87.13 old poet of the city Constantine Cavity.”] A play on the name of the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933).
89.7 science has its reasons that reasons knows not of,”] Cf. “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point” (The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing), from the Pensées, collection of philosophical and theological observations by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) first published posthumously in 1669–70.
89.16–17 “In the Blue . . . Williams.”] “In the Blue of Evening” (1943), hit song by Al D’Artega (1907–1998) and Tom Adair (1913–1988) for Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra, with Frank Sinatra singing vocals; “Long Ago (and Far Away),” song with music by Jerome Kern (1885–1945) and lyrics by Ira Gershwin (1896–1983), introduced by Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly in the film Cover Girl (1944); “Who?”, song from the Broadway musical Sunny (1925) with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) and Otto Harbach (1873–1963); fictional poem dedicated to the American poet and physician William Carlos Williams.
90.33 liaisons dangéreuses] French: dangerous liaisons, from the title of the novel (1782) by French writer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803).
91.16 Wozzeck.] Opera (1925) by the Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885–1935).
91.29–31 “Red Boy Blues,” . . . “Edward”] “Red Boy Blues” (1957) and “Gigantic Blues” (1956), compositions by jazz saxophonist Lester Young (1909–1959); “That’s All” (1952), song written by Bob Haymes (1923–1989) and Alan Brandt (1923–2003); “Muggles” (1928), composition by jazz trumpeter, composer, and singer Louis Armstrong (1901–1971); “Edward,” traditional ballad about a murder.
91.38–39 “I Didn’t Know . . . “Misty.”] “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” song from stage musical Too Many Girls (1939) with music by Richard Rodgers (1902–1979), lyrics by Lorenz Hart (1895–1943); “Misty” (1954), composition by jazz pianist and composition Erroll Garner (1921–1977).
94.4 objective correlative] Aesthetic concept formulated by T. S. Eliot in his essay “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919): “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.”
94.20 “Carl Maria von Weber,”] German composer (1786–1826).
95.17 John Hawkes] American fiction writer and playwright (1925–1998) whose works include The Lime Twig (1961), Second Skin (1961), and Adventures in the Alaskan Skin Trade (1985); a friend of Barthelme’s and like him often labeled as a postmodernist.
96.30–32 Villon . . . ‘If I Were King’] The life of the French poet François Villon (ca. 1431–1463), who was imprisoned on charges of theft in 1462, was dramatized in If I Were King (1901), play by the Irish writer and politician Justin Huntly McCarthy (1859–1936), adapted into a film in 1938.
99.23 the “Warsaw Concerto.”] Composition (1941) for piano and orchestra by the English composer Richard Addinsell (1904–1977) written for the film Dangerous Moonlight.
100.18 “Cornish Rhapsody”] Piano composition (1944) by the English composer Hubert Bath (1883–1945) featured in the film Love Story (1944). Like “Warsaw Concerto,” it was written in the style of Rachmaninoff.
100.22 “Flying Dutchman!”] A legendary ghost ship associated with the tale of a sea captain selling his soul to the devil, after which he was doomed to sail for eternity.
101.15 Où est mon livre?] French: Where is my book? The following French phrases on this page are Where is your book?, Where is his book?, All that happened in 1924, and Phone me one of these days.
101.32 Grit] Publication founded in 1882 aimed at a rural audience, often sold by youngsters and teenagers.
105.3 Mark Schorer] American critic, academic, and fiction writer (1908–1977), the author of Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (1961).
106.30 Aqueduct] Horse-racing facility in Queens, New York.
114.1 A Shower of Gold] In Greek mythology Zeus, disguised as a shower of gold, impregnated the Greek princess Danaë.
115.8–10 “You may not be interested in absurdity . . . you.”] Cf. the remark often attributed to the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”
116.39 Giacometti stickman] The Swiss-born sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) is best known for his elongated sculptures of human figures.
117.12 I-Thou relationship] Relationship between the individual and God articulated by the German Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber (1878–1965) in I and Thou (1923).
117.14–15 In the end one experiences only oneself, Nietzsche said] In Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), Third Part (1884), by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).
117.30–32 “Like Pascal said, “The natural misfortune . . . console us.”] From Pensées, section 2, no. 139.
118.6–7 biography of Nolde] Emile Nolde (1867–1956), German expressionist artist.
118.24–25 early seventeenth-century engraving by Franz van der Wyngaert . . . in which a cat piano appears] La Lecture du grimoire (Reading the Book of Spells) by Frans van den Wyngaerde (1614–1679), Flemish printmaker and publisher.
118.29–30 ‘The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian’] Incidental music by the French composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918) for a theater piece (1911) by the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938).
118.30 ‘Romeo and Juliet’ overture] Orchestral composition (third and final version, 1880) by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), known particularly for its Love Theme.
118.30–31 ‘Holiday for Strings’?] Instrumental hit single (1944) by David Rose and His Orchestra composed by its leader, David Rose (1910–1990).
119.3 pour-soi] French: for itself, a term in existentialist philosophy, in particular that of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), who opposed the being-in-itself (en soi) of other philosophers, which precedes all action, to the more creative existentialist conception of being-for-itself.
119.29 A.I.R.] Artist in residence.
119.39 engagé] French: committed, often said of intellectuals who involve themselves in public debates or activism.
121.18 BAD FAITH] Bad faith (la mauvaise foi) is a key concept in Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism as discussed in his L’Être et le néant (Being and Nothingness, 1943).
122.3–4 a man singing “Golden Earrings”] Title song from the movie Golden Earrings (1947) by Victor Young (1899–1956), Jay Livingston (1915–2001), and Ray Evans (1915–2007), a hit record in its first release as a single for singer Peggy Lee.
UNSPEAKABLE PRACTICES, UNNATURAL ACTS
124.1 Herman Gollub] Book editor, publishing executive, and author, a friend of Barthelme’s who was his apartment-mate for a while.
125.5 Mark Clark] U.S. Army general (1896–1984) who commanded forces in World War II and the Korean War.
125.21 Fauré’s ‘Dolly’] Suite of six piano compositions for four hands (1898) by the French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924).
126.11–12 bottles of Black & White] A blended Scotch whiskey.
126.33 Korzybski] Polish-born philosopher Alfred H. Korzybski (1879–1950), founder of the field of general semantics, outlined in Science and Society (1933).
127.11 Chester Nimitz] U.S. Navy admiral (1885–1966), commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet during World War II.
127.16 I.R.A.] Irish Republican Army.
127.24 George C. Marshall] Military officer and government official (1880–1959), U.S. Army chief of staff during World War II and U.S. secretary of state, 1947–49, who he
lped to create the European Recovery Program, known as the Marshall Plan.
128.18 Skinny Wainwright] Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright (1883−1953), commander of U.S. and Filipino forces during World War II, the highest-ranking American POW during the war after his capture by the Japanese in 1942.
128.21–22 former king of Spain, a Bonaparte . . . New Jersey] Joseph Bonaparte (1768–1844), who had been king of Spain, 1808–13, acquired the land for his Point Breeze estate in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1816 and lived in the United States until 1839.
128.25 Valéry] The French poet and critic Paul Valéry (1871–1945).
128.33 Gabrieli, Albinoni, Marcello] The Italian composers Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1554/1557–1612), Tommaso Albinoni (1671–1751), and Benedetto Marcello (1686–1739).
129.1 serviette] French: napkin.
129.22 Abraham Lincoln Brigade] Unit of American volunteers who fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
129.24–25 Frank Wedekind] German playwright (1864–1918), author of Frühlings Erwachen (Spring’s Awakening, 1891).
129.35 Gustave Aschenbach.] Gustave von Aschenbach, dying protagonist of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice (1912), who becomes obsessed with a beautiful Polish youth named Tadzio.
130.29 Emery Roth & Sons.] Architecture firm founded by the Hungarian-born architect Emery Roth (1871–1948), a prolific builder of apartment buildings, hotels, and other buildings in New York City from the 1920s through the 1980s.
130.33 Jean-Luc Godard] Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930), French-Swiss filmmaker at the forefront of the French New Wave whose films include Breathless (1959) and Alphaville (1965).
135.27 Alamo Chili House] Restaurant on West 44th Street with a statue of a giant iguana on the roof, which closed in the 1970s.
135.29–30 Gallery of Modern Art] Art museum on Columbus Circle in Manhattan exhibiting the collection of Huntington Hartford II (1911–2008), heir to the A&P retail grocery fortune.
138.15 EEC.”] European Economic Commission, the forerunner of the European Union.
138.35 “bonne chance!”] French: good luck.
140.12 Heinrich von Kleist] German writer (1777–1811) whose works include the novella Michael Kohlhaas (1810).
141.4–5 rock around the clock interviewing Fabian] A conflation of the single “Rock Around the Clock” (1952), best known in the recording by Bill Haley & His Comets, with the long-running syndicated television variety show American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark (1929−2012); the teen singer and actor Fabian (Fabian Forte, b. 1943) rose to fame with his hit “Turn Me Loose” (1959).
142.1 Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning] Cf. the title of the satirical French film Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning, 1932), directed by Jean Renoir (1894−1979).
143.35 Unknown Towns (Rimbaud)] See Une Saison en enfer (A Season in Hell, 1873), prose poem by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854−1891): “nous voyagerons, nous chasserons dans les déserts, nous dormirons sur les pavés des villes inconnues, sans soins, sans peines” (we will travel, we will hunt in the deserts, we will sleep on the pavement of unknown towns, without cares, without worries).
144.1 MÖBEL . . . MEUBLES] German and French words for furniture, respectively.
144.30–33 Karsh of Ottawa . . . Churchill thing . . . Hemingway thing] The Armenian-Canadian portrait photographer Yousef Karsh (1908–2002) photographed Winston Churchill during a 1941 visit to Canada in an image that soon graced the cover of Life magazine and was widely circulated around the world; among Karsh’s many other celebrity subjects was Ernest Hemingway.
147.9 Sidi-Madani] Village in Algeria.
149.24–25 Poulet . . . Marivaux] The Belgian literary critic Georges Poulet (1902–1991) addressed the work of the eighteenth-century French playwright Pierre Marivaux (1688–1763) in La distance intérieure (The Interior Distance, 1952).
151.12 os calcis] The heel bone.
151.22 Isambard Kingdom Brunel] Pioneering English civil engineer (1806–1859).
153.20 “Nothing mechanical is alien to me,”] Cf. the Latin dictum “Nihil humanum mihi alienum puto” (Nothing human is alien to me) from Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormenter) by the Roman playwright Publius Terentius Afer, known as Terence (c. 186–c. 159 B.C.E.).
161.3–4 Seville, to see if hell was a city much like] See Man and Superman (1905), play by the Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), act III: “As saith the poet, Hell is a city much like Seville,” adapting as well a remark by Percy Bysshe Shelley in “Peter Bell the Third” (1819) about London.
162.24–25 Steve Canyon recruiting posters] Steve Canyon, comic strip, 1947–88, created by Milton Caniff (1907–1988), adapted into a television show, 1958–59, its titular hero a pilot in the U.S. Air Force.
163.9 “Perdido.”] Jazz composition (1942) by the trombonist and composer Juan Tizol (1900–1984), with lyrics (1944) by Ervin Drake (1919–2015) and Hans Lengsfelder (1903–1979).
165.8 the Marat/Sade] Common abbreviated title of the play The Persecution of Jean-Paul Marat by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (1963) by the German playwright Peter Weiss (1916−1982).
165.30–31 Life magazine with a gold-painted girl on the cover] The actor Shirley Eaton (b. 1937), who was shown as a corpse covered in gold paint in the James Bond film Goldfinger, was featured on the cover of Life on November 6, 1964.
166.6 Round Tower.] Seventeenth-century architectural landmark in central Copenhagen constructed as an observatory.
166.27–28 Eddie Constantine] American comic actor (1917−1993) who starred in B-movies in Europe, including a recurring role as the agent Lemmy Caution.
166.33 Ross Macdonald] Canadian-born American crime novelist (pseud. Kenneth Millar, 1915−1983), creator of the detective Lew Archer and author of many books, including The Moving Target (1949), The Galton Case (1959), and Black Money (1966).
167.17–18 “Ich verstehe nicht,”] German: I don’t understand.
169.38–39 princesses. . . . archaeologist] Danish queen Margrethe II (b. 1940), who as crown princess made her first visit to an archaeological excavation in Egypt in 1962.
170.2 “We Shall Overcome.”] Protest folk song often sung at civil rights demonstrations.
170.8 Finn Viderø] Danish organist and composer (1906–1987).
172.14 wienerbrød] Danish pastry (lit. “Vienna bread”) known simply as a “Danish” outside Denmark.
173.3 The Interpretation of Dreams] English translation of Sigmund Freud’s Die Traumdeutung (1899).
173.27 blufaerdighedskraenkelse] Danish: indecent exposure.
173.29 Joan Baez] Folksinger and political activist (b. 1941).
173.35–36 We be of one blood, thee and I.] Version of the recurring line spoken by the boy Mowgli to animals in The Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).
175.5 Anthony Powell] English novelist (1905−2000), author of the twelve-volume novel cycle A Dance to the Music of Time (1951−75).
175.12 Madam Cherokee’s] Spiritualist in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. See Barthelme’s Here in the Village (1978): “I went last week to see Madam Cherokee, my Reader and Spiritual Advisor, who maintains premises on Orchard Street devoted, as it were, to pulling the teeth of the future.”
176.1 La vache!] French expression to express surprise (literally “The cow!”).
178.4–6 “Mrs. Miniver” . . . Flynn] The novel Mrs. Miniver (1940) was written by the English writer Jan Struther (1901–1953), not the English novelist, playwright, journalist, and critic J. B. Priestley (1894–1984). Its 1942 screen adaptation starred Greer Garson (1904–1996) and Walter Pidgeon (1897–1984) but n
ot Errol Flynn (1909–1959), known for his swashbuckling movie roles.
180.15 “The Mark of Zorro.”] Adventure film (1940) starring Tyrone Power (1914–1958) and Linda Darnell (1923–1965).
183.36 USAFI course] Correspondence course offered by the United States Armed Forces Institute.
186.16 Brahms’ “Guten abend, gut Nacht,”] The “Wiegenlied” (1868; often referred to as “Brahms’s Lullaby”), op. 49, no. 4, by Johannes Brahms (1833–1897).
189.14 Poujadist] Poujadism was an anti-establishment economic populist movement in France during the 1950s.
190.4–5 Babar books . . . elephants] Babar the Elephant is the anthropomorphic hero of a series of French children’s books beginning with Histoire de Babar (1931), written and illustrated by Jean de Brunhoff (1899–1937).
190.19 Tinguely] The Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925–1991).
192.12 Klinger’s] The German symbolist artist Max Klinger (1857–1920).
194.24 Brye . . . Marshall Blücher] On the morning of June 16, 1815, two days before the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington met with the Prussian field marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742–1819) at the latter’s headquarters at the windmill of Bussy on the heights of the Belgian village of Brye to discuss their cooperation against Napoleon’s forces.
195.9–12 essay by Paul Goodman . . . antidote”)] From “A New Deal for the Arts,” essay by the social critic, novelist, and poet Paul Goodman (1911–1972) first published in Commentary in January 1964.
195.14–15 Mr. and Mrs. Beck of the Living Theatre] Judith Malina (1926–2015) and Julian Beck (1925–1985), husband-and-wife founders of the experimental Living Theatre company.
196.22 Benning.] Fort Benning, U.S. Army post near Columbia, Georgia.
196.25 Leonard Wood] U.S. Army training facility in Missouri.
196.26–27 a little more grape, Capt. Gregg] Cf. “a little more grape, Capt. Bragg,” remark attributed to Zachary Taylor (1784–1850) during the Battle of Buena Vista, February 23, 1847, and used as a slogan for Taylor’s victorious 1848 presidential campaign.
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