Confederacy of a Dunce - No photos here, please move along

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

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As promised yesterday, here are all the photos from my cycle commute to work this morning:
Caption 1: It's raining. And chilly. So I decided not to take the camera on my cycle commute.
Caption 2: I decided not to take the cycle either.
Caption 3: So why am I bothering to write captions for nonexistent photos of a nonexistent journey? Hmmm I'll have to think about that one.

One of the disadvantages of being close to several useful bus routes is that it's very easy to take the lazy way out and leave the bike behind. It adds about 20 minutes to my commuting time, but gives me a chance to read. Those of you who may think my reading choices are unusual, individualistic or somehow out of the mainstream will be very disappointed to learn that I am following a massive public trend with my current choice of reading material. Yes, I have joined in the fad and am now reading Trilby by George du Maurier (OK, I'm a little behind the bleeding edge of this fad which had its heyday nearly 100 years ago, but I'm a follower not a leader). As for reading it, well, it's certainly a product of its time: it's set in Paris and chock full of clever French bons mots, well, even entire conversations that are not entirely transparent to a dullard/simpleton reader who does not read French (surely the sign of an inferior education). But the real delight is being introduced to the original Svengali, whose name has of course entered the English lexicon " to designate one who exercises a controlling or mesmeric influence on another, freq. for some sinister purpose." (Oxford English Dictionary). But he is introduced in a very subtle manner which gives no clues whatsoever that he may have sinister motives:

First, a tall bony individual of any age between thirty and forty-five, of Jewish aspect, wll-featured but sinister. He was very shabby and dirty, and wore a red béret and a large velveteen cloak, with a big metal clasp at the collar. His thick heavy, languid lustreless black hair fell down behind his ears on to his shoulders, in that musician-like way that is so offensive to the normal Englishman. He had bold, brilliant black eyes, with long heavy lids, a thin, sallow face, and a beard of burnt-up black, which grew almost from under his eyelids, and over it his moustache, a shade lighter, fell in two long spiral twists. He went by the name Svengali, and spoke fluent French with a German accent and humourous German twists and idioms, and his voice was very thin and mean and harsh, and often broke into a disagreeable falsetto.

There is no shortage of Svengali figures in the news: GhanaWeb describes Karl Rove as Bush's Svengali (and wishes for even half-a-Rove behind Ghana's President Kufuor, perhaps missing the "sinister" implications of the term), and many other news or "news" articles use the term in the same contexts. Other Svengalis appear (like the original Svengali) in the music business (Suge Knight to Snoop Dogg, Alanis Morissette's "producer/collaborator/svengali" Glenn Ballard, Dr. Dre [who I believe is NOT a real DOCTOR!] to The Game, and numerous others). Maybe some day I too will become a Svengali, but first I'll need a velveteen cloak and a bad dye job.

bike | read

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 10:03:11 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)