My Life and Thoughts

Democratic readers!  Thanks to all who voted in the epic Google/ Gogol pun contest, which, due to technical problems, raged on for a full week longer than I had intended (sorry, Bibliomosquito).  But the results are finally in: Gogol documents (Kate Romatowski) came in first with 54 votes, just one vote ahead of Gogol maps (Peli Grietzer); Gogolplex (Isabel Brown) placed in a respectable, Nader-like third, with 15 votes.  In recognition of the very close outcome, book prizes will be sent to both Kate and Peli, and I salute all three finalists for their hard work and ingenuity!

I’m just back in San Francisco from a particularly strenuous trip to the East Coast, where I attended, among other more-or-less Dostoevskian social functions, a twelve-hour Italian-language performance of The Demons on Governor’s Island.  I urge you all to check out the riveting minute-by-minute account, “My Twelve-Hour Blind Date, With Dostoevsky,” on the Paris Review blog.

Forthright readers!  I’m not going to sit here and tell you all that those twelve hours (actually fifteen hours, if you count transit time) were one unmitigated whirlwind of delight, because they weren’t.  Nonetheless, perhaps Dostoevsky put it best when he wrote the epigraph to The Brothers Karamazov: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).  By which I mean to say that, even though something in me died during that performance, slowly, over the course of 12-15 hours, my cultural martyrdom did subsequently yield several non-negligible benefits, three of which I would like to share with you today.

1.  My fellow-sufferer Paul Roossin (the one who observed that the fat man had no decorum) sent along a really great photograph of The Possessed in an exotic location:

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Literate readers!  If you haven’t already, now is the time to vote in the Google/ Gogol pun contest.  Gogol Documents and Gogol Maps have been neck to neck for the past 48 hours—and it isn’t too late for Gogolplex to make an amazing comeback either!

In the meantime I am happy to share with you yesterday’s OED word of the day.  The D-list has made it to the A-list of dictionaries!

D-list, n. and adj.

DRAFT ENTRY June 2010

orig. U.S.

Brit. /dilst/, U.S. /dilst/  [< D n. + LIST n.⁶ , after A-LIST n., B-LIST n., C-LIST n.]

A. n.

1. The fourth in a series of lists, esp. lists ranked in order of preference or significance.

1951 White Bk. Aggressive Activities towards Yugoslavia (Yugoslav Min. Foreign Affairs) II. iii. 301 They had instructions to put through the proposed ‘D’ list in its entirety. They refuse to lift the ‘export ban’. 1957 B. HIGGINS Indonesia’s Econ. Stabilization & Devel. i. 3 Imports were divided into four categories: an ‘A’ list of free imports, a ‘B’ list requiring payment of 100 percent ‘inducement’, a ‘C’ list requiring payment of 200 percent inducement, and a prohibited ‘D’ list. 1987 in T. McCourt Conflicting Communication Interests in Amer. (1999) ii. 52 ‘What kind of cuts..are you considering for CPB?’ Stockman said, ‘Well, let’s see. We have an A, a B, a C, and a D list. They’re on our D list. That’s a 50 percent cut.’

2. Any (notional) list comprising only the least celebrated or important members of a particular group, esp. in the entertainment industry or the media.

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Autonomous readers!  If you love democracy, now is your chance to prove it by voting on your favorite Google/ Gogol pun by Friday the 9th.

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Many many thanks to everyone who participated!  Honorable mention goes regretfully to Lev Blumenfeld for pointing out that the real winner was, as usual, Google, because on April 1, 2009 (Gogol’s 200th birthday), they replaced the Google logo with a Gogol logo.  (The same BBC article includes a poll in which readers voted on whether Gogol is Russian, Ukrainian, or belongs to the whole world.  Read it and weep, nationalists.)  I’m not considering them eligible for prizes, though, because they already have too many books for their own good.

A belated shout-out is also due to all the San Franciscans who tore themselves away from the Dyke March long enough to attend the Believer All-Acoustic Summer Festival of Language and Thinking last Saturday. I had a great time representing the world’s non-Jewish peoples, in a fantastic billing with Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Justin Taylor, Damion Searls (whose wife brought a vuvuzela), and a wonderful musical group identified as “the Jews of Citay” (a subset of the musical group Citay).

I leave you now with some amazing images, courtesy of esteemed reader/ contest finalist Kate Romatowski, depicting “The Possessed bravely tracking some of Yellowstone Park’s more fearsome wildlife, as well as touring Strasbourg’s monuments to those great French literary heroes, Goethe and Gutenberg.”

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