A Pernicked Lists of Lists
And The Great Pakaluk Family Christmas Movie List
Wittgenstein used to wonder whether when a list is drawn up, the list has to include a claim about its own completeness. Suppose I make a list of everything on my desk. (You’d be surprised by the junk. Piles of endorsed, deposited checks kept for weeks “just to be sure.” Two or three Sharpies. An odd piece of wood.) Does the list need to say, “And nothing else is on this desk”? It’s a question about the function of the quantifier, “all.”
Today, two lists came to my inbox, the first, in an announcement that Chris Scalia was going to give a talk at The Heights School (which three sons attend) on his book, Thirteen Novels Conservatives Will Love (But Probably Haven’t Read).
This was a reminder to me first of all that advertisement matters! I know Chris and have been in authors’ groups with him, but I did not know about this book, which came out in May this year. —As much as I hate the appearance of self-promotion.— I’m glad that I know about this book now. I wish Chris had “self-promoted” himself more.
But then I thought, what might those 13 books be. (Actually, I thought before that, “who are these ‘conservatives,’ and am I even one of them?” The label now seems meaningless to me. If I have to use a label, I’m preferring Dan Klein’s moniker, “liberal conservative.”)
Amazon wouldn’t give me the list, but only the authors, which leads to a fun game of guessing the novel from the author. Samuel Johnson? That’s easy: Rasselas. Willa Cather? Death Comes to the Archbishop? (And yet ‘probably’ you have read that book. So maybe, My Ántonia!). Walter Scott? Ha ha ha ha. Which one? All are equally valuable (I’m not going to add, “or not.). I’ll guess Ivanhoe.
The second list was from the mailing of The Lamp magazine, marked perhaps by a somewhat persnikety editorial manner. (Or perhaps I should say “persnickety to me.” And maybe it is so because I can be persnickety.) Did you know that “persnickety” comes from a Scots word, “pernicky”? From a dictionary of broad Scots:
PERNICKETIE, adj., adv., n. Also perni(c)kitie, -y, pir-, pick-, -ketty, -kittie, -kertie, pernikket(i) (Sh. 1908 Jak. (1928), 1914 Angus Gl.), perneekity (Sc. 1911 S.D.D.); perneckety; persnickety; pernackety; parnackity; pernigglety (Kcb. 1900); prignickitie (Rxb. 1825 Jam.); pirnickerie (s.Sc. 1825 Jam.); pernicky; and quasi-ppl. forms pernicked, pernicket(t) (Rxb. 1942 Zai).
I’ve got to find a way to use “pernicked.”
By the way, speaking of lists, the Online Dictionary of Etymology identifies these as their trending words:
Fetus? Render as “offspring” please.
Mark Twain used to tell stories to his children composed by weaving together all the objects that had been placed on the living room mantle piece in anticipation as a challenge during the day. Here’s a challenge: write a sentence using all the words on this list, and no trivial uses (which would makes it easy, as to wit: “Standing on a rostrum I said, declining to speak on religion, gender, art, or morphology, that, rather, I would hope to tell the story of a woman who was nice to her fetus”).
The Lamp sent this:
Our readers’ list of offbeat Christmas movies includes some old favorites (Die Hard, Metropolitan, Muppets’ Christmas Carol, etc.), but also includes some truly outré offerings. Here are a few: Dekalog: Three, My Night at Maud’s, The Dead, In Bruges, Eastern Promises, Tokyo Godfathers, Gingerbread Journeys, The Hunt for Red October, Three Godfathers, Mean Girls, and Mr. Bean’s Holiday.
No comment. I’ll simply juxtapose the list of Christmas movies which has been compiled in my family over the years:
3 Godfathers
A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott -or- Alisdair Sims (1957)
A Christmas Wish
Charlie Brown Christmas
Christmas in Connecticut
Die Hard
Elf
Holiday Inn
Home Alone
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
It Happened on Fifth Avenue
It’s a Wonderful Life
Miracle on 34th Street
Remember the Night (NOT It Happened One Night, another great movie)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Shop Around the Corner
The Bishop’s Wife
The Little Troll Princess
The Muppets Christmas Carol
The Snowman (animated, for little kids)
We’re No Angels
White Christmas
But this list of lists, alas, needs to be brought to an end. It will therefore declare itself not to be complete. And I’ll finish it with two lists I recently sent out to students, who asked me “What movies do you most recommend?” and “What musicals do you think are the best?”
Films (in rough order):
Ordet
High Noon
North by Northwest
Babette’s Feast
Seven Samurai
The Island (Russian, 2006)
The African Queen
Ben-Hur
The Ten Commandments
Vertigo
Witness for the Prosecution
Musicals (not in any particular order)
Oklahoma!
Carousel
An American in Paris
Brigadoon
Showboat
South Pacific
Guys and Dolls
West Side Story (original)
My Fair Lady
Fiddler on a Roof
Sound of Music
My wife and I will use these lists during the holidays in Stockholm.
RE Christmas movies: Know and agree on many of yours, notably Die Hard. A favorite of our family (my wife, my daughter, and me) is A Christmas Story (1983).
RE my own favorites, of any kind: My list, too, includes High Noon. And I'm big on The Seven Samurai. Others would be Roman Holiday, Casablanca, and A Little Princess (1995) (this last a big family favorite; a great father-daughter movie).
RE Hitchcock, I love the two you list, but: Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Lady Vanishes.
A favorite comedy extravaganza: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Simply a great simple plot!
Musicals: I'm not so into them, but family favorites are The Sound of Music and, most especially, Mary Poppins.