“You are the main trouble with this university”: body-text fonts, pt. 39: ITC Galliard

More Thurber (“University Days,” in My Life and Hard Times):

The typeface is the ubiquitous ITC Galliard, implemented successfully or not depending on the paper, the ink cartridge, the positions of certain celestial bodies, etc. Just look at all those Library of America volumes with their uniform design. In some, the text is beautiful and legible; in others, it’s too dark or too light.

Compare with this sample from Hammett:

Of course the scan quality also affects these samples, but my point is that the print quality varies greatly – even from page to page. I admire Galliard’s letters but never have been tempted to make them the basis of a printable document. Printing body text set in Galliard would be like playing the lottery.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

P.S. regarding the passage in the first sample:

It’s a joke, of course. But as I age, I find myself agreeing rather often with General Littlefield, especially when I use social media. I catch myself thinking that this or that individual pip-squeak is the main trouble with this country (this church, this fanbase, this social class, etc. – and yes, this university, or universities in general).

As far as I can tell, this attitude is indefensible. But the feeling is so strong, it would be illuminating if some philosopher could put together a half-plausible rationalization for it. (Not for scapegoating, which I take to be primarily concerned with types or groups rather than individuals.)

The Dain curse; a weekend outside the house

Not a good novel, The Dain Curse (1929). Indeed, not really a novel. Mostly, self-contained stories, strung together.

(I wonder how often this sort of detective “novel” used to get published. Agatha Christie’s The Big Four [1927] is another specimen.)

Here’s a passage in which the detective recites a non-exhaustive version of the casualty list. (To reduce spoilage, I’ll replace the victims’ and perpetrators’ names with capital letters.)

“Are you sure,” Fitzstephan asked, “that you’re right in thinking there must be a connection?”

“Yeah. A’s father, step-mother, physician, and husband have been slaughtered in less than a handful of weeks – all the people closest to her. That’s enough to tie it all together for me. If you want more links, I can point them out to you. B and C were the apparent instigators of the first trouble, and got killed. D of the second, and got killed. E of the third, and got killed. Mrs. F killed her husband; G apparently killed his wife, and D would have killed his if I hadn’t blocked him. A, as a child, was made to kill her mother; A’s maid was made to kill H, and nearly me. F left behind him a statement explaining – not altogether satisfactorily – everything, and was killed. So did and was Mrs. G. Call any of these pairs coincidences. Call any couple of pairs coincidences. You’ll still have enough left to point at somebody who’s got a system he likes, and sticks to it.”

Fitzstephan squinted thoughtfully at me, agreeing:

“There may be something in that. It does, as you put it, look like the work of one mind.”

In the last two chapters, Hammett somehow makes good his detective’s hunch and ties all these crimes together as “the work of one mind.” He also wrings as much comedy as possible from his distressed damsel’s morphine withdrawal.

The ending almost makes the book worthwhile.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin’s dad & Carol took Samuel to Fort Wayne over the weekend. It went well enough until bedtime, when Samuel shrieked and shrieked that he wanted to walk home to be with Mommy & Daddy.

In South Bend, Karin & I took Daniel to get his hair cut. Later, we took him to a park. He loved it so well, he protested (shrieking) all the way home from the park.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Something’s wrong with how I’ve been sleeping. Today my head and shoulder and the back of my neck feel like somebody whacked them with a board.

Another mouse

We aren’t very sick anymore. I have to blow my nose a lot, but that’s the extent of it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Last night, we saw a mouse in our basement. Get it, Jasper!, we said.

A little later, we saw our champion mouser trotting along, his mouth full, a bit of brown fuzz dangling out of it. Karin followed after Jasper with an empty potato-salad container. He tried to escape into one of his hidey-holes to play with his prize, but Karin caught him and he grudgingly released the limp thing.

It was a plastic toy. The bit of fuzz was a dust bunny. We didn’t see the mouse again.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This, at last, is shaping up to be the August when I read all of Light in August.

Some more August reading:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The Merchant of Venice.

Operation Mincemeat, by Ben Macintyre.

Storm, by George R. Stewart.

Something crime-ey as soon as I wind up The Dain Curse.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ana & David and their children, Ada and George, will be in town from Saturday to Saturday.

A perfunctory update

Our air conditioner does seem to have died. Our furnace, too. The company that sold us our home warranty is figuring out what to do, or not do, for us.

It’s been a hot week. The temperature in the house was 89 degrees F for a long time.

Karin’s health improved. She worked the last two days.

Daniel has fallen ill with coughing and fever.

I also am ill now, with congestion and fever – and with the usual bleak thoughts about life, death, and trivia. What’s the best way to put mayonnaise in a sandwich? My fever-addled mind has been returning to this tedious question again and again.

During a semi-lucid spell, I read some chapters of The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett. The detective goes into a dark room. He breathes in a poisonous gas. He sees what appears to be a supernatural being hovering in a jet of colored steam. He tries to fight the supernatural being.

Happily, I never became as confused as that detective.

Samuel has been healthy, quiet, and considerate. Well done, Samuel!

Here is a photo of Daniel taken after he rocked himself to sleep on Moby the Whale.

Red harvest

Just finished Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. Strange literary specimen. Hugely, rightly influential – film-and-TV debtors alone include Yojimbo, A Fistful of Dollars, Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome, Miller’s Crossing, Twin Peaks, Deadwood, etc., etc. (Recently read entertaining Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette; same sort of thing.)

And yet: Not all that good.

Influential due to setup. Isolated locale ravaged by corrupt, rich, warring factions (even “good” factions basically bad). Outsider hero – or, readers might prefer, anti-hero – resolves to clean up locale. Cannily plays factions against each other until factions eliminated and locale rosier, i.e., redder (anti-capitalist undertone).

Book itself rather sloppy. Warring factions not clearly defined. Motives nowhere near subtle. Plot nowhere near tidy. Deeds and settings under-described: little physical sense of action or place. Language too cute.