Body-text fonts, pt. 36: Gill Sans

A sans-serif typeface – rare in this series.

Designed by the wicked Eric Gill. Practically synonymous with Britain.

I don’t care for the regular weight, actually, but the lighter weight is very nice in certain settings, e.g. in this remarkable Lego-builders’ book that Samuel borrowed from the library. (I refer to the body text, not the heading.)

I made the caption easier to read:

(Echoes of Ian Fleming’s prose.)

Gill Sans Nova is a nice compromise, weight-wise.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ada and George, my little niece and nephew, visited today. They were eager to see their cousins but couldn’t keep their names straight.

Ada drew this card-brandishing soccer referee. Notice the microphone wrapped around his or her cheek.

Some old, old, old favorites

For the boys, we put on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – overlong but not devoid of charm. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were responsible for twenty-five to fifty percent of my anglophilia. Daniel is transfixed, and Samuel jumps up and down: he loves the old automobiles. One of the best gifts I ever bought him was a huge volume called The Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars ($1 at a library sale). It is too heavy for him to gently carry around, and so, over the years, he has wrecked its spine. (Lately, Daniel has been tearing out its pages; he also ripped the front cover off a paperback that I received in the mail today.)

I once read Ian Fleming’s Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang during a long car ride. The novel was disappointing. At least it is slim. The movie is 2½ hours long. Some of its musical numbers seem that long, all by themselves.

Tonight we don’t watch the whole movie. Instead, I put on Bugs Bunny: Superstar and we watch the first two cartoons. Samuel doesn’t know what to make of it. He’s a shrewder child than I was. Bugs Bunny may have unduly influenced my personality.

Edoarda & Stephen have acquired a puppy: Rembrandt (Remi). Last night we all went over to Mishawaka to meet him. He is still an excitable young beast.

Body-text fonts, pt. 3: Melior

The mower is repaired, thanks to Karin’s dad; and the lawn is cut, thanks to me. And just in time, because this has been a rainy day.

On the whole, the weather has not been bad, but I haven’t wanted to go out strolling with Samuel and Daniel. I’ve been reluctant to take Daniel out very far: he’s still so small.

It’s not easy to think of good content for this blog when I don’t leave the house.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This month’s font, Melior, was designed by the great Hermann Zapf.

Speaking of Bond, I suppose the Russians are due to make a comeback as “the baddies” of spy fiction.

The reason is terrible, of course.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Domestic terrorism is featured in British thrillers more and more often. Has this been true of U.S. thrillers? Of the Jack Reacher novels, for example?

It’s fun to read about agents who fight exotic foreigners. I imagine it would be less pleasing to read a thriller about, e.g., a homegrown mass shooter.

Reading report

For the third time, I’m trying to read Rebecca. Some passages are very good. Some could have been trimmed down a bit. In general, the book emits a nice, festering scent of dread.

I was inspired to try out Rebecca again because I’d just finished a du Maurier-like James Bond novel: The Spy Who Loved Me. What a weird little book. Its narrator, a young woman, juxtaposes her sordid past with her terrifying present, in which two monstrous goons pursue her through a nightmarish landscape. Toward the end, James Bond becomes the narrator’s life-saver and lover. (I haven’t spoiled the plot, most of which can be discerned by reading the table of contents.) Bond behaves like a douchebag.

In the Bond novel, the haunted past is, for the most part, linearly recounted – not woven in along with the present terror, a technique that du Maurier skillfully employs in Rebecca. Ian Fleming should’ve written a second draft. But, apparently, he never did that with his novels. Not surprisingly, The Spy Who Loved Me was poorly received: none of the book’s plot was incorporated into the movie of that title, and Fleming made the book unavailable as a paperback for as long as he could.

These two fantastical novels have been something of a break from the realism of Sjöwall’s & Wahlöö’s police procedurals, of which I’ve read five in the last two months. I’m halfway through that series. I now have no trouble identifying the funny parts. When certain characters appear – especially the unrefined inspector Gunvald Larsson and the lazy patrolmen Kristiansson and Kvant – it’s a signal that humor is forthcoming. It’s the despairing kind of humor that says, “On such pillars as these, society rests.” The Swedish welfare state is criticized for allowing the lower orders to distract themselves with drugs, drink, and sex while the upper orders squirrel away the crucial assets. It’s a criticism from the Left: it explains why the workers of the world aren’t uniting.

The Caribbean

In Doctor No, James Bond travels to Crab Key: a horrid little island, the base for a vicious tycoon who rules over the guano trade. Ah, the Caribbean. It would be nice to go back there (I was in Jamaica in 1993). I think of the various Caribbean books in my library. Cambridge’s Concise History of the Caribbean. Biographical and autobiographical writings about Marcus Garvey. A collection of Haitian revolutionary documents. A book about Fidel Castro’s wars in Africa. A book about the Cuba of José Martí. A Caribbean Mystery. A High Wind in Jamaica. Wide Sargasso Sea. V.S. Naipaul. Juan Bosch. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.

The telephone rings: I’ve been selected for two cruise tickets to the Bahamas! The condition is that I answer a brief survey.

All rightie.

Should the United States make it a priority to get over its dependency on fossil fuels?

Yes!

If there were an electric car, sold for such-and-such a price, rechargeable every-so-many miles, would you buy it for the primary driver in your household?

Yes!

(I can’t remember the third question, but it, too, is an environmental one. Yes!)

Thank you. Now someone will take your personal information. Please stay on the line.

But I don’t actually wish to go to the Bahamas.

Besides, would Karin wish to go to the Bahamas? Could she take off from work to go to the Bahamas?

Besides, traveling on a cruise ship is, like, the worst thing that an ordinary person could do to the environment.

I feel a pang of guilt. I hang up.

Where were we, ah yes, the literary Caribbean. Better than the literary Middle Ages. Last week I talked to a guy who liked medievalish fantasy fiction so well that he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in medieval literature. He specialized in the late-medieval poets who were “responding to” Chaucer. I asked him which literature of the period he might recommend to me, to someone whose interest was very casual; and with a straight face he told me Game of Thrones. No, I said, something from the period. He told me I might like Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales. Later I told Mary about this. She was not impressed.

Reading report; dreaming report

I await my $0.64 copy of The Sorrow of Belgium. I bought it online from Better World Books. It has passed from BWB’s warehouse in Mishawaka (5–6 mi from my house) to Cincinnati, OH, to Allen Park, MI – near to Detroit. Now I’m hoping it’ll come back west.

It’s dumb for stuff to be shipped so circuitously. Would the Pony Express have taken this route? I doubt it.

Meantime, I’m making good progress reading these books:

Inner Workings by J.M. Coetzee;
The Witches by Roald Dahl;
Doctor No by Ian Fleming.

Later this month, Karin & I’ll go on a long car-ride to a place called Brown City Camp. I don’t like to listen to audiobooks, but Karin does. I’ll compromise. The key is to pick out something funny and gruesome: for instance, a book written by Roald Dahl and narrated by Stephen Fry, or by Hugh Laurie, or by some other British comic person. (Maybe also some nice sermons.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I dreamed last night that I wasn’t very fat any more – but also not very limber; and that I was trying to play soccer on a tiny field with two dozen other people, and that the passing lanes were all blocked off; and that the overaggressive coach (or whoever he was) was telling me to “jab the foot in” more, and I was like, It isn’t necessary, Sir: on this congested field I can simply hold the ball carrier off; he will lose his control of the ball. And I dreamed that I scored my only goal by climbing up a chain-linked fence and waiting for the ball to come up to me and then tapping it in from above the other players; but everyone wanted to disallow that goal.

I dream a lot of dreams like this one.

Gatsby

The nation rejoices: Castillo’s ligament isn’t torn. Though he won’t play for a couple of weeks, he’ll be included in our World Cup roster.

The score of our last warm-up, against England: 2 to 2.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Martin and I watch the new Gatsby movie. (He might show it to his highschoolers.) We take turns cringing. … Though I’ve read the book twice, and seen an opera of it, I hardly remember the story. What I notice this time is how Gatsby keeps on repeating the phrase “old sport.” (I recall a similar faux pas by a character in From Russia with Love, the Bond novel. Is Fleming spoofing Fitzgerald?) … Downtown, Sabby (the male) says of a pedestrian: “There goes the Gatsby of South Bend.” What a sad description to be known by! And how ridiculous that I, so removed from the local “scene,” should know exactly who that person is. … Reputation is a horrid thing. When I’m introduced to new people, they look startled — and then they say they know my reputation. Those are the words they use. Nothing makes me queasier.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Come, meet Bianca,” I say to Cristian. The little beast is resting on a chair. She raises her chin, and Cristian strokes it. “You are beautiful,” he tells her. “At last I meet this cat — the Internet sensation.”

(This photo is nothing special; but with a laptop camera it’s the best I can do to show Bianca sleeping in her box.)