"My dad saw Houdini once—did I ever tell you this? He said it was much like you’d expect."

"They tied him up this way and that way, ropes, cables, locked him in a jail cell, then before you knew it came the sound of bolts dropping to the ground and locks flying off, and the great Houdini emerged. He just came walking out three paces behind the sheriff—and it was nothing! Anticlimax! Where was this? Manistique, Michigan, the county jail. Poor Houdini, she said. You should write a poor Houdini sonnet, Vern said. I hate it when people tell me what I should write, she said. I bet, Vern said. But still."

Wrote Anne Carson, the new winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in "Poor Houdini," published in 2024 in The New Yorker.

Manistique, Michigan is a real place. It sounds made up, though, don't you think? Like a portmanteau of "man" and "mystique." There's no [famous] book called "The Masculine Mystique."

Once more, I am the only martyr..."

"... in late night."

I would have advised Steven Colbert against using the word "martyr."

It is — at least for some of us — too evocative of the loss of Charlie Kirk. Why wouldn't you notice? Or did you notice and intend to make sport of it?

The OED has this as the oldest meaning of the English word "martyr":

"I don't quite understand the emphasis on relationships/friends/etc. I'm an introvert, always have been..."

"... was married to an introvert, I am now a widow. No children, no family other than the toxic in-laws long out of my/our life. I spent 40 years of my life doing well at jobs that required interaction with other employees and/or public. Enough. When I got in my car at the end of the day I felt as though a weight had been lifted off my shoulders - solitude! I LOVE the quiet of my solitary life, I grit my teeth when I have to participate in resident association meetings which are thinly disguised social gatherings - I live in a senior retirement community. I read, I stream, I read news online, I follow art classes online, I make my own art in sketchbooks, I read, I browse online, I read .... I do chat briefly, and happlily [sic], with the public library staff, the checker/bagger at the grocery store, the maintenance staff. But I love my solitary life! When I pass away perhaps no one will mourn. So what? I get tired of being advised that I'm not happy, not physically health[y], and will die sooner. Again, so what? I'm past my 'sell by' date anyway. I'm happy with myself, by myself."

That's the highest rated comment at a Washington Post column, "How — and why — you should increase your social network as you age/'It’s never too late to develop meaningful relationships,' one expert says."

I enjoyed the sentence: "I read, I stream, I read news online, I follow art classes online, I make my own art in sketchbooks, I read, I browse online, I read."

Another writer, using the same material, might argue that one is never really alone, that you have the company of the very best of humanity when you read. You can also work with the concept that you are not not alone when you yourself are your own substantial and beloved companion. And, for some people, there is God. For others, dog.

I liked this headline and assumed it would be bloggable, but it's really too obvious to bother with.

"Economists often don’t know what they’re talking about" (WaPo).

ADDED: Notice that it doesn't say "Economists don’t know what they’re talking about." It's just "Economists often don’t know what they’re talking about." So they do know something, just not everything, and it's an area of study that's probably inherently beset by unknowables. Anyway, here's the old Alexander Pope verse:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.

"What if All I Want is a Mediocre Life?"/"What if I all I want is a small, slow, simple life?"

Now, there's some headline to first line slippage.

The headline is good clickbait, but it sets up an argument that the author — Krista O'Reilly Davi-Digui — never makes. What's mediocre about a small, slow, simple life? Many people would say that the life described in the essay is the essential, most beautiful human life, centered on the real, immediate world of home and family.

The word "mediocre" does appear in the essay, but only to describe relatively unimportant aspects of the small, slow, simple life. Her body is mediocre. She might be a "mediocre home manager" in that she "rarely dusts," sometimes orders pizza, and has some messy "areas" in her house.

"And the more they drank, the longer they lived...."

The more coffee they drank...

That article, in The Atlantic, led me to look up "coffee" in the OED. Among the coffee quotes, this, from Alexander Pope: "Coffee, (which makes the politician wise/And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)."

Katie Roiphe tries to fathom the depths of why she's buying really expensive shoes.

She writes about herself in the second person saying things like: 

You have read Adorno. You are able to think critically about your desire for the shoes. Furthermore, you have a healthy class-hatred for people who dress habitually in clothes from this store...

And:

If you do walk out with the shoes...  they work like a drug—the anxieties that were plaguing you before you enter the store have lifted. As you step out into traffic, the still and stagnant city is suddenly charged with possibility

The parties you have scribbled in your calendar seem more glittery or interesting or fun, and you in the shoes, more daunting, more sylphlike, more free, more invulnerable....

Do you want to be the kind of person who sacrifices, overreaches, for a pair of shoes, who imbues them with a romantic overlay that a material object cannot possibly sustain?

That's where the internal argument ends up, and obviously she buys the shoes. Obviously, there's a huge mental element to consumerism, both before and after the purchase. Note that anxieties must be stirred up to provide an additional argument: I need to dispel these anxieties! She gets off on the purchase.

My question: Why shoes? There's some discussion of how shoes "will transform you into someone else" — special shoe magic. (See "The Wizard of Oz.") There's oddly little reference to sex. Roiphe ignores Freud, who famously saw shoes as vagina symbols. Roiphe wants — or wants "you" — to be daunting, sylphlike, free, and invulnerable.

A sylph is a female fairy. In Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock," "women who are full of spleen and vanity turn into sylphs when they die because their spirits are too full of dark vapors to ascend to the skies." (Here is "The Rape of the Lock," with the illustrations by Aubry Beardsley, for only 99¢ on Kindle!)

So, maybe, why shoes? Why not dresses, jackets, jewelry, sweaters? I think it's that you've got to specialize — unless you're actually rich — if you're going to shop in the really expensive places. You can trick yourself into thinking you've been indulged. Still, why specialize in shoes?

"Ode on Solitude."

Alexander Pope, 1735:

Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.
Sound sleep by night; study and ease,
Together mix'd; sweet recreation;
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,
Thus unlamented let me die,
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.