Bill Poser elaborates on a nice BBC account of the story. Pretty interesting, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

This is my current copy, 1962 US Fawcett (Crest Books), Greenwich CT. There are some themes: movie stills, skin, Nabokov, plain brown wrappers.

Have a look. Fascinating.

Language Log asks you (don’t all shout at once)

… Yes, thickheads. I know they won’t like being called that; but hey, what do I care? I’ve shut off the comments area to new contributions now. Let them squirm and fume, with the smoke coming out of their ears. They’re just wrong. I like a good distinction in senses as much as the next man, and I don’t care for ignorant word choice errors; but I don’t get in a stew about it. It’s the way languages are, and the way they’re going to be. You have to deal with it.

This is one of those metaphors that most listeners, if pressed, could explain. I think. While it’s dead, it’s not yet returned to dust. But how many of us have any experience of a “running tide”? We in the SF Bay Area have a nearby dramatic example, four times a day, and I’ve even watched it run from a blufftop overlooking the Golden Gate. But it’s never been running against me.

If our experience of tides comes from our visits to the beach, we know something about the ebb & flow of the tide, but not its running. (It was relatively late in life that I made the connection between “flow”, ebb & flow, and “flood”, ebb tide and flood tide. Duh.)

The sense of “tide” as “time” (eventide, Eastertide) predates its related application to the timing of the sea. We can hear an (unintended) echo of that sense in “the tide is running against him”.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

The attribution is all over the web, but with no source, and it doesn’t really sound like him, does it? Hard to prove the negative, but you’d think that someone would mention where he had written it, or when he had said it. The same source (again via Sr J) produced another:

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

Even less Jamesian, wouldn’t you say? But this time The Google was more helpful, and it turns out that it is Jamesian—just not William Jamesian. It’s from Clive James, q.G.

There are historical figures that seem to be (mis)attribution magnets: Shaw, Churchill, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde. James, not so much, I wouldn’t have thought. But there you are.

You Missed It: Most Unfairly Overlooked Movies Of The Decade

… These are the other guys, the great films you missed through circumstance or stupidity, through studio stumbling or simply bad timing. The best movies don’t always get seen, the best movies don’t always win the awards. This isn’t a list of critically acclaimed indies which didn’t do well at the box office, or films with huge fan followings which couldn’t get anyone else to turn out (sorry Serenity). Nor is this a list of movies which flopped at the box office but later found cult success. These movies fell between the cracks and never really found the audience they deserved. When you’re thinking back on the aughts, you won’t think of these films, but maybe you should. Consider giving these movies a second chance. Unique and strange, funny and weird, challenging and sexy; they’re the most unfairly overlooked movies of the past decade. …

As for Shakespeare—Baker has an idea, put into the pen of his character Paul Chowder, that iambic pentameter is basically a waltz, the five beats being supplemented by a rest at the end of a line.

(This is part of Arnold’s series on audiobook choices; I look forward to reading the others Real Soon Now.)

Five down, one to go. I’m slowly making my way through last year’s Booker shortlist and, unless Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture proves to be invincible, this extraordinary Australian debut novel about, well, everything really — families, crime, celebrity, philosophy, religion, sport, relationships, travel and above all the search for identity — will have been my winning choice. To give any of the plot away would spoil the surprises, and it’s full of wonderful surprises. The story is told alternately by Martin Dean – paranoid, intellectually brilliant, dysfunctional, achingly funny wannabe philosopher from a hick town voted the most boring in Australia — and his son Jasper, ditto. The frenetic action — prison revolts, serial killing, bush fires, exploding river barges carrying guns/drugs — swerves wildly between Poland, China, Australia, France and Thailand. Toltz’s wit is as good as Clive James’s, though maybe darker, and he can be lyrical, too: “the rhythms of the universe were perceptible in the way the boats were nodding at me.” Brilliantly read by both actors to make you mourn as much as laugh, this David Copperfield Down Under on speed with son is an epic in every sense, including length. But don’t be tempted, even if there is one, to get an abridged version. Every macabre detail, every chaotic incident, every wisecrack is an essential fraction of the whole. Heartfelt thanks to Whole Story Audio for getting this and half the other 2008 Booker shortlist out so quickly. To cut a single sentence would be criminal.

Anyway, meet the Folk, via the 5 statements of Beaker Belief.

Brokenness
Beautiful World
True liberalism oppresses
Knowing God means challenge
Better off with tea lights?

Hard to argue with that.

If you visit their blog (when you visit their blog), remember to vote on the Moon Gibbon; as I write there are only 240 days left to vote.

Update: Anglici sunt. And there’s a gibbon up there right now, so…