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Author Archives: Michael Hendry
Quotation of the Day
An incompetent small-town Australian police chief (Royle) visits the lodgings of a headmaster suspected of murder (Doncaster): “It was a gentleman-scholar’s room: photographs of cricket teams, school groups, and a smart army photograph with a rather artificially grim expression. On … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Fiction
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Quotation of the Day
“I had made the discovery that if you put people in a comic light they became more likable — if you spoke of someone as a gross, belching, wall-eyed human pike you got along much better with him thereafter, partly … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Fiction, Orbilius
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Quotation of the Day
“. . . a thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.” (Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 95) Inelegantly expressed, but the thought is interesting.
Posted in Culture: Fiction
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I Wonder
When Orson Welles was filming Macbeth, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight, did the crew call him Horson Welles? Behind his back, or to his face, it would have been a thoroughly Shakespearian pun.
Posted in Culture: Plays, Movies, Nachleben
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Quotation of the Day
“You never do the safe thing if there’s a risky alternative. You’re what people would call feckless, in the days when such words were still in use.” (Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 43) Those were presumably the days when copy editors … Continue reading
Posted in Orbilius
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Life and Art
What’s it like living in one of the hillier parts of the Shenandoah Valley? Like living in a Grandma Moses painting, but with slightly duller colors and much better perspective. I really like driving past cows on the way to … Continue reading
Posted in General
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Quotation of the Day — and Hebdomad
A boy, an ungrown child, in seven years puts forth a line of teeth and loses them again; but when another seven God has made complete, the first signs of maturity appear. In the third hebdomad he’s growing yet, his … Continue reading
Quotations of the Day
“The dead weep with joy when their books are reprinted.” “Everyone can see the future, but no one remembers the past.” (The Stranger, in Russian Ark, 2002)
Posted in Movies
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Quotation of the Day
“Unhappiness is our own invention. At times I’m sad that I lack the imagination for it.” (Général André de . . ., in The Earrings of Madame de . . ., 1953)
Missing the Best Part?
InstaPundit is duly impressed that Amazon sells bacon-flavored jelly beans. I’m more astonished by the last two things listed under ‘customers who bought this item also bought’: the bacon wallet (imitation bacon, I presume) and the Mr. Bacon vs. Monsieur … Continue reading
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Yet Another Peculiarity of the English Language
Until I sat down today to compile a review worksheet on Latin prepositions, I had never noticed an inconsistency or inconcinnity in the names of the parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. If non-visible frequencies of light are seen as metaphorically … Continue reading
Posted in Orbilius
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Horace Kippled
D. A. West, in Horace Odes I: Carpe Diem, Oxford 1995, 6-7: In Horace the tone is often elusive. Perhaps the nearest thing in English is the parody [of Odes 1.1] by Kipling in ‘A Diversity of Creatures’: There are … Continue reading
The Usefulness of Classics
Another British policeman (Pumphrey) interrogates the headmaster (Crumwallis) of a worse than mediocre private school: ‘Hmmmm’, said Pumphrey. ‘You seem to do a lot of classics.’ It was not the remark Mr. Crumwallis had been expecting, but he perked up, … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Fiction
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Royal Edward
A British policeman is looking for a millionaire at a posh hotel in Bradford: It was called the Royal Edward, and for once it lived up to its name. The foyer was all white and gold and plush pink, with … Continue reading
Posted in Culture: Fiction, Orbilius
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Bad Sign
Waking up at 4:20 in the morning singing (inaudibly, I hope) Travis Tritt’s “The Whisky Ain’t Workin’ Anymore”, just the one line, but with “Nyquil” substituted for “whisky”. If you’re awake at 4:20, it’s definitely not workin’.
Posted in Nachleben
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Historico-Sociologico-Linguistic Query
I gather from various English novels read over the years that public-school boys routinely called each other by their last names (perhaps still do), and that brothers were called (e.g.) ‘Smith major’ and ‘Smith minor’. I’ve always wondered what they … Continue reading
Posted in General
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A Fourteenth-Century Blogger?
If I fail to say what lies on my mind it gives me a feeling of flatulence; I shall therefore give my brush free rein. Mine is a foolish diversion, but these pages are meant to be torn up, and … Continue reading
Laudator Temporis Acti has an amusing post on ‘comical construes’. Here is another, as I heard it from one of my professors in grad school: In Satires 1.4.120, Horace uses the phrase nabis sine cortice, “you will swim without a … Continue reading
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Milton on Reading
However many books Wise men have said are wearisom; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior, (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep … Continue reading
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Bad Things Come in Threes
In his commentary on Horace’s Soracte Ode (1.9), David West writes: “Horace says sententiously, ‘When winds stop blowing, trees stop shaking’, meaning of course that unpleasant things do not last for ever. This could be said of a plague of … Continue reading →