Rant rant rant, books books books

Some time ago I bought a couple of books from the Oxford University Press shop, from their sale shelves. One was the first volume of Cowie’s The Oxford History of English Lexicography, a copy from the first printing of the 2009 first edition, on sale because the dustjacket was a little bit damaged. The other was Burnett’s edition of The Poems of A.E. Housman, ‘printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability’ from the 2004 reprint of the 1997 first edition, on sale (I presume) after being printed on demand for a demand that failed to materialise. I can understand why that might have happened.

The History of Lexicography is produced to the expected OUP standard: it’s not letterpress, of course, but the text is fine, set in Minion, printed cleanly if slightly pale. The whole thing is bound in the traditional blue buckram with the press’s crest in gilt at the base of the spine; the matte paper jacket does its job. Observe the text:

By comparison the A.E. Housman is a disaster. Although the paper quality is acceptable, the text looks as though it was photocopied from a photocopy of a photocopy. The letter contrast has been brutalised: the thick strokes are too thick and have developed fuzzy edges, while the thin vertical strokes are nearly gone. The typeface was, once upon a time, Ehrhardt, which is slightly on the narrow side but generally fine for text. It wasn’t designed to be reproduced like this:

And then there is the binding. The text-block has been carelessly glued into glossy boards printed with a standard design of remarkable ugliness and poor reproduction quality: a meaningless green, blue, and purple vertical pattern on the spine, just leaking onto the black boards; the title slapped on in some form of Times New Roman with edge-jagginess turned up to 11. The false headbands, glued on at odd angles, are an insult. My copy also (intentionally?) lacks the front free endpaper, which may have further contributed to its presence on the sales shelf. I was just barely able to justify buying it from there at a steep discount, knowing that second-hand copies turn up slightly less frequently than the tooth fairy visits hens.

Which brings me to the really offensive part. The original edition of this book was produced in exactly the same way as the History of Lexicography: traditionally, attractively, legibly. If its cost was exorbitant then, it was no more exorbitant than any other academic edition or text. I still find it hard to believe that anyone thought – indeed, still thinks – it acceptable to ask the same massive sum (£145/$250) for this Calibanized thing of a book. If I had ordered a copy at full price and been presented with one of these and that price tag, I would have dropped it on the counter and reeled out of the store, ‘conscious’ (like Larkin seeing his name on a gravestone) ‘of a desire to vomit into a homburg hat’.

It’s clear from the History of Lexicography that the OUP can do this right, and that it needn’t be unreasonably expensive – it retails at £175, which is slightly more than the Housman, but one does get two definitive volumes, properly printed and bound, with contributions from a score of notable scholars. (It can currently be had direct from the OUP at half off, as well, and my secondhand copies cost less than that.) But the more I see reputable academic publishers selling cheap knock-offs of their own books at full price, the more I doubt their ability to survive the next 10 years.

More sweet things

Just as you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, you can’t make creme egg cookies without breaking both eggs and cookies.

See?

Don’t listen to them

Sometimes life really is all beer and skittles.

See?

Foodstuff

A few months ago I ordered a run of Convivium, the food journal from the makers of Hortus, which lasted for eight quarterly issues in the early 1990s. Reading it these days, when everyone buys their tripe-and-truffle sandwiches on freshly-baked spelt rolls from the local McDonalds, it seems a strange glimpse of a lost world in which Carluccio’s was run out of one man’s kitchen, Copella apple juice could only be bought from the orchard, and there was all this new and exciting food stuff just waiting to be tried if one would only meet the right people at dinner parties.

But the general idea, that food is a subject about it is worth being pretentious, is still so very relevant that the charge has been taken up again in the form of Fire & Knives, which takes advantage of the advancement in printing technology to do everything in luscious Holga-y colour instead of restrained, engraved black and white. My copy of the first issue arrived yesterday – I wasn’t particularly engrossed by the sample page on the website, but I subscribed anyway – and I was won over by page 39. Between a story on dinner parties and a story on quail, there was a spare page. So they print a photograph of a chef frying a brain in a pan, ‘because sharing such images generally improves our world’.

I wouldn’t bet on it, but here’s hoping it lasts longer than Convivium.

ETA: I have finished the issue, and I will make one recommendation: fellows, proof-read for extraneous spaces in the middle of words. Really.

A frustration

My to-read pile. It can grow no further.

A boat

In the Lake District.

Yes, I have just taken the card out of my camera for the first time in months.

Yes, I do nurse grudges

I think it is usually suggested that a slow wit is a disappointing thing to have, and that all the sharp comebacks in the world are frustratingly useless if they don’t occur to you until ten minutes after you could have snipped someone to shreds.

I disagree.

The other day I was waiting in the office of an organisation with which I must do business in order to maintain an important part of my life. (I am being vague now because I plan to be very rude shortly.) I was waiting to speak to my new point-of-contact at this particular organisation, which was a good thing because my old point-of-contact has the distinction of being the most incompetent person I have ever met, and has caused enormous stress at crucial moments because of it.

While I was waiting, the gravitational centre of all idiocy (I refer here to Old POC) walked in – having an adjacent desk to NPOC – and asked if I needed help. I said “no thanks”.

But! Now I can enjoy imagining all of the terrible, insulting, cutting remarks I could have made, had I felt like speaking my mind and my mind been up to that sort of quick-fire repartee. Like “no thanks, I’m waiting to speak to someone who can tie their own shoes.” Or “no thanks, I’ve got a question that grunting can’t answer.” Or “no thanks, you’re a useless pile of unthinking dung that ought to have been converted into horse feed at the earliest possible opportunity, but probably weren’t because horses are stupid enough already.”

Yes, these aren’t particularly good, but the beauty is I can keep working at it as long as I like, and three or for yeas from now when I have the perfect putdown I can enjoy it just as much as if it had occurred to me the moment I walked out of the office.

Life provides a one-liner

Today I finished a crossword (the Village Voice from a few weeks ago, to be precise), and my time on the digital leaderboard (9:09, to be precise) came in just above someone with the online nickname ‘Micturator’. I can only assume he was taking the piss.

E pluribus avibus, unum.

This bird is Liverpudlian. I suppose – if it weren’t a seagull – I could call it the Scouse Grouse.

News and picture

News headline of the day: Peace ‘causes increased drinking’.

Also another picture. This time Ireland. Yes, all of it.