¶ Matins: Poème trouvé: “To the Uptight Guy on the 6 Train at 77th St. Station.”

¶ Tierce: An initial decision, against going to the movies today — I’ve got lots to do in preparation for tomorrow’s luncheon, after all, and I don’t want to be running around at the last minute — was overturned when I discovered that The Other Boleyn Girl is showing around the corner at 10:30.

¶ Compline: The most incredibly occupied day. Read all about it below.

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An abbreviated read, hastily summed-up; and more’s the pity, because two of the items (Boccaccio, James) would merit the whole day’s study.

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¶ Matins: William F Buckley dies, at 82.

¶ Nones:  And we’re back. Something about corrupted update code knocked out the server. While The Daily Blague was down, I went ahead and posted today’s Morning Read in the Vestibule at Portico. Think I’ll do that as a matter of course. Directive from the Department of Redundancy Department. (more…)

¶ Decameron, V, vi: I wonder if anyone has studied what it is about the Fifth Day’s stories that sets them apart from the tragic love stories that surround them. Today’s tale begins with the usual young lovers, but by the time it hiccups into melodrama, the reader might have missed something.

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¶ Matins: The Book Review review.

¶ Tierce: In Seventeen-Hundred-and-Fifty-Two, Columbus sailed the Ocean …. WTF??

¶ Nones: The menu for Saturday’s family luncheon is set: onion soup, boeuf bourguignonne, and Dacquoise — made to recipes from one or the other of Julia Child’s Mastering treatises.

¶ Compline: What to do with old Christmas cards? Ten ideas.

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Today, I bid an inconclusive farewell to Seamus Heaney’s District and Circle. I also contemplate reading the rest of Blogging Heroes in one go, and being done with the blasted thing.

As for the Decameron, I find myself wondering how this book might be taught. Reading a story a day seems just right, and I expect that it was only the very odd medieval reader who went through it any faster. Most people, like the companions in the Decameron itself, heard the stories, at least until the printing presses got going. Here’s what I’d do if I were teaching the book: I’d have students read it over the summer! Starting in tenth grade.

Now, there’s a thought. Anyone who was exposed to Boccaccio in high school, raise your hand. I didn’t think so. The one classic that would appeal to adolescent audiences, scrupulously kept from them.  What waters of Lethe do teachers drink, anyway?

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¶ Matins: I’ll be at Carnegie Hall this evening, where Thomas Meglioranza, whose wonderful voice I haven’t heard in well over a year, will be singing at the Weill.

¶ Nones: Who knew there was an Uncyclopedia? Why didn’t you tell me?

¶ Vespers: You ought to want to go to the movies. Here’s why…

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Today, we have a dirty picture! I had to photograph it, because the scanner, while perfectly fuctional, won’t hook up with the computer at the moment. Yes, there’s another scanner (the very same model) in the bedroom, but to use it I’d have to boot up the laptop, and then cope with the Wi-Fi signal, which might or might not be registering… I am very anti-tech at the moment.

But even if you don’t ordinarily follow this feature, be sure not to miss the salacious woodcut from a Venetian Decameron of 1492.

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The windows are open today! Even though it’s still February, spring is undeniably in the air. No doubt my cold will get even worse.  

¶ Tierce: Josh Marshall wins the Polk; TPM ineligible for the Pulitzer.

¶ Sext: Another reason for taking an interest in the Oscars this year: reading Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution.

¶ Nones: Books on Monday: Breakable You, a third and, for the time being, final, novel by Brian Morton.

¶ Vespers: What to do with Swimming in a Sea of Death, by David Rieff?

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Although I cannot wait to be done with Blogging Heroes, there’s no doubt that it has prodded me to “purpose” The Daily Blague. What is my blog about, in one sentence or less? I’ve been squirming for more than a month now, trying to answer this question. Last week, I began to understand. The Daily Blague is a blog about being a reader. Not “about reading,” but “about being a reader.” There’s a difference. And one thing that The Daily Blague most emphatically is not: “a blog about books.”

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The tears are streaming down my cheeks. Vive le pays de Marion!

A bearded Paul Newman having the time of his life, playing a mad, pretentious artist, in What a Way to Go! Shirley MacLaine assists.

Reading Mark Harris’s amazing Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, I’ve been struck by more than a few ideas — and I’m only in the seventh chapter. What strikes me most acutely is that film history is as complex and arresting as military history, with the relative advantage of (a) few to no casualties and (b) plenty of beautiful women. The hugely collaborative filmmaking process is so bewilderingly vulnerable to contingency that it is astonishing that any movie is actually completed.

Pictures at a Revolution tells the story behind the making of the five Best Picture nominees of 1968. The narrative begins in 1963 — with, among other details, Warren Beatty thinking about producing and starring in an adaptation of Charles Webb’s new novel, The Graduate. Yes, you read that correctly.

At the same time, producer Arthur P Jacobs was struggling to secure the rights to the Dr Doolittle books. When I read that his most recent production at that time, What a Way to Go!, featured Margaret Dumont — still at work in 1963! — I picked up the phone and had the video sent round at once. I expect that I’ll be seeing a number of pictures in this spontaneous manner as my reading continues.

¶ What a Way to Go!

Plaza Mayor, Salamanca/Wikipedia 

To paraphrase Dr Johnson, he who is bored by Vantage Point is bored by both life and the cinema. As befits a movie that begins with explosions, this excellent little film about a big subject has no settled center of gravity. Gravity, in fact, is precisely what’s blown up. We watch, fascinated, as it reasserts itself over the course of the story.

¶ Vantage Point.

¶ Matins: Vantage Point at ten-twenty, at the Orpheum. In the evening, a MMArtists in Residence recital at Grace Rainey Rogers.

¶ Tierce: Perhaps I want to reconsider the movie? Nah, I always disagree with Manohla Dargis.

¶ Sext: The Manohla-meter worked! I had a super time. In fact, I watched the last fifteen minutes standing up. Ack-shunnn!

¶ Vespers: I’ve decided to stay home. I wouldn’t want to be looking for a slip-and-fall attorney.

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Swanky New York townhouse? Not a bit of it. It’s Joe.My.God‘s post office.

When I was in law school — I turned thirty during first year — Louis Auchincloss was my model. A successful Wall Street attorney, he cranked out novels that were taken seriously, however grudgingly, by the literary establishment. In the event, I would not become a successful lawyer, and I would not crank out novels. But he remained my model just the same.

¶ Larissa MacFarquhar on Louis Auchincloss, in The New Yorker.

High tide or low? Only the wind ripples the surface of the East River.

¶ Matins: Lunch with Nom de Plume!

¶ Tierce. The threat of Alzheimer’s is on the wane, according to a paragraph in the Times. “Older Americans are having less trouble with their memories,” and it’s all tied to schooling.

¶ Nones. Happy to be in for the day. Just before I went out, I came across some cool names for Ollie Kottke’s dinosaur.

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Today’s excerpt from Clives James’s Cultural Amnesia is about Edward Said. I’ve tried to read On Late Style several times since it was given to me, but I haven’t made much headway; the writing is clear and elegant enough but the thoughts are rebarbative. And I can’t help snorting at the idea of Mozart’s “Late Style” — as if the composer had the sense of an approaching end that so clearly inspired Beethoven (and Said’s book). By the unhappiest of accidents, Mozart happened to be fulfilling a commission to write a Requiem Mass when he died. But as this was composed for a knucklehead aristocrat who had the habit of passing off such purchases as his own work, the Requiem is not what we would call a personal project. Mozart was far more engaged with the professional projects that, in my opinion, cost him his health and then his life: two opera premieres, in the far from neighboring towns of Vienna and Prague, within the space of three weeks, and on the cusp of classically eighteen-month-long depression.   (more…)

¶ Matins: Due at Westphalia at eleven.

¶ Lauds. Unable to sleep, I read most of what’s left of Breakable You. Lights out who knows when.

¶ Tierce. In the Times, Letters to the Editor grapple with the meaning of The Great Gatsby.

¶ Sext. Mission accomplished at Westphalia, despite heavy traffic.

¶ Nones. Gotham ugliness is not confined to Queens.

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This could easily be one of those blog entries that are all about how the writer has nothing to say, &c.

An update on “What I’m Reading” used to occupy this space. Books and reading have so extensively pervaded The Daily Blague that it seems fatuous to devote an entry to what turns out, week after week, to be a list of books that I am not reading. I want to read them, I mean to read them — but I’m not reading them. I’m reading lots of other things, things which, for one reason or another, don’t seem to fall under the rubric “What I’m Reading.” All the books on the Morning Read list, for example. And all those magazines!

And now, there’s the Daily Office. This new variety of entry is still very much in the beta stage, so I’m not calling attention to it — I’m just writing it and seeing what happens. The Daily Office is a journal that I plan to spruce up with lots of links, something that The Daily Blague has been short of lately. These weekday journal entries can hold up to eight sub-entries, each one tagged with the name of a “Canonical Hour” — more about which some other time.  Because the meat of each entry lies below the jump, it ought to be very easy to see at a glance if the entry has been updated since one’s last visit to the site.

Meanwhile, our look at this week’s Book Review:

¶ Of Crime and the River.

Red or What?

¶ Matins: Tomorrow’s dates: 11:15: Rue des Médecins. Six to eight in the evening: the Poussin preview at the Museum. (Details below the jump.)

¶ Tierce. Kathleen rejects proposal to move to the Boat Basin.

¶ Nones. It’s getting colder out there — at least for shrinks.

¶ Compline. Et in Arcadia ego [!]

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