Looking forward to collecting what would be recollected later.
How could I have forgotten where to find that marginal note? Because I am a dolt, that’s how.
(I wonder, Van, why you are doing your best to transform our poetical and unique past into a dirty farce? Honestly, Van! Oh, I am honest, that’s how it went. I wasn’t sure of my ground, hence the sauciness and the simper. Ah, parlez pour vous: I, dear, can affirm that those famous fingertips up your Africa and to the edge of the world came considerably later when I knew the itinerary by heart. Sorry, no—if people remembered the same they would not be different people. That’s-how-it-went. But we are not “different”! Think and dream are the same in French. Think of the douceur, Van! Oh, I am thinking of it, of course, I am—it was all douceur, my child, my rhyme. That’s better, said Ada.)
Context is everything (“p. 120. parlez pour vous: speak for yourself,” offers Vivian Darkbloom). —Speaking of which, I shall now remedy the grave disservice of failing to note the delicious synchrony of wood s lot marking Diane di Prima’s birthday scant days after I picked up Memoirs of a Beatnik on a (prurient) whim. There’s frequent delicious synchronies to be found at wood s lot; this is but the latest, which leads us to di Prima’s website, and leads me to add One Too Like Thee to my list of Phantom Books to be Tripped Over Someday if I’m Lucky. (And one does get lucky: why, look! From a year-old number of the Nutmeg Point District Mail:
UNHISTORY AT LAST!
Tor Books will publish Adventures in Unhistory. The last book published during Avram Davidson’s lifetime will once again be available for the edification and pleasure of readers. Not a month goes by but your editor receives multiple inquries from would-be readers, collectors, librarians, and even booksellers seeking what has become a genuine rara avis among recently published books.
Further details, including publication date, will be announced as they become known.
(And though said details have yet to forthcome, this mere hint of an announcement is itself enough to kindle hope in a breast long since inured to stoney disappointment. My breath is yet bated, if not wholly held.)
So: to repair this divarication, I’ll return for a moment to Ada, or Ardor and note an instance of prior art, to be found on p. 86 (“strapontin: folding seat in front,” offers Darkbloom) of the Vintage International trade paperback edition:
Being unfamiliar with the itinerary of sun and shade in the clearing, he had left his bicycle to endure the blazing beams for at least three hours. Ada mounted it, uttered a yelp of pain, almost fell off, googled, recovered—and the rear tire burst with a comic bang.
Well. Okay. Maybe not. But still.
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google intr. Of the ball: to have a ‘googly’ break and swerve. Of the bowler; to bowl a googly or googlies; also (trans.), to give a googly break to (a ball). Hence googler, a googly bowler.
Why did I never think to look "google" up in the OED before? (I gather a "googly" is the cricket equivalent of a curve ball.) As always, V.V. turns up a mot juste most of us would never have thought of (even, I dare say, those of us who, unlike this one of us, are familiar with cricket... and notice that the OED does not even bother to mention that the ball of which they speak is a cricket ball). At any rate, I really must reread Ada posthaste.
Curious as to any further datums re: ADVENTURES IN UNHISTORY, which is probably at the top of everybody's list of Books What I Oughta Bought When I Had The Chance...
For an explanation of the Googlie and a funny film; see the movie Hope and Glory.