Now *this* is a book title

I'm at work today, and I found an uncatalogued book in the closed stacks:

Coryat's crudities; reprinted from the edition of 1611. To which are now added, his letters from India, &c. and extracts relating to him, from various authors, being a more particular account of his travels (mostly on foot) in different parts of the globe, than any hitherto published. Together with his orations, character, death &c. With copper-plates ...




This little gem hit the London bookstalls in 1776, and probably provided a welcome distraction from the hooliganism of American colonists. And lest the second word of the title make you think the book started off with dirty jokes (which is perfectly plausible: those Jacobeans could be a raunchy bunch), that's simply how Thomas Coryat, Esq., spelled crudités: the book is a gastronomical travelogue, and was originally entitled:

Coryat's Crudities Hastily gobbled up in five Moneth's travells in France, Savoy, Italy, Rhetia comonly Called the Grisons country, Hel- Vetia alias Switzerland, some Parts of both high Germany, and the Netherlands; Newly digested in the hungry aire Of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, and now dispersed to the Nourishment of the travelling Members of this Kingdome.

A friend informed me that the British comic writer Tim Moore retraced Coryat's journey in the 'nineties and wrote it up as Continental Drifter.

When I learned that, I immediately understood why book sales have tanked in recent years. As a title, Continental Drifter is concise and mildly evocative, but it's pretty lackluster compared to Coryat's crudities; reprinted... I'm sure Drifter is a perfectly readable book, but where are the promises of "orations, character, death"--and the added enticement of copper plates?

And don't get me started on comparisons to the original title: Moore's book just makes me picture some down-and-out wandering God knows where (he doesn't even specify which continent). The good Mr. Coryat, on the other hand, dangles France, Savoy, Italy and Hel-Vetia before my eyes, and refreshes me with bracing thoughts of the hungry aire of Odcombe.

Screw the big displays at Borders: titles like Coryat's crudities? Now that's marketing.

By the way--Coryat is credited with introducing the fork to the Anglophone world. What's Tim Moore done for us lately?

Scammers go Postal

Literally. A friend of mine went to the USPS website and was told he was the one millionth visitor and would win a free laptop--after handing over access to his bank account, of course.

He went to another computer four hours later and was again told he was the one millionth visitor.

Since he hasn't created a customer account with USPS, he couldn't be identified as the same person who had visited the site earlier.

Two one millionth visitors? Is that something that's possible in the New New Math?

Round-up of the latest news

So far, so good....a grand jury met today without indicting young David Kernell, the University of Tennessee student who is believed to have hacked Sarah Palin's email account.



The conservative public has expressed a good deal of outrage that poor Mrs. Palin's privacy was violated in such a manner. And rightly so--it's due to sexism, no doubt. Nobody would ever have hacked a male candidate's email account: it's unthinkable.

And of course, the outrage has reached such a fever pitch that it's clouded many normally acute minds: in a discussion of this case, one of the most listened-to commentators in America was so furious he seems to have forgotten about the First Amendment.

But this young scamp's shenanigans did give me pause--at least momentarily. I was worried that someone so dim as to conduct state business on a Yahoo! account protected with security questions that could be answered with publicly available information might not be up to the task of national office. But then I relaxed. She's got some pretty sharp guys around her: after all, John McCain did invent the Blackberry.

I must confess to some concern that in all the buzz about Sarah Palin, email hacking, and all this campaign nonsense, we've forgotten what's really important: the war on terror. Did you know that the tireless patriots at the TSA are so overworked protecting us they don't have the resources to make sure they themselves undergo security screenings?

The next time you fly, show them you care. Bring flowers, chocolates, or offer to buy them a drink--as long as it's under 3 ounces, of course.

What's the Bra Threat Level Today?

I am baffled that the TSA has a manpower shortage. The job has obvious and ever-expanding perks that should appeal to teenage boys and--judging from the number of middle-aged men looking at porn on public internet terminals in my library--other segments of the population. If you work at Logan Airport and work your way up the local TSA hierarchy, in a few months you'll get to see people naked. And if you work at the San Francisco Airport, you may get to feel someone up the old-fashioned way.

One Nancy Kates recently went to San Francisco International Airport to board a flight to Boston. She is apparently amply proportioned, shall we say, and the larger-than-average-underwire in her bra set off the metal detector. She was told that she could fly only if she submitted her breasts to a pat-down. She offered to take off her bra instead, which satisfied local TSA security concerns.

There's no word yet on whether she was able to put her bra back on before boarding the flight or whether her underwear is now lying on top of a pile of confiscated nail clippers.

Nancy Kates says she will talk to the ACLU about how to respond to this incident. She was four hours late getting to Boston, but she had at least one consolation: since Logan's full-body scanner hasn't been installed yet, she didn't have to worry about anyone staring at her bare breasts.

Closing thought: with the technology to see people naked, and the option of groping people for security reasons, what do you want to bet Scarlet Johansson gets added to one of those TSA-extra-scrutiny lists?

America's Finest at Work, Part V

In June the TSA began putting the names of people who show up at airports without identification on a watch list of people who broke security regulations or acted suspiciously (like trying to sneak on board with a 3 oz. can of shaving cream in their carry-on). At last count the list had over 16,000 names.

But this past Tuesday TSA chief Kip Hawley told USA Today that the Administration will no longer keep records on travelers who show up at their airport without ID.

It's just as well: how would they know whom they were keeping records on?

Stealth Poetics in the News

You may recall that from time to time I write about the literary and cultural undercurrents in our supposedly mind-numbing popular media. You may also recall that some weeks ago I wrote about a lawsuit launched by some inhabitants of Lesbos to enforce their copyright (as it were) of the name 'Lesbian." Well, they lost. And as I reviewed the headlines on this case from start to finish I started to notice something a little unusual:

Lesbos Ladies Launch Lesbian Lawsuit (CNN)

Lesbos Loses Lesbian Lawsuit (365 Gay News)

Lesbos Locals Lose Lesbian Appeal (BBC)

Lesbos Locals Lose Lesbian Lawsuit (Drudge)

News editors do not have very many outlets for their creativity. One of those few outlets is writing headlines. And a good many editors are former English majors, doubtless nostalgic for the days when their lives were devoted to the pursuit of ideas and the study of beautiful language. Now if all they were doing here was playing around with simple linear alliteration (which my own creative writing teacher called "a cheap trick") or making fun of these poor people (another cheap trick), these headlines would not be worthy of notice.

But take a closer look:

Lezbos Lozez Lezbian Lawsuit.

You've got multiple intertwined repetitions here: the l sound, the z sound in Lesbian, the hard s in Lesbos and Lawsuit, and you can either count the bs as a separate repetition or consider the zb combo a sound repetition in its own right. This is cynghanedd (pronounced koonghahneth)--a term that originally covered a range of Medieval Welsh verse techniques but since the nineteenth century has simply meant multiple, interlaced alliteration.

Gerard Manley Hopkins used it a lot ("When dragonflies draw fire, kingfishers catch flame").


Robert Browning occasionally indulged himself in a good cynghanedd as well ("Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me").



Read the other headlines closely. You'll find similar patterns. *

This is sophisticated stuff, folks. And finding it makes me very happy. A) I know that some former English major working at CNN has called his father to say, "And you thought studying poetry wasn't good for anything? In your face!" And B) it really does show how silly this talk is about whether online reading is "real" reading (Because I found all these headlines online, of course). Do you honestly think any of us are going to get subtly stealthily steeped in the spirit of Victorian poetry by reading the New Yorker or any of those other supposedly highbrow rags?

* I don't know why this didn't occur to me myself : "Lanky Librarian Loves Ludicrousness of Lawsuit Launched by Layabouts in Lesbos."

Of Traveling and Cheese

Apologies to all five of N&C's fans for the long silence. The closest thing I have to an excuse is a fair amount of traveling, so the TSA has been on my mind even more than usual. When I'm planning a trip (as opposed to actually traveling) it's easy to forget what a nuisance post 9-11 flying can be. For example, I'm often late to the game on finding out what items are verboten. Last weekend I visited friends in Florida. A few days before I was shopping for a host & hostess gift and foolishly bought some Stilton. It was only after I got home that it occurred to me to check the TSA website: that's right--you can only take cheese on board if it's 3 ounces or less and in a pressurized container.

I'm not sure what the TSA thinks I could possibly do with a wedge of Stilton, although Dairy Management, Inc.'s "Behold the Power of Cheese" campaign did suggest that disastrous things can happen in connection with dairy products.

And I must admit the notion of cheese being much more than just a foodstuff has precedents. Charles de Gaulle blamed cheese for French political fractiousness (Comment voulez-vous gouverner un pays qui a deux cent quarante-six variétés de fromage?). The formidable Queen Maeve of the Táin Bó Cúailnge was killed with a piece of cheese (it's a long Wikipedia entry--scroll down, you'll find it).* And events within the past month testify to the continuing destructive power of cheese.

Briefly as I child I believed that cheese had some connection with the divine (because of a hymn that began "Who is this that cometh from Edom?")** I was clueless about spelling--I was four, after all. (A pity I was too young for Monty Python--"blessed are the cheesemakers" would have packed much more of a punch in that context).

But even taking all this history into account, banning all cheese in quantities of over 3 ounces is overkill. It's Stilton for God's sake. The worst it could do is stink up my luggage. Sure, it's a little on the smelly side if you've got a cheddar-conditioned palate, but there are much more serious cheeses out there. A few years ago Cranfield University in the UK conducted a study to to determine the world's skankiest cheeses--Stilton didn't even crack the top ten.

The world's premier cheese-eating nation (yes, the one with 246 kinds) bans only one cheese from any kind of transportation: Epoisses de Bourgogne.

I suppose Francophobes would consider this just one more example of how the French aren't doing their part in the War on Terror (now you may mentally insert any riff on the "cheese-eating -surrender-monkeys" theme).


*And yes, I have read the Táin. It really is in there. And yes, the death-by-cheese is the best part.

**In spite of the opaque lyrics (Alpha and Omega, the Great I Am...), I knew the guy from Edom/Edam had to be Jesus. It was church. Everything was about Jesus. It was like an obsession with those people.