mouths tumble into the open pit.
And sometimes it’s not good. Sometimes. I will urge some people who have never had Brunswick stew (nobody but a Russian has never had chili) to try it, and I’ll tell them it’s named for General Lionel Brunswick, who discovered that you can mix anything with okra, and I’ll assure them that boy, do they have a treat in store for them. And then it will arrive and it won’t be good, sometimes.
That’s why I’m glad Brunswick stew doesn’t have the mystique that chili has. Anybody who has ever glanced at an in-flight magazine knows what goes into authentic chili: antelope chunks, hand-chewed Guatemalan cumin, individually seeded and dried chili peppers (only the ones that point upward on the bush) from the Aiyaiyai region of Oaxaca, and no beans, because chili in a can has beans. But no one, even the Brunswick family, can say for sure what goes into Brunswick stew, or what doesn’t.
Which means that I can be authoritative about it. When people complain that this Brunswick stew I have touted them onto is not good, I can roll a bite of it around against my upper palate, gaze off into the middle distance with my eyes closed except for tiny contemplative slits, and observe, with no tinge of defensiveness, “Yeah, this is a little off. Prob’ly used a rabid squirrel.”
How to Read the New York Times
T HE FIRST THING I look for is whether I am in it. Many mornings — the majority of mornings — I am not. This fuels my belief that the Times has me black- or at least brown-listed. Every writer who is neither rich nor a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters has a right to this belief. William Styron is in the Times nearly every morning, being either reviewed or quoted. Sure! He probably goes skiing with those guys!
The second thing I look for in the Times is something juicy. This may seem quixotic. I realize that the Times gives the impression that it doesn’t want to admit that there actually is anything in the world that Weegee would have liked to photograph. But when there does occur a murder or an accidental squashing that the newspaper of record cannot in all good conscience overlook, the Times always comes up with good obscure details. Several years ago the Times ran a story about a helicopter crash that killed twenty-one people being transported to Disneyland. A witness was quoted as saying, “Two small gears and a dime hit me on the chest.”
I don’t mean to outrage traditionalists, but I recommend looking in the Times for signs of writing that is not wholly institutional. It’s there. It’s like little rustles of life in the forest primeval: it’s there if you look for it.
But don’t tell anybody.
Living with Wizardry
I WAS TALKING TO a grade-school teacher the other day. She said some of her students were wholly nonplussed by the concept of clockwise, and she had figured out why: all the timepieces they had been exposed to were digital.
What is Western culture going to do without the concept of clockwise? How are newspapers going to identify people in group photographs?
The one just to the left of the water pitcher there is Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: The one to her left — not to your, the reader’s, left, which is to say what has just been referred to as “the” left, but rather to her. (Mrs. Thatcher’s) left — is Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Okay, now, keep moving in that direction in an orbital manner, so to speak. Pretend you are revolving around the ice sculpture there, and …
Whatever else may be miniaturized in the years ahead, it won’t be photo captions.
But I haven’t got time to worry about the impact of electronic wizardry on newspapers. I am too busy worrying about the impact of it on me.
In my own home.
There is a word processor in my home.
“Word processor,” indeed! That thing doesn’t know what words are. A word, to that thing, is whatever comes between spaces. That thing would just as soon process tbldgk as
And sometimes it’s not good. Sometimes. I will urge some people who have never had Brunswick stew (nobody but a Russian has never had chili) to try it, and I’ll tell them it’s named for General Lionel Brunswick, who discovered that you can mix anything with okra, and I’ll assure them that boy, do they have a treat in store for them. And then it will arrive and it won’t be good, sometimes.
That’s why I’m glad Brunswick stew doesn’t have the mystique that chili has. Anybody who has ever glanced at an in-flight magazine knows what goes into authentic chili: antelope chunks, hand-chewed Guatemalan cumin, individually seeded and dried chili peppers (only the ones that point upward on the bush) from the Aiyaiyai region of Oaxaca, and no beans, because chili in a can has beans. But no one, even the Brunswick family, can say for sure what goes into Brunswick stew, or what doesn’t.
Which means that I can be authoritative about it. When people complain that this Brunswick stew I have touted them onto is not good, I can roll a bite of it around against my upper palate, gaze off into the middle distance with my eyes closed except for tiny contemplative slits, and observe, with no tinge of defensiveness, “Yeah, this is a little off. Prob’ly used a rabid squirrel.”
How to Read the New York Times
T HE FIRST THING I look for is whether I am in it. Many mornings — the majority of mornings — I am not. This fuels my belief that the Times has me black- or at least brown-listed. Every writer who is neither rich nor a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters has a right to this belief. William Styron is in the Times nearly every morning, being either reviewed or quoted. Sure! He probably goes skiing with those guys!
The second thing I look for in the Times is something juicy. This may seem quixotic. I realize that the Times gives the impression that it doesn’t want to admit that there actually is anything in the world that Weegee would have liked to photograph. But when there does occur a murder or an accidental squashing that the newspaper of record cannot in all good conscience overlook, the Times always comes up with good obscure details. Several years ago the Times ran a story about a helicopter crash that killed twenty-one people being transported to Disneyland. A witness was quoted as saying, “Two small gears and a dime hit me on the chest.”
I don’t mean to outrage traditionalists, but I recommend looking in the Times for signs of writing that is not wholly institutional. It’s there. It’s like little rustles of life in the forest primeval: it’s there if you look for it.
But don’t tell anybody.
Living with Wizardry
I WAS TALKING TO a grade-school teacher the other day. She said some of her students were wholly nonplussed by the concept of clockwise, and she had figured out why: all the timepieces they had been exposed to were digital.
What is Western culture going to do without the concept of clockwise? How are newspapers going to identify people in group photographs?
The one just to the left of the water pitcher there is Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: The one to her left — not to your, the reader’s, left, which is to say what has just been referred to as “the” left, but rather to her. (Mrs. Thatcher’s) left — is Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Okay, now, keep moving in that direction in an orbital manner, so to speak. Pretend you are revolving around the ice sculpture there, and …
Whatever else may be miniaturized in the years ahead, it won’t be photo captions.
But I haven’t got time to worry about the impact of electronic wizardry on newspapers. I am too busy worrying about the impact of it on me.
In my own home.
There is a word processor in my home.
“Word processor,” indeed! That thing doesn’t know what words are. A word, to that thing, is whatever comes between spaces. That thing would just as soon process tbldgk as
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