Coaster found inside 1961 copy of "Tropic of Cancer."

I was just rearranging my bookshelves, mostly planning to trash decrepit mass-market paperbacks, but I'll keep this. It was, undoubtedly, bought by my parents and read — perhaps only up to page 163 — and then migrated to my house after my parents were both [word in the upper right hand corner, above].

At the Newark Public Library, you can see a display of almost 4,000 books from Philip Roth's personal library....

"... including a four-volume set about the history of presidential elections, multiple copies of Kafka’s 'The Trial' and a marked-up edition of 'Incredible iPhone Apps for Dummies.'"

 According to "Look Inside Philip Roth’s Personal Library/The author of 'Goodbye, Columbus' and 'The Human Stain' left several thousand books, many of them with notes or letters, to the Newark Public Library." 

I love the high-low juxtaposition of "The Trial" and "Incredible iPhone Apps for Dummies." 

And I love that there's lots of marginalia. (You may remember that marginalia was the subject of the first post on this blog, on January 14, 2004.) 

There are some nice photographs at the link, such as the one of Roth's copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" — with Post-It notes and an underline sentence: "'Life,' said Emerson, 'consists in what a man is thinking all day.'"

In that first blog post of mine, I said, among other things, "I do like writing in the margins of books, something I once caused a librarian to gasp by saying." Having made a librarian gasp, I'm pleased to see this Newark library constructing a shrine to marginalia.

My favorite linguistic issue ever: What if Trump didn't say "shithole" but "shithouse"?

Have you seen this one? National Review editor Rich Lowry was on "This Week" yesterday and this happened:

STEPHANOPOULOS: It's pretty clear [President Trump] said what's been reported. By denying it, he puts his supporters in the most difficult position.

LOWRY: He used a different -- my understanding from the meeting, he used a different, but very closely related vulgarity. He said s-house, and not s-hole. That's not going to make a difference to anyone. But the general remarks -- yes -- I'd like to have a transcript, because everyone is putting so much weight on this to see exactly what was said in what ways, but the general tenor of the discussion has been reported accurately.

Not going to make a difference to anyone?! Now I'm determined to find a shithouse/shithole distinction.

Historically, going back to the 1600s, "shithole" first meant "The rectum or anus." (I'm using the OED.) "Shithole" took on other meanings in the early 20th century: "a wretched place," "a toilet." And in the late 20th century, it also became an alternative to "asshole" to mean "a despicable person."

"Shithouse," going back to the 1600s, meant "toilet," usually an outdoor toilet — a "privy" or "outhouse." The oldest published usage is (like Trump's purported use) metaphorical:

1659 J. Howell Ital. Prov. Let. Ital. Prov. sig. A4v, in Παροιμιογραϕια If Florence had a Sea Port, she would make a Hortyard of Pisa, a Counting-house of Ligorn, and a shitt-house of Luca.

Like "shithole," "shithouse" came to mean "a wretched place" in the 20th century. The first published use was in 1949, in Henry Miller's "Sexus": "You leave the toilet and you step into the big shithouse. Whatever you touch is shitty."

And here's Martin Amis in "London Fields" in 1989:

The class system just doesn't know when to call it a day. Even a nuclear holocaust, I think, would fail to make that much of a dent in it. Crawling through the iodized shithouse that used to be England, people would still be brooding about accents and cocked pinkies, about maiden names and settee or sofa, about the proper way to eat a roach in society. Do you take the head off first or start with the legs?

Ha ha. Settee or sofa. It's so like shithouse or shithole. And yet so different.

Anyway, "shithouse" also came to mean "despicable person" in the 20th century (at least in Britain). And it's been an adjective meaning "contemptible, bad, disgusting" at least since 1966, when Charles Bukowski wrote in a letter, "The flunky fired from his shithouse job, the guys like me."

There are also the phrases: "To be in the shithouse" (as in "Fleetwood Mac's career was definitely not in the shithouse") and "shithouse rumor" ("All you had was a shithouse rumor" (heh, that's all we have about Trump and "shithouse")) and the well-known "shithouse rat" ("Cute as a shithouse rat," wrote the lowly, lowry cur James Joyce in that shithouse book "Ulysses").

I've got to say, if Trump said it, I hope he said "shithouse." First, I like the resonance with his real estate career. It's the humblest real estate, a shithouse. "Shithole" has more of an anatomical whiff to it — not that Trump doesn't also have his connection to body parts (tiny hands, grabbed pussies, differently sized penises).

ADDED: There's also the subtle topic of what goes on in the mind of a person who hears "shithouse" and later drags "shithole" up out of his memory. If the wrong word was reported, what caused the house-to-hole substitution? Phobia about human anatomy?

If the "smartest move" — in making a serious TV drama about porn — is "exploiting the contradictions," then how can you say "'The Deuce' is certainly a feminist series"?

I don't watch this show, and there's no way I will, but I do read The New Yorker, and that means I'm often challenging myself to understand TV shows (and movies) that I do not and will not watch. I'm keeping an eye on the culture from the safe distance of reading. For example, I read this about the Emmys show, which I did not watch:

“I haven’t had a TV since I moved out of my parents house at 18,” [Shailene Woodley] told E! News in the pre-show on the red carpet at the 2017 Emmy Awards Sunday, where Big Little Lies had received 16 nominations.

“All my friends who watch TV, I always ask them when they have time to. When do they have time to?” she said. “I’m a reader. I always have a book.”

That's reported at People under the headline "Shailene Woodley Slammed After Revealing She Doesn't Own a TV on Emmys Red Carpet: 'I'm a Reader.'" Slammed? Why? Actors are supposed to tout the industry? Or does claiming to be "a reader" sound snobby? Tell me what books Shailene Woodley reads and I'll have an opinion on that. It seems to me many of these TV shows and ponderous and hard work to watch, and lots of books are lightweight. My preference for reading is more about wanting control of my own time, to go fast or slow, to switch into my own thoughts, and to retrace my path and skip around.

Ah! I found an answer to the question what books does Shailene Woodley read:

[Shailene's] favorite is Henry and June by Anaïs Nin, a memoir about the author's passionate love for Henry Miller and his wife, June. "Anaïs is like the ultimate goddess," Shailene says. "I feel really connected to her femininity." Much like we feel connected to your femininity, Shai. (Did that sound creepy?)

That's Teen Vogue, which might explain the cutesy dancing around carnality. So, onto the subject of the New Yorker article: "'The Deuce' and the Birth of Porn/The show is a classic David Simon joint, in which sex workers and porn actors are treated like any other alienated workforce," by Emily Nussbaum:

“The Deuce” is certainly a feminist series—and half its directors are female—but its smartest move is to resist turning sex into a thesis, exploiting the contradictions instead. 

You're a connoisseur of contradictions, a resister of sex as a thesis, and yet you dictate to me: "'The Deuce' is certainly a feminist series." Why the certainty?! Why shut the door to the exploration of contradictions in the contention that this show — about pornography — is certainly feminist? I'm outraged by this pronouncement. I would begin with the hypothesis that a show about pornography is anti-feminist, but you want me not even to think about it.

I continue reading this article precisely because I'm so annoyed:

Often, this means visually scrambling cable clichés, starting with a rape role-play in the première that spills into genuine violence. In the aftermath, Darlene, dabbing her bruises, is nude, but she’s never the camera’s focus. Instead, our gaze keeps settling, with nosy clarity, on her bald trick’s big-bellied torso, his matted back hair, his exposed crotch, forcing us to consider that body—both pathetic and intimidating—not hers.

There’s warmth, too, particularly through [Maggie] Gyllenhaal’s mournful, electric presence, her fame itself upending the hierarchies of cable, which typically dictates that extras bare it all while the stars cover up. With the polarities reversed, and the biggest celebrity somehow exposed and not objectified, I found myself craving a sex scene between the one non-sex-worker African-American couple on the show: in this context, such a sequence became elevating, not debasing, a sign that the characters were taken seriously enough to see their private world.

What is the argument that this is even uncertainly feminist? I really have no idea. Getting the star to go nude is an old trick, and not one I associate with feminism. Showing an ugly man having sex with a beautiful woman is a tale as old as time. Maybe somehow the graphic depiction of rape and the bruised body of a woman is supposed to be flipped into something meaningful, but Nussbaum doesn't explain how this happens and why this isn't just another way to palm off the same misogyny that the recently departed Kate Millett wrote about in "Sexual Politics."

Is it that half of the directors of "Deuce" are women? So they hire on women to get immunity from the charge of misogyny. We're supposed to support the furthering of the careers of women and see that as feminism. Could Nussbaum please explain why the gambit of hiring women to work on projects like this is certainly feminist and not actively anti-feminist?

There's always a woman who will take the work. They can put the face of a woman on any project they want. Is it that easy to get the Certainly Feminist stamp? (If so, porn itself is certainly feminist.)

The nudge and the prick.

Reading that last post out loud with Meade, we were talking about how the Democratic Party is trying to create anxiety by letting you know that the Party knows how much money they've gotten out of you this year.

It reminded me of that mailer I received a couple years ago from the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund, showing my name and my home address and whether I'd voted in recent elections in a list with the same information about my close neighbors. That was really egregious guilt tripping, because neighbors were getting information about each other, so the organization was openly leveraging everyone's need to maintain esteem in the community.

But the new email from the Democratic Party relied on a similar psychological manipulation: My reputation is at stake. People whom I want to think well of me know that I'm not quite good enough, and they are showing me what I can do to fix that. I'd better vote this time so I don't look bad on the next mailer OR I can hit the $3/$10/$50 donate button.

Meade said this what they call "nudge." You know about the nudge. Cass Sunstein wrote a book on the subject "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness."

I said there needed to be a different word, because "nudge" seems to be a positive poke in the right direction, not the creation of anxiety around the thing that they don't want you to do.

That word is: PRICK.

"Prick" is the ideal word — quite aside from any indelicate intention to refer to male genitalia — because it means (OED): "To cause mental pain or discomfort to; to sting (esp. the conscience) with sorrow or remorse; to grieve, pain, torment" and "To poke at something as if to pierce it; to make a thrust or stab at." That is, "prick" is precisely the negative version of "nudge."

By the way, the "coarse slang" use of "prick" to mean the penis goes back to c1555:

c1555   Manifest Detection Diceplay sig. Biiiv,   To turne his pricke vpward, and cast a weauers knot on both his thumbs behind him....

The other "coarse slang" usage, which I particularly like in connection with my recommendation of a nudge/prick distinction is "A stupid, contemptible, or annoying person (esp. a man or boy)." That goes back to 1598:

1598   J. Florio Worlde of Wordes at Pinchino,   A pillicock, a primcock, a prick, a prettie lad, a gull, a noddie.

More recently:

1934   H. Miller Tropic of Cancer 110   Jesus, what I'd like is to find some rich cunt—like that cute little prick, Carl.

Miller doesn't mean he wants to find a "rich cunt" who resembles "that cute little prick, Carl." He means he wants to find "rich cunt" like the "rich cunt" found by "that cute little prick, Carl." Is Miller a sloppy writer or did he find that ambiguity amusing?

In any case, the word of the day is "prick." Don't let those manipulators of the masses say "nudge" when the word should be "prick." Observe the nudge/prick distinction.

ADDED: I just realized: If you like this blog post, you might want to consider doing your on-line shopping through The Althouse Amazon Portal.

"And I never touched a living body cold as the Rube there in Philly... I decided to lop him off if it meant a smother party."

"(This is a rural English custom designed to eliminate aged and bedfast dependents. A family so afflicted throws a 'smother party' where the guests pile mattresses on the old liability, climb up on top of the mattresses and lush themselves out.) The Rube is a drag on the industry and should be 'led out' into the skid rows of the world. (This is an African practice. Official known as the 'Leader Out' has the function of taking old characters out into the jungle and leaving them there.)"

Something William S. Burroughs wrote in "Naked Lunch," which I was reading this morning in my iPhone after running across this in today's NYT:

In 1965, Mr. de Grazia went to Boston to appeal a court ban of William S. Burroughs’s sexually explicit novel “The Naked Lunch.” He summoned literary lions like Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg to testify about the book’s artistic worth and won his argument, that genius should never be curbed because of differences over taste or morality.

The book, published in 1959, was the last work of fiction to be censored by the Postal Service, the Customs Service and state governments.

Edward de Grazia — who also fought in the Supreme Court for our right to read Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" and to see "I Am Curious (Yellow)" — has died at the age of 86.

Here's his book: "Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius."