In memory of Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick,
who reportedly died today at 99:
Related legal notice from Princeton —
The above copyright notice is from The Symbolic Quest,
by one Edward C. Whitmont (birth name: Weissberg).
Friday, June 23, 2023
Ashes to Ashes, Dustbin to Dustbin
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Thursday, June 22, 2023
Dustbin Notes
Found today at Language Log:
Translated from the Russian —
Also from Language Log, an earlier use of the phrase —
F. C. Burnand's novel My Time and What I've Done with It , Chapter 27,
in Old and New, Volume 8, 1873:
It is thus that ignorant prejudices are fostered ;
and how few of us in afterlife have the time or the will
to sift the rubbish of the dust-bin of history
on the chance of discovering the diamond of truth.
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Unfolded Drama
"I could a tale unfold . . ." — Hamlet's father's ghost
"Thus the entire little drama, from crystallized carbon
and felled pine to this humble implement, to this
transparent thing, unfolds in a twinkle."
— Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things
"… a cardboard tube, more or less the same length as
the inner core of a toilet roll, but thicker. He frowned,
took the roll out, laid it on the desk and poked up it
with the butt end of a pencil. Something slid out.
It looked like a rolled-up black plastic dustbin liner;
but when he unfolded it, he recognised it as the funny
sheet thing he’d found in the strongroom and briefly
described as an Acme Portable Door, before losing
his nerve and changing it to something less facetious."
— Holt, Tom. The Portable Door . Orbit. Kindle Edition.
According to goodreads.com, the Holt book was
"first published March 6, 2003."
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Monday, June 19, 2023
The Original Portable Door
"… a cardboard tube, more or less the same length as
the inner core of a toilet roll, but thicker. He frowned,
took the roll out, laid it on the desk and poked up it
with the butt end of a pencil. Something slid out.
It looked like a rolled-up black plastic dustbin liner;
but when he unfolded it, he recognised it as the funny
sheet thing he’d found in the strongroom and briefly
described as an Acme Portable Door, before losing
his nerve and changing it to something less facetious."
— Holt, Tom. The Portable Door . Orbit. Kindle Edition.
According to goodreads.com, the Holt book was
"first published March 6, 2003."
Compare and contrast the "portable door" as a literary device
with the "tesseract" in A Wrinkle in Time (1962).
See also this journal on March 6, 2003.
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