[lit-ideas] Re: Wonder of Whizz and Shakespeare the Thinker

Two point four whizzy-bits of speed, just chew on that, and a screen that you 
have to search to locate where your eyes should be pointed, and an ipod and a 
new printer.  I am *so* up-to-date.  Quick, ask me my opinion of something 
really up-to-date, "Forever Twenty One," for example.

Well, since you asked, "Forever Twenty One," which is a store, should 
be prosecuted for having a big sign at the entrance saying, "$3.99 and up."  
What, I asked the first person I met, costs three ninety nine?  "Perhaps 
something on the clearance rack at the back of the store," she hazarded.  Well 
hazarded is about right for, having paid for a new computer I was in the mood 
for some savings. Nothing, nada, zip on the rack at $3.99.  Something should be 
done.

(Footnote: I was actually only carrying the wallet; it was my daughter who 
wanted to investigate the store.)

Why do I have an ipod and a printer?  It's Mac's back to school (and in 
"school" they include professors) deal.  Buy a whizzy, bit-stuffed piece of 
elegance... get an ipod and a printer, after jumping through only several 
thousand rebate steps.

And what about the old beast?  Pronounced by the repair specialists beyond 
redemption, absolutely ready to be take out behind the barn and introduced to 
the business end of the duck punt gun.  I'm not at all sure that I'm going to 
get my mail files away from its death grip.

Meanwhile, a sad note.  Passing time this evening, I opened the "New Yorker," 
turned to the book reviews, chanced upon "Shakespeare the Thinker," by A.D. 
Nuttall.  The review is a good one, a study "rich in unexpected 
juxtapositions"...analysis which, "never pulls too far away from the action 
onstage."  It concludes, "the Shakespeare who emerges here is a 'systematically 
elusive' intelligence, whose brilliance lay in his ability to join 
'verisimilitude to wonder.'"  That might equally describe Nuttall, a man I 
didn't come close to understanding but who I thought kind of wonderful when he 
was my personal tutor at Sussex.  The review began, "Nuttall, who died earlier 
this year..."

He kept a bottle of sherry in his filing cabinet.  When I run across some 
sherry I'll have a drop in his memory.

David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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