not, as some readers may have surmised, because I do not show up on film, but because I had left early to attend an election-night party hosted by fourth cousin and frequent commenter Frederica Holstein. The latter affair attracted, among other curiosities, a near-staggering number of pro-Bush Europeans: six. Well, they were Central and Southern Europeans. Miss Holstein, a citizen of Austria ("the Empire," as she insists), regretted that she was ineligible to vote for the man she calls our Texan Jan Sobieski. And so he may be.

In retrospect, Miss Holstein's cascading fountains of Veuve-Clicquot almost--but not quite--compensate for my disappointment at not meeting Mr. Sullivan and a few others at Fitz.

By the way, we did argue about the appropriateness of serving La Grande Dame at this pro-Bush function, given her country of origin. Luckily, the purists did not win out. Churchill's dictum on champagne had the effect of Scripture: "In success you deserve it, and in defeat you need it." Thank goodness it turned out to be the former.

By the light of the African moon

2004-11-01T08:12:00.000-05:00

The Telegraph's obituary for Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (she was by request never styled "Dowager Duchess of Gloucester" after her husband's death in 1974) mentions her exploits in Africa:

She also made the brief acquaintance of Evelyn Waugh, who irritated his hosts by sporting a conspicuous hat at night. "I'm told the Kenyan moon is dangerous and makes people decidedly odd," he explained.

Evidently. No, on second thought, Waugh probably did not require the Kenyan moon.

The obit notes that "Princess Alice remembered a time when the British aristocracy lived far more sumptuously than kings or presidents do today":

A train would be hired to transport the household and its eight tons of luggage; and at Bowhill, a mere mansion compared with the palaces of Drumlanrig and Boughton, Christmas Dinner in the 1920s still meant feeding 150lbs of turkey to 220 mouths. When news of the second nurse's engagement to the groom of the chambers reached the nursery on one of these occasions, the housekeeper's only comment to nanny was: "Wherever can they have met?"

Read on. I was surprised to learn that defenestration was a holiday frolic at houses other than my own.

2004-10-29T11:59:00.000-04:00

I have begun to bring my list of links up to date; it is full of anomalies
and anachronisms, as Lord Marchmain would say.

Artists Stage a Be-In at Bergdorf's

2004-10-29T10:34:00.000-04:00

The Times reports:

"Retail stores have got to be a cultural experience, too, now," [Robert Burke, fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman] said. And Bergdorf Goodman is doing its best to join the charge toward hipness, however much that may clash with its current image as a sort of safe house for shoppers who rarely venture south of 14th Street.

The retailer's latest effort, the Collage Project, opened Monday in the Fifth Avenue windows and on the third floor of the men's store. For 10 hours, 20 young artists set themselves up on trestle tables and, using glue sticks, X-Acto knives, scissors, fabric, sewing machines, heaps of fliers, old children's books, vintage National Geographics, origami paper and clippings from 1970's smut magazines, proceeded to make art.

"Art," you say? This is hardly what I would call a "cultural experience" in the best sense. Next time I have the urge to go to Bergdorf, perhaps I shall stage my own "be-in" at the Oak Bar.

2004-10-29T01:45:00.000-04:00

"States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel."
--Adam Cohen in the New York Times, 25 October 2004, on what we can expect should President Bush be re-elected. Emphasis mine.

A question for the hyperventilating Mr. Cohen, or the many Chicken Littles who quote him: What, exactly, is a "mini-theocracy"? A theocracy with diminutive gods?

2004-10-28T09:46:00.000-04:00

Today is Evelyn Waugh's birthday. Why not celebrate with some chloral, bromide, and gin?

Who won the world what-now?

2004-10-28T08:40:00.000-04:00

I am told that whatever baseball-related event occurred last night was rather important. Piffle. Any game without horses or guns is hardly a sport.

And speaking of sports, the latest attempt to defeat Britain's hunting bill is worth mentioning: the formation of the Free Church of Country Sports. The church "is based on the life of Saint Hubert, the Patron Saint of Hunters":

Legend has it that Hubert discovered his faith while hunting in the forest on Good Friday morning, when he received a vision of a stag with a crucifix between its antlers.

The Founders of the Free Church of Country Sports believe this story has relevance today, as do our fellow sportsmen in Europe. We believe that those who take part in country sports receive spiritual inspiration from their activities.

We believe that the countryside and the bounty it provides is the work of God and that our activities bring us closer to our Creator, very much in the spirit of Saint Hubert.

The Feast of Saint Hubert officially opens the hunting season in Belgium on November 3, and our Patron Saint of Hunting is also represented on the Jagermeister's Badge of Honour in Germany.

By tradition, the badge offers the hunter protection and "honours the Creator and his creations."

Keep drinking Jägermeister, and you'll see visions, too.

The FCCS goes on:

The Church intends to introduce a badge in the United Kingdom and is also to mark the Feast of Saint Hubert on November 3.

This plan is clearly desperate though charming in its schismatic way. Thanks to Mr. Z. for the tip.

Taking sides against the family

2004-10-26T14:29:00.002-04:00

Bush Relatives for Kerry
"Because blood is thinner than oil!"

A truly despicable endeavor. Good people do not publicize a family squabble, unless that squabble is World War I. (And that's another regrettable story.)

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could...

2004-10-26T14:15:00.000-04:00

ROME (AFP) - Parishioners in southern Italy have bricked up the entrance to their Roman Catholic church, in response to a decision to transfer their popular priest, local authorities said.

"It's either Don Giuseppe (Franco) or no-one," according to the banner dangled by the angry parishioners, including women and children, as they demonstrated on the steps of the San Nicola of Bari church near Naples in the hope of a u-turn from the diocese.

The archbishop of Benevento, Monsignor Serafino Sprovieri, dismayed the parishioners by sending the young priest to nearby Paupisi.

I wonder when Boston parishioners will imitate these tactics. Vigils and the like are all very well, but nothing says "We're serious" like masonry.

Inscrutable Spam

2004-10-25T11:03:00.000-04:00

A spam message I received today contained the following text after its pitch for various embarrassing-sounding medications:

king let sort appear food keeping things taught. turn hospital front lie opened,
immediately accident conscience fixed ladies garden nice privilege late near,
fool bright passing longer team doubt everywhere still. foreign read dining mouth themselves.

The e-mail, from (simply) "Sonja," addressed me as "Lois Enid." The Jade Monkey goes to anyone who can decipher this.

Archaeologists find Luther's Commode

2004-10-25T08:39:00.000-04:00

Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.
The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg.

Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds.

Some things are best left in the WC.

145 rue Lafayette

2004-10-22T13:10:00.000-04:00

While I was away, Father Tucker posted a story on the tangled subterranean tunnels of Paris. A fascinating story, following this earlier one:

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement. ...

After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.

Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.

Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.

It almost makes me want to go on a spelunking tour of Paris.

I could not help thinking of this exchange between Casaubon and Signor Salon from Foucault's Pendulum:

"Have you ever been to 145 rue Lafayette?"

"I must confess I haven't."

"It's a bit out of the way, between Gare de l'Est and Gare du Nord. An unremarkable building at first sight. But if you look at it more closely, you realize that though the door looks wooden, it is actually painted iron, and the windows appear to belong to rooms unoccupied for centuries. People walk past and don't know the truth."

"What is the truth?"

"That the house is a fake. It's a facade, an enclosure with no rooms, no interior. It is really a chimney, a ventilation flue that serves to release the vapors of the regional Metro. And once you know this, you feel you are standing at the mouth of the underworld: if you could penetrate those walls, you would have access to subterranean Paris. I have had occasion to spend hours and hours in front of that door that conceals the door of doors, the point of departure for the journey to the center of the earth."

I have been in the steam tunnels beneath New Haven, Connecticut. (This is what happens when one mixes gin and champagne.) There were no martyrs' bones or rough-hewn theaters I could discern.

No accounting for taste

2004-10-22T10:52:00.000-04:00

From Agence France Presse:

Of the new products launched, some never quite make it to the supermarket and one out of every two that does is pulled off the shelves within two years, he told AFP.

New-to-the-west African drinks, of throat-wrenching ginger, sweet baobab or thirst-quenching red hibiscus, also known as Bissap, Roselle or Red Sorrel, will probably go down well in a clean-living health-conscious market which is increasingly turning up its nose at alcoholic drinks.

To abuse Chesterton's much-abused phrase, The first effect of not drinking alcohol is to drink anything.

Read on for more culinary atrocities.

Guarding Tess

2004-10-22T08:33:00.000-04:00

A member of my vast network of informants has provided me with leaked directives from Senator Kerry's Secret Service detail. The Teresa Heinz Kerry Advisory System, according to a memo from top Kerry adviser Mike McCurry, "calls for specific protective measures based on threat and vulnerability assessments related to Mrs. Kerry's interaction with the media."

At Green Alert, the threat of injurious activity by Mrs. Kerry is considered very low. Most likely she is at home quietly playing solitaire or busy marinating raisins in gin. Agents are asked to allow her to have "me time."

At Blue Alert, there is a general risk of incident. Witnesses are present, and although Mrs. Kerry has no easy access to a public address system, her facial expressions and responses are clearly visible.

At Yellow Alert, there is significant risk of activity. Mrs. Kerry is in close proximity to public address systems, and although she is not scheduled to speak, there are no great obstacles to her suddenly seizing a microphone. Agents should watch her eye movements very carefully and be prepared to remove her from the scene to "another pressing engagement" should she make for the PA system.

At Orange Alert, there is a high risk of political embarrassment. Presence of old Pennsylvania foes, such as Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporters, and super-sensitive face-recognition software trained on Mrs. Kerry indicate she is about to form the words "shove it." Agents are authorized to use tranquilizer darts discreetly, if possible. Failing that, taped records of any expletives should be seized and destroyed.

At Red Alert, risk of injurious action is severe. Mrs. Kerry is speaking at length with reporters or has a microphone, and presence of press and cameras renders overt use of force impossible. If she has begun speaking about the president or first lady, threat should be considered imminent. Agents are advised to create a diversion by pretending to be disruptive Bush supporters, using strategic explosions, or if all else fails, dropping stage lights. This should be considered a last resort, and agents are reminded that they are only required to render speech impossible or otherwise incapacitate Mrs. Kerry.

From the point of view of the campaign, McCurry should have put these into effect earlier. But I am glad he did not.

Update: Polite society anticipates Teresa's pizazz

Unintended Consequences

2004-10-21T10:12:00.000-04:00

Strange. This animation from People for the American Way only strengthens my resolve to vote for President Bush. Just look at Justice Rehnquist go!

One ought not to laugh when an old man takes a tumble

2004-10-21T08:52:00.000-04:00

...unless that old man is a dictator. Perhaps Cuba is just a misstep away from freedom.

Administrative Matters

2004-10-20T15:25:00.000-04:00

I am still beneath a pile of e-mails, bloggable items, requests, and threats that accumulated while I was away. And I have to update my links. All coming soon.

2004-10-20T14:41:00.000-04:00

Mike Vargas: "This could be very bad for us."
Susan Vargas: "For us?"
Mike: "For Mexico, I mean."
--Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, "Touch of Evil"

Pre-emptive lights

2004-10-20T14:31:00.000-04:00

Driving back from Greenwich, Connecticut last night, I noticed one house in that town already bedizened with colored Christmas lights (or should that be Christmas lights of color?). These were definitely Christmas decorations, unless candy canes are now associated with Ramadan. I've never seen Christmas decorations so early in the year.

(I should qualify that statement. I have never seen residential displays so early. Commercial ones, on the other hand, are usually quite shameless. Here in Manhattan, Macy's has had its Herald Square aluminum-and-bulbs Christmas tree ready to go for weeks already. In fairness, the store has not yet switched its green awnings for red ones, which, coupled with the unveiling of the ("Miracle on") 34th street windows, usually signifies that Christmas™ at Macy's has begun in earnest.)

Alessandra's mash note to Jon

2004-10-20T11:35:00.000-04:00

Alessandra Stanley, the NY Times columnist who amazingly manages to watch television while her head is planted firmly in the ground, cheers Comedy Central's "Daily Show" host, Jon Stewart:

[T]he Comedy Central star mocks the entire political process, boring in tightly on the lockstep thinking and complacency of the parties and the media as well as the candidates. More than other television analysts and commentators, he and his writers put a spotlight on the inanities and bland hypocrisies that go mostly unnoticed in the average news cycle.

Mr. Stewart is very funny, but it is the vein of "a plague on both your houses" indignation that has made his show a cult favorite: many younger voters are turning to the "The Daily Show" for their news analysis, and are better served there than on much of what purports to be real news on cable.

And of course it was fun just to see television pundits who think they are part of the same media version of the Algonquin Round Table as Mr. Stewart lose their cool when he tore off the tablecloth and shattered the plates. "Wait,'' Mr. Carlson said querulously. "I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny." Mr. Stewart was funny. And it was at their expense.

If Stewart really mocked "the entire political process" in a "plague on both your houses" vein, I think Ms. Stanley would be too busy shielding herself from debris from the overturned Round Table to gush over Mr. Stewart. But since Stewart refrains from slaughtering the Old Gray Sacred Cow, Stanley is free to crown him with laurels.

Lebanon proscribes potboiler

2004-10-20T08:50:00.000-04:00

From the Washington Post:

BEIRUT -- Few places seem to indicate how far this country has come from civil war better than the sunny hipness of the Virgin Megastore that fills a blond-stone building in the heart of the new Beirut. Lebanon's largest mosque is being built nearby amid a cluster of lovely churches, a sign that the religious tolerance shattered by years of fighting between Christian and Muslim militias in these same streets is on the rise.

But there is a hole in the megastore's inventory that suggests the war's legacy has not entirely faded. The store's 60,000 books and magazines include Playboy, "The Photographic Kama Sutra" and an array of French paperbacks whose titles alone would make much of Middle America blush. But "The Da Vinci Code," the most popular work of American fiction during the past 18 months, is not available.

The international blockbuster was pulled from shelves last month by Lebanon's domestic security agency at the request of the Catholic Church. Church leaders claimed the murder mystery's use of controversial theories regarding the life of Jesus defamed Christianity and warned that it could ignite Lebanon's old sectarian tensions in the process.

My name is spelled 'Luxury-Yacht' but it's pronounced 'Throat-Warbler Mangrove.'

2004-10-19T07:18:00.000-04:00

The Boston Globe on Anthony Powell:

It's always difficult to discuss the late British novelist Anthony Powell because hardly anyone knows how to pronounce his name. It was decades after I had read one of the early novels in his 12-volume series, "A Dance to the Music of Time," that I learned his surname rhymes with "hole." At least I was in good company. Powell's own countrymen mangled his name at his funeral, and the US ambassador to London, Raymond Seitz, botched it during a 1984 American Embassy ceremony honoring Powell. According to biographer Michael Barber, Powell rose to answer the ambassador that he would "cease to insist on people rhyming Powell with 'Pole' when the 'Lowells of Massachusetts' -- which he pronounced to rhyme with 'bowels' -- 'did the same.'"

(Here's a proper review, by the way. Don't bother with Alex Beam, whose newsprint is fit to be ground into pulp for use as insulation in low-cost housing.)

Operation Abberton

2004-10-18T15:58:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Binky the CaNNet Web-Elf for this tip:

Scotland Yard is making a fresh attempt to solve the Lord Lucan murder case, 30 years after the peer vanished having apparently killed his children's nanny in the belief that she was his wife.

Detectives have prepared a new computer-generated image of how Lord Lucan would look today if he were still alive. They are also applying DNA techniques to the case that were not available at the time of the murder.

Lord Lucan, who would be nearing his 70th birthday if he were still alive, disappeared on the night of November 7, 1974 after Sandra Rivett, his children's nanny, was bludgeoned to death at the family's London home.

The review of the case - codenamed Operation Abberton - is being led by Det Supt Lewis Benjamin, of Scotland Yard's specialist crime directorate. The case is widely regarded as the force's most infamous unsolved murder.

Perhaps I should skip my Icelandic plans and spend a few years tracking Lord Lucan instead. Clearly he'd be a regular at the clubs of the local expatriate communities in Africa, so I should begin by checking those one by one. And I'll blend in by wearing a pith helmet and sopping up pink gins.

The Times inserts its snout into the sanctuary

2004-10-18T15:44:00.000-04:00

NY Times knocks Bl. Karl I, "nostalgic monarchists"

But with all due respect for his humility and piety, does Charles I of Austria, the last Hapsburg emperor, really belong in [the company of Pope John Paul II's other blesseds and saints]? ...

Charles has been beatified (the last step before full sainthood) as a "man of peace" and as a noble ruler who tried to steer Austria on a liberal course. But many historians regard him as a weak, dissembling loser who presided over a messy collapse of his empire. Canonizing a relatively recent monarch, especially a controversial one, seems to range beyond the realm of identifying a spiritual role model and into the murky domain of nostalgic monarchists.

--Staff Editorial, 15 October 2004.

Njorl's Saga

2004-10-17T15:17:00.000-04:00

What's cold, pale, hostile to the EU, and prone to chasing whales? Yes, me. But also Iceland, the wealthiest place in Europe. There are many interesting things here. To make a long story short, I'm going to Iceland.

Via Midwest Conservative Journal, whose editor provides a few more reasons to like Iceland. (I won't comment on Lutheranism.)

The Vanishing

2004-10-11T18:04:00.000-04:00

It seems that Blogger devoured the post announcing my absence from this space. (I had meant, among other things, to recommend that my readers instead turn perhaps to this fine piece by John O'Sullivan in The New Criterion.)

Said absence will continue for a short while; after returning from my (too brief) vacation, I took ill, and remain so. The worst, I am told, is over, but my upright moments are still limited. More news as events warrant.

What would Evelyn do?

2004-09-30T10:31:00.000-04:00

A helpful question in many situations. Mr. Beck accuses Senator Kerry and other opponents of the Iraq War of sloth as defined by Waugh: "sadness in the face of spiritual good."

This is essentially what St. Thomas Aquinas says. Sloth does prevent one from recognizing or doing the good. However, as a friend of mine once observed, it also means one is too lazy to commit the other deadly sins.

Where in the world is the seventh Earl of Lucan?

2004-09-28T11:56:00.000-04:00

The 'last person to see Lord Lucan alive' dies (Evening Standard, 28 September)

The last person officially to see Lord Lucan alive has died, taking her secrets to the grave.

Susan Maxwell-Scott spent several hours with fugitive Lucan after the murder of his family's nanny 30 years ago.

He had driven to Mrs Maxwell-Scott's Sussex home as his estranged wife, drenched in blood, fled their Belgravia home to raise the alarm.

While at his friend's house Lucan composed himself enough to write two letters before fleeing. Some days later his borrowed car was found at Newhaven, but there was no sign of the earl.

For more information on the case of Lord Lucan, see this (rather odd) site. Court TV also has some pictures and information.

Remember Duncan MacLaughlin's claim that Lord Lucan was living in Goa under the name "Jungly* Barry"? (Why not?)

2004-09-28T10:53:00.000-04:00

"Charles," said Cordelia, "Modern Art is all bosh, isn't it?"
"Great bosh."
--Obvious

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - The hottest new abstract artist in town has reason to celebrate.

This summer, she went from selling her work in a coffee shop to having her own gallery show.

After a local newspaper's feature on her, about 2,000 people came for opening night - everyone from serious collectors to the artist's preschool teacher. She earned more money than she could comprehend. The gallery owner said it was his most successful show ever and scheduled a second one for October.

So celebrate, the artist did. During a recent visit, she climbed on a big bouncing ball shaped like a frog, grabbed the handles and bounced around the house with laughter pealing and pigtails flying.

The artist is Marla Olmstead. She is 4.

--New York Times, 28 September 2004.

In this case we can be certain of that which we suspect of other artists: Miss Olmstead creates abstract art because she hasn't the technical ability to do otherwise. I can't help thinking that young children at a certain point should not be encouraged to produce art like this. It is indulgent, and no doubt stunts artistic and intellectual growth. To teach children to speak proper English, one must at some point cease addressing them in baby-talk. (I would never speak in baby-talk, mind you; in fact, I steer clear of the matter by avoiding talking to children altogether.) Perhaps Miss Olmstead's parents will one day see that she learns to create grown-up art; but earning $40,000 for her juvenilia is probably no inducement to change her style.

I would say that our friends at Armavirumque will have a field day with this tidbit, but they have by now seen it all.

Dvořák: One Wild and Crazy Guy

2004-09-27T13:48:00.000-04:00

From the Sun-Sentinel (25 September 2004):

Throughout his life Dvorak was a pious and reserved man, a committed Roman Catholic with quirky hobbies of pigeon breeding and train spotting.

Train spotting? Who knew?

For those interested, Microtoss offers a truly thrilling train spotting simulator.

Turks at the Gates (again)

2004-09-22T10:22:00.000-04:00

Sipping red wine on a hillside terrace high above Vienna, Helmut pointed to the Polish church next door, convinced that the epic drama played out here in 1683 still spoke to central Europeans down the centuries.

"I know one Turkish bloke," said the Viennese social worker. "He's got two wives. Neither of them can speak a word of German. He beats them up. He's got two sons as well. They're terrified of him. They're just different from us. We're Christians. They're Muslims. And these Muslims are getting more and more extreme. It's time to make a choice. I'm against it."

What Helmut is against, like two out of three Austrians, is Turkey joining the European Union. Gerhard, the landlord serving him his wine, joined in eagerly. "This is Europe and we're in danger of losing our identity with all these people from Turkey and Africa. We Christians are losing our faith while the Muslims are getting more fundamentalist."

Neither man wanted to give his full name. Both were keen to dwell on history. The place they were sitting, a hillside north-east of Vienna, was where 321 years ago last week the Polish king, John III, after a plea from the Vatican, marshalled a huge Roman Catholic army and went galloping down the mountain to save Christendom, Europe and Austria, routing the Turks, raising the 61-day Ottoman siege of Vienna, and halting the Turkish advance into the European heartland.

The advance of the Turk was much more recent than the Crusades, though we are not supposed to mention it. Every child should know the story of Jan Sobieski's victory, which was "so great and so complete that past Ages can scarce parallel the fame; and perhaps future Ages will never see any thing like it" (from The Secret History of the Reign of John Sobieski, The III of that Name, King of Poland, containing a particular account of the siege of Vienna).

And before I forget about the Guardian piece:

Slovenia, the poster boy of post-Yugoslav success, is integrated into the EU and Nato as a stable and prosperous democracy. But the uglier, intolerant aspect is that Ljubljana is the sole EU capital city without a mosque. For decades, Slovene Catholics have thwarted attempts by the country's 50,000-strong Muslim community to build a mosque, although the constitutional court earlier this year finally threw out demands for a referendum that would have banned building one. [My emphasis.]

Number of churches in Saudi Arabia: 0.
Last permit issued to build a non-Muslim church in Sudan: 1975.
Subject Christian schools are not permitted to teach in Brunei: Christianity.

See the State Department's 2004 International Religious Freedom Report for much, much more.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument for Turkey's admission to the EU. I'm with Cardinal Ratzinger.

2004-09-20T18:48:00.000-04:00

My extended weekend in the country was filled with all manner of country sport:

Mr. Hiss (center foreground) and guest (obscured by umbrella)

The world according to Frank Rich

2004-09-20T14:46:00.000-04:00

Frank Rich maintains the party line:

Though the best-selling "Unfit for Command" was the work of a longtime Kerry antagonist and a writer best known for his anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic comments on a right-wing Web forum, its facts were challenged on TV at a far slower pace than the books of Seymour Hersh and Kitty Kelley, whose reporting was targeted in advance by administration talking points handed out before the books could even be read.

You see, Frank, it's sentences like this that make people want to kick you (in case you were wondering). Jerome Corsi is "best known for his anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic comments on a right-wing Web forum"? Funny. I would have guessed he was better known for co-authoring Unfit for Command. Nobody cared about his comments on Free Republic until after he became well-known; and even then, practically nobody cared about them.

Pro-hunting protesters storm Commons

2004-09-15T13:50:00.000-04:00

From the Telegraph:

Five pro-hunting protesters have broken into the House of Commons, forcing a brief suspension of an MPs' debate on a Bill to ban hunting with dogs.

Not very sporting, perhaps. But the Government hasn't been, either:

The Bill will be rushed through the Commons today and the Government has made clear that if MPs vote for the ban, it will invoke the Parliament Act to quash expected resistance in the Lords.

Anti-hunting MPs are planning to table an amendment to bring forward the implementation of the ban and deny hunts another season's sport.

I am certain that Britain has more important things to do than destroy an enjoyable and traditional pasttime. (I have lamented this on other occasions.)

2004-09-15T08:46:00.000-04:00

The Old Oligarch (keeper of l'heure verte) has an interesting drink recipe with no name. It is a mix of European liquors, which might induce one to call it the "European Union." However, since the expert O.O. mixed it, it would surely not be as nauseous as its namesake.

Perhaps it should be called the "Henrietta Maria." The O.O.'s drink contains French, Italian, and Scottish elements. Henrietta Maria was the daughter of King Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici; and though not Scottish, she did marry King Charles I.

2004-09-14T09:03:00.000-04:00

Continuing the irrigated theme of the past few days, I should note that today marks the 190th anniversary of Francis Scott Key's composition of our national drinking song, sometimes called our national anthem. That is worth a toast.

Speaking of Drambuie

2004-09-14T08:44:00.000-04:00

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

Some of the most beautiful engraved drinking glasses of the 18th century are on view in a new exhibition at Winterthur, "Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Royal House of Stuart, 1688-1788," which features a hundred objects from the collection formed by the makers of Drambuie, a potent liqueur with links to Scottish history.

Collection curator Robin Nicholson, who was on hand for the opening, wrote the accompanying catalog, which helps to explain the complex political issues that gave rise to the artwork. The Jacobite cause began when James II, the Catholic Stuart monarch, was forced into exile in 1688 and replaced with the nearest Protestant relatives, William and Mary.

Amid this polarizing mix of religion and politics, the Stuart supporters were on the outside and never got over it. Through the lives of James II's son and grandson - who was known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or "The Young Pretender" - Jacobite loyalists met to toast the "real" monarch with the words "God save the King I pray," which begins the verse on the Spottiswoode "Amen" glass, circa 1745, in the exhibition.

One can view the "Amen" glass and other items here. I would very much like to know how the verse on the glass continues; is it the original Jacobite "God Save the King"?

Calling all tipplers

2004-09-13T08:52:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Zorak's comment on this post, I am determined to invent a drink called the "Tweed Avalanche." Any suggestions would be most welcome. I will test the most reasonable or intriguing recipes and announce the results of my findings at a later date.

2004-09-13T08:40:00.000-04:00

"One clergyman asserts that most bishops would 'rather have a child molester in their diocese than a weeping statue of the Virgin Mary.' It's less work."
--"Sorting the Holy from the Crazy," Washington Times, 11 September 2004.

A very unfortunate tidbit from Randall Sullivan's The Miracle Detective: An Investigation of Holy Visions.

2004-09-13T08:37:00.000-04:00

Catholics, Orthodox come together over a dead Orthodox body (naturally)

Several Orthodox and Catholic leaders from Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Russia presented the mummy of Grand Duchess Aleksandra Pavlovna of Russia to the public Saturday, September 11, in her original tomb in the village of Urom, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northwest of Budapest.

The duchess, who died in childbirth at the age of 18 in 1801, was the eldest daughter of Tsar Paul I, and the first wife of Palatine Joseph (1776-1847), an Austrian grand duke and Hungarian royal prince, who experts say promoted the modernization and cultural advantage of Hungary in the first half of the 19th century.

In keeping with her wishes, the tsar's daughter was buried in a sepulchral chapel built on the imperial Habsburg family's Urom estate. The chapel survived both world wars, but was ravaged in 1981. The mummified body of the grand duchess was reportedly damaged and her arms were broken off.

Her remains spent the past 23 years in a royal sepulcher of Budapest's Buda Castle, after thieves plundered the chapel and Soviet backed Atheistic Communist authorities threatened to destroy the historic building, officials said at the ceremony in Urom.

Vile Bodies perfumed

2004-09-10T08:28:00.000-04:00

Mr. Bottum confirms the prejudices that have kept me from seeing Stephen Fry's "Bright Young Things":

And so Stephen Fry excised some and sanitized other plot elements from "Bright Young Things" to make a surprisingly sweet film.

How horrifying.

"I couldn't make two films, one for we who read Waugh and one for the others," [Stephen Fry] offered as another explanation for his toning down of "Vile Bodies" into the movie "Bright Young Things."

A damning rationalization. When Fry does make a film for those who read Waugh, perhaps I'll see it.

2004-09-09T08:37:00.000-04:00

Otto will return. He has only just escaped from a calamitous tweed avalanche during his post-Labor-Day wardrobe rearrangement.

The Little Sisters of Our Lady of Legal Abortion

2004-09-07T08:52:00.000-04:00

Donations by nuns to Emily's List questioned
From the Detroit Free Press:

The Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters, the blue-robed nuns who have educated legions of Catholic children in southeastern Michigan, donated $200 to Emily's List, which raises money for Democratic female candidates who support the right to have abortions.

Despite the church's teachings against abortion, the IHMs made the donation in August 2003 to promote electing more women into office, said Sister Mary Katherine Hamilton, IHM vice president.

"We weren't making a political statement in terms" of abortion, she said.

2004-09-03T10:41:00.000-04:00

I am off to an undisclosed location for an unspecified number of Pimm's & Gingers while the season lasts.

In the meantime, why not discover everything you wanted to know about the pickelhaube but were afraid to ask? Via an industrious reader.

Catholic to the max

2004-09-02T11:36:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't already seen it, I present Xtreme Papa.

Also see the "Pope on a Mission" collection. And "Say it with flowers" (clever, I'll admit). Oh, and "Who's your Mama?"

Not exactly my cup of Darjeeling.

On the Town

2004-09-02T08:49:00.000-04:00

"Twenty-three and a quarter minutes past," Uncle Matthew was saying furiously, "in precisely six and three-quarter minutes the damned fella will be late."
--Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate

I am certainly late in posting this, but better late than red. [Pause for groans.]

What a splendid contrast it was to travel on Tuesday from the vicinity of Madison Square Garden to 2nd Avenue and 85th Street. Frequent commenter Steve M., the lovely Miss G., and I encountered at 36th and 6th a pungent pack of protesters who congregated in the street to block a bus carrying delegates to the nearby Convention. The police arrested a few and quarantined the rest behind some barricades, allowing the delegates to flee to a new bus commandeered by the police from the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Miss G. saw it all from her perch on the base of a lamppost. The agitators--birkenstocked college students and a few aging hippies, many with state-of-the-art digital cameras casting an eerie glow about them--chanted a few slogans: "This is what democracy looks like"; "This is our street"; "No Bush"; and "RNC go home!" Steve M. loudly answered the last, "We are home!" A few bits of the rabble turned to look at us, but seemed to fear acting as individuals to avenge Mr. M's affront.

We soon wandered off to find a cab to carry us far from the anarchists--to Fitz, where the subversives are much better groomed. Roger Kimball was there (in trademark bowtie), joined by the fine Fitz regulars and guests from out of town. Several of us devoted some time to studying the work of Gaspare Campari and other Western luminaries. Our assemblage, cheering during part of Governor Schwarzenegger's speech, no doubt bewildered passersby.

I promised one guest that I would recount our comments on one remark the Governor made (in keeping with the "what-I-oughtn't-to-blog" spirit of this space):

Der Gouverneur von Kalifornien: "To think that a once scrawny boy from Austria could grow up to become Governor of California and stand in Madison Square Garden to speak on behalf of the President of the United States that is an immigrant's dream."

Friend A.M.: "I thought it was to earn lots of money."

Otto: "I thought it was to blow up buildings."

My cups may have drained me of subtlety, but not of good cheer; I said this with a broad grin.

At some point, someone crowned Mr. Panero with a wreath of flowers, lending him a Bacchic air. It was appropriate.

That Caravaggio reminds me: I have encountered a particular strain of hangover best described as the "Judith Beheading Holofernes" variety. I do not recommend it. I do, as always, recommend spending a Tuesday evening at Fitzpatrick's.

Wanted: A few good pirates

2004-08-31T10:35:00.000-04:00

Your target: the Borndiep.

The Portuguese navy seems to have the "abortion ship" under control for now.

LISBON (Reuters) - Portugal banned a Dutch boat with an abortion clinic on board from entering its territorial waters Saturday, but activists said the bar was illegal and they still hoped to find a way to carry out abortions.

The floating clinic offers an abortion pill in international waters to women in countries where it is illegal or more restricted than the Netherlands.

It planned to allow women to board in a Portuguese port before sailing back out to international waters, where it would operate under Dutch law, to carry out the abortions.

Abortion is only legal in mainly Roman Catholic Portugal when the mother's life is in danger and a few other specific cases.

"It's a question of legality and morality," Secretary of State for Sea Affairs Nuno Fernandes Thomaz told Portuguese news agency Lusa.

"Using the abortion pill is prohibited in Portugal. If they plan to administer it, that means they will bring it (on board)," Thomaz said. "For this reason (the boat) should stay in international waters."

Though I am not usually in favor of piracy, cases like this just beg for an exception.

2004-08-30T12:26:00.000-04:00

"It was an era when only a man of exceptional ability and determination could keep from getting signed up by a studio in some capacity or other. I happened to be engaged as a writer."
--P.G. Wodehouse on Hollywood in 1930.

2004-08-27T08:49:00.000-04:00

Che, Che, Ho, Ho, Capitalism's got to go!
(My apologies for the slogan.) The other night I met "Che" of Communists for Kerry. (He is clearly discernible in this picture.) His group is clever and unafraid, and just what New York needs in this time of protests. It is not unlike Yale's Committee For Freedom, which has claimed (correctly, I believe) to be the first ever right-wing guerilla theater group, among other things. (By the way, CFF members, please do something about your website.)

One of the slogans Communists for Kerry will bellow through bullhorns during protests this week caught my eye:

Give each homeless person a rich Republican widow!

Was John Kerry homeless when he got his?

2004-08-27T08:01:00.000-04:00

Otto von Habsburg, on the possibility that his family will reclaim the Crown of St. Stephen:

And, bearing in mind the mumblings of some pro-monarchists, could he ever see the possibility of a constitutional monarchy in Hungary? It is a question he must have heard countless times, but he gives no indication of such, nor does he shy away from its potential for controversy. "Why not? I am often asked if I am a republican or a monarchist. I am neither, I am a legitimist: I am for legitimate government. You could never have a monarchy in Switzerland, and it would be asinine to imagine Spain as a republic. "

From a Budapest Sun article titled "More Dynasty than Dallas." Note in the story's accompanying photo the portrait of Otto's father, Emperor Karl I, in the background.

Bihvhar!

2004-08-26T11:21:00.000-04:00

The story of Jason Read, chief of the Amwell Valley, New Jersey Volunteer Rescue Squad and U.S. Men's 8 Gold Medalist, is worth reading.

"When you see a woman pulled out in front of you without a head, that changes your life," Read said. "I now recognize mortality can become reality in a nanosecond. We are owed nothing in this life, and you can't presuppose there are an infinite number of tomorrows. I know it's critical for me to be the best brother, teammate, friend I can be."

On Sunday, Jason Read rowed for 3,000 victims at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He rowed for the firefighters and the emergency workers. He rowed for the spirit of volunteerism in America. He rowed like he never had in his life.

A fine piece on Read, including something I hadn't previously known:

[After September 11] He was consumed by sadness. Hundreds of images flashed through his mind. He lives with his parents because the Olympic training center is in Princeton, and his mom watched him withdraw. He was a mess.

Rowing and friends helped him, but he said it was his conversion to Catholicism that led him through the fog. Father Tom Muellelly, the Princeton and rowing team chaplain, helped him. Read was confirmed at Easter time in 2002. His little brother Gunther was baptized that day.

"It was one of the happiest days of my life," he said. "The church gave me the fourth leg of my life's stool. I am stronger now. But you cannot jettison those feelings from 2001."

Read on.

For an interesting contrast, read about the person who owes her medal to the Chinese Communist Party (via Arts & Letters Daily).

Suspect advice

2004-08-25T14:11:00.000-04:00

Page Six reports that "Former P. Diddy personal assistant Fonzworth Bentley" has some fashion tips for Senator Kerry:

The dandy dude also wishes our presidential candidates would mix it up a little bit, particularly with pocket squares. "It's ridiculous for John Kerry to not wear a pocket square. His wife is Ms. Heinz," he ranted to PAGE SIX's Lisa Marsh. "What if she spills some ketchup on herself? What's he going to do? If he has a pocket square, he's prepared."

Actually, it's ridiculous to split infinitives unnecessarily, Mr. Bentley.

Now, I'm all in favor of pocket squares. However, it is entirely for show, unlike a handkerchief. And if Ms. Heinz did spill her catsup, presumably a napkin would do the trick.

A friend once suggested that one should not wear pocket squares to job interviews. (I am rarely seen without one spilling out of my breast pocket, and would not like to work in an atmosphere hostile to them.) Perhaps this is the reasoning behind the bare breast pockets: voters are frightened of nicely-arranged bits of satin and silk. Presidential candidates might be able to campaign with the staid white affair of Ronald Reagan, but I suspect anything more interesting might lose Peoria. Pity.

Stay tuned for more hard-hitting political analysis from Otto-da-Fe.

2004-08-24T11:00:00.000-04:00

Influenced by Waugh in exactly the wrong way

Deterred from applying to Oxford and Cambridge by his readings of Evelyn Waugh ("I knew it was all getting debagged in the quad by raving drunken aristocrats"), [David Lodge] won a place at the only other institution he had heard of: University College, London, where he gained a first and - after National Service - went on to do postgraduate work.

--Telegraph, 24 August 2004

2004-08-24T10:35:00.000-04:00

A newly edited commercial for New Jersey tourism retains the scenes of outdoor sports and rustic charm, but omits the final shot of Governor McGreevey standing by a lake with his family, urging the viewer to "See what's new in New Jersey." Instead, now a voiceover speaks the unfortunate phrase, "Come out and see what's new in New Jersey."

Too easy? Perhaps. But maybe this is a sign that the Human Rights Campaign is having a greater effect on New Jersey affairs than we previously thought.

A window into the mind of Alessandra Stanley

2004-08-24T09:40:00.000-04:00

She follows a note about the Scott Peterson murder trial with a parenthesis:

It is particularly confusing on Fox News, where so many of its blond female anchors look like Amber Frey.

Whom do you resemble, Ms. Stanley? Don't balk at the question; you opened the door.

2004-08-23T14:30:00.000-04:00

"Never lose any sleep over accusations...unless they can be proven, of course."
--Senator Morton (Leo G. Carroll), "Strangers on a Train" (1951)

2004-08-23T11:50:00.000-04:00

This piece on Senator Kerry's 1972 "Lowell Watergate" is worthwhile, if only for the colorful image of Clement Costello, onetime editor of the Lowell Sun:

Costello, who indulged a penchant for silk shirts, French Gauloises cigarettes and berets and capes, was pro-war and pro-Nixon - and, to him, Kerry's anti-war efforts verged on the unpatriotic.

Happily, most present-day Kerry opponents lack such Gallic touches.

2004-08-23T11:32:00.000-04:00

The Seattle Archdiocese has permanently barred three priests from ministry, stopping short of defrocking them. Jim Biteman, president of the Seattle chapter of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, "expressed mixed feelings about the censure":

"Defrocking would send a very solid message that maybe the church is finally going to do something serious with these abusive priests," he said. "But if they defrock them, maybe they can't keep tabs on them."

Mr. Biteman is just the kind of decisive man we need on our lay review boards.

2004-08-23T11:04:00.000-04:00

Leaders of Catholic orders say Vatican can't bully them
"We are perishing numerically because we have not been public enough in our protest of patriarchy."
--The Rev. Michael Crosby, answering today's problems with the solutions of 1970. Father is such a traditionalist, he insists on age-old answers regardless of whether they ever worked.

2004-08-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

Ted Rall is a boor.

And not just because he thinks "coronate" is a verb. Here he is on the liberal welcome Republicans can expect during the Republican National Convention:

Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch's call to "make nice" with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers--most of them Democrats--for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq to enrich Dick Cheney and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city's squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush's policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

He applauds these ungracious hosts (who plan to act according to stereotype). What better way to improve one's country than by undermining public trust, civility, and the like?

Spare the rod and you'll spoil those children

2004-08-18T13:08:00.000-04:00

Newsday: New York opens arms to protesters

Mayor Michael Bloomberg thinks he's found a way to pin down rowdy protesters at the Republican National Convention — by offering them a powder-blue button that labels them "Peaceful Political Activists."

In a bid to tame potentially disruptive protests, Bloomberg and tourism officials yesterday offered a unique package of discounts on hotels, restaurants, plays — even cut-rate entry to the Museum of Sex — to the best-behaved demonstrators.

These are protesters; as such, they are not easily satisfied. I would be stocking up on sticks, not carrots, Mr. Mayor.

Tuesdays

2004-08-18T10:22:00.000-04:00

I had to leave the New Criterion's "Tuesdays" gathering last night at an abominably early hour in order to be presentable for a breakfast meeting this morning. On the upside, I composed the ditty below between eggs and tirades. It should put to rest the perception that I am out of touch with recent musical developments. Inspired by Mr. Beck, I have set it to a recent popular tune—-one that is, as the youth say, quite spiffing.

Have you seen the Right-wing crew
Upon Second Avenue?
On that famous boulevard
Jeering at the avant-garde?
Loose ties and open collars,
Juke box and woozled hollers;
Draining all the gin
To make a wonderful din!

Now, if you’re blue
And you don’t know where to go to,
Why don’t you go with squiffy wits
Puttin’ on the Fitz.

Right-thinking New Yorkers should go; don't let my song deter you.

Belloc where one least expects him

2004-08-17T13:12:00.000-04:00

The Post has printed transcripts of conversations between accused murderer Scott Peterson and his mistress, Amber Frey:

"Can you see yourself as the Juliet in . . . this poem?" Peterson asks before romantically reciting a poem by Hilaire Belloc:

"How did the party go in Portland Square? I cannot tell you: Juliet was not there. And how did Lady Gaster's party go? Juliet was next to me and I do not know."

A puzzled Frey asks Peterson to explain the lines for her.

Via the Dawn Patrol.

Brother Nathan and Emperor Charles

2004-08-16T10:15:00.000-04:00

Some of my readers are probably already familiar with Brother Nathan Cochran, OSB, and his important work. This (disjointed) piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette provides a brief glimpse of the man.

Brother Nathan Cochran is a monk on a mission, a Benedictine from Latrobe who's now at the Vatican, swept up in the excitement of seeing a personal hero made over into a Catholic saint.

On Oct. 3 he'll take part in a three-day liturgical party to mark the beatification -- the first official step toward sainthood -- of Kaiser Karl von Habsburg of Austria-Hungary. Like a hardworking diehard delegate to a political party convention, Brother Nathan, an art history professor at St. Vincent College, can't wait to see his beloved candidate installed.

He's not the only one. Upon hearing the news, I nearly threw my pickelhaube into the air in celebration, but thought better of it.

Ignore the odd political slant in the article, but do note that Brother Nathan rightly uses the soon-to-be-beatified Emperor Karl as a foil for Senator Kerry:

"[Democratic presidential nominee] John Kerry is a Roman Catholic, but he's promised that won't have an effect on his decision-making," Brother Nathan pointed out. "That's exactly backward from what the church teaches, and how Karl ruled. His Catholicism colored all his decisions. He wasn't ashamed of that."

If Kaiser Karl was ruling today, he'd be branded a bleeding-heart liberal, and maybe a religious nut. He pioneered government-sponsored social services. During the war he banned aerial bombing and chemical warfare, and funded programs aiding soldiers' widows and orphans. He openly expressed his devotion to his wife, children and church, and didn't mind if fellow power-brokers saw the rosary poking from his pocket. He was proof that European emperors pray, too -- an example to Western Europe, where each village has its landmark church, but less than 9 percent of the population attends church regularly.

"Bleeding-heart liberal"? I doubt that label would stick these days. "Religious nut" might.

Brother Nathan has lived in a in a succession of monasteries near his Vatican office since June. He's scurrying these days, distributing literature and Web links in 11 languages, seeing 10,000 commemorative medals struck, and planning the details of the upcoming three-day beatification festival.

Those interested in attending the festivities in Rome this October should view the schedule of events and ticket reservation information here.

AEIOU

Attack of the clichés

2004-08-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

Tom Payne has compiled a "vast, sprawling" list of clichés that seem to be, sadly, indispensable to many reviewers:

By the time I left the books desk, my list had become vast and sprawling. It included the phrase "vast and sprawling" (which is often followed by the words "epic" or "tome"). It contained words I was fed up with seeing next to one another, and it started to create problems. Journalists who saw the list found it stopped them feeling able to put any words together at all: how could they be sure they weren't writing something someone else had written? So the time has come to celebrate this ready-made vernacular in all its richness, and to show the world what prefabricated phrases exist to assist our discussion of any book that comes our way.

So much for anxiety of influence.

A few of Payne's shibboleths:

at its core, **** is a deeply moral work – a handy way for a critic to say that those who don't like the shocking book under review simply don't understand it

breakneck speed – no successful thriller will go any slower

bursting to get out – of novellas in vast, sprawling epics

by this stage, I was ready to hurl the book across the room

cocktail – the result of stirring one author in with another: "a cocktail of Hergé and the Marquis de Sade"

coruscating – to be confused with "excoriating"

cracking pace – slower than breakneck speed; too slow

darkly comic (cf wickedly funny)

deadly earnest

deceptively simple – the simplicity of the phrase itself belies how complicated it is. Is the book/poem/style simple or isn't it? Or does it remind us that to mere readers, something might look simple, and that they need clever critics to undeceive them?

divided like the state of India itself – useful way of describing confused characters in post-colonial novels

dogged investigation

edgy

editor should be shot – wouldn't it be better to shoot those who write "the editor should be shot"? The phrase normally appears in connection with a list of minor quibbles. But to punish editors with this ultimate sanction would lead to a smaller number of editors, not only through their execution but also by discouraging people from becoming editors in the future. The grim consequence of this would be a major increase in minor quibbles

Read on.