News and Sundry
The critic, translator, and biographer David Bellos has died, as was announced this week by his colleagues at Princeton University. Bellos had a long and productive career but is perhaps best known for his work on 20th-century French literature. He translated George Perec’s monumental novel Life: A User’s Manual in 1987 and then went on to write a biography of the author, Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which was published in 1993. Notable for this newsletter, Bellos also hosted a weekly series of public translation-related speaking events at Princeton. There, I met and talked with him as a casual visitor, not as an academic or an invited guest, but he extended the greatest amount of warmth and courtesy during our brief acquaintance.
The Graveyard Review, an annual zine about cemeteries and horror movies, has just published it second issue, with a contribution by yours truly; I review The Woodlands, a historic cemetery in West Philadelphia, which may or may not have been immortalized in the classic 1976 crime drama Mikey and Nicky. For additional information and details about purchasing print and digital copies, please go to the Substack of
, who, along with , edits The Graveyard Review. No events have been planned for this release, but if you, kind reader, are able to find me walking the banks of the Schuylkill, I will relate certain mysteries not disclosed on this or any other mortal page.
Self-Officiation
Last weekend, some New York friends happened to be visiting, not visiting our part of the state, not Philadelphia, but rather its mountainous (or nicely hilly) northeastern quadrant, specifically in the Poconos, so me and my fiancée, now my wife, decided to visit them there and have them sign, as witnesses, our marriage license, in a ceremony peculiar to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, officially called a “self-officiating marriage” but unofficially referred to, even in official circumstances, as a “Quaker marriage” because of the denomination’s influence on state law from the colonial period onwards. It made for a beautiful weekend.
Usually by then, in the middle of the end of October, the trees would have already dropped most of their leaves. But fall had been warmer than usual in the Poconos and the steeply banked valleys along the Lehigh River kept their color wonderfully. There was a corresponding increase in traffic in Jim Thorpe, a scenic tourist town nestled along the river, named or rather renamed in honor of the American Indian athlete, despite him not ever setting foot in the place, at least while he was alive. As it happens, the original name of the town, Mauch Chunk, does have indigenous roots, meaning “Bear Place” in the Unami branch of the Lenape Language. While we were walking to brunch, a man shouted out from his lifted pickup truck that Jim Thorpe was “not that special” and that we should all “just go home”. — Too late for that, way too late.
The wedding ceremony, so-called, was self-officiated by me and my fiancée over brunch and witnessed by friends, not solemnly, as in the Quaker tradition, with a moment of silence, but rather between a course of deviled eggs, the paperwork spread over the tablecloth. The topic of general conversation was roguelike videogames and the annoying persistence of QR-code menus. Having more important matters on her mind, the proprietor of the cafe explained, with some solemnity, that she did not serve fries and chicken tenders. Apparently, visitors to Jim Thorpe expected them as a matter of course, from any establishment. Truth be told, chicken tenders did seem like a nice option, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment, informal though it was, by being flip and ordering them anyway.
Congrats!