Veronica Lake and Gooseneck Trailers: McPhee Ponders Points of Reference
March 11, 2015 5:32 PM   Subscribe

In an essay for the New Yorker, John McPhee (previously, previously, and previously) reflects on the points of reference writers choose in order to illuminate their topics, sometimes to the annoyance of readers. "Mention Beyoncé and everyone knows who she is. Mention Veronica Lake and you might as well be in the Quetico-Superior." Frame of Reference: To illuminate—or to irritate?
Meanwhile, though, in a contrary way, we have come upon a topic of first importance in the making of a piece of writing: its frame of reference, the things and people you choose to allude to in order to advance its comprehensibility. ... Frames of reference are like the constellation of lights, some of them blinking, on an airliner descending toward an airport at night. You see the lights. They imply a structure you can’t see. Inside that frame of reference—those descending lights—is a big airplane with its flaps down expecting a runway.
But what happens when the references fail to resonate?

Mentioned in this essay: Sprezzatura. The possibility of a "sincere" mustache. A tetragrammatonic anything. Tom Ripley. Abe Vigoda. And the apocryphal origins of the word "posh," together with McPhee's charming argument for keeping, rather than striking, the word or phrase that will reach 1 in 10,000 readers.
posted by MonkeyToes (56 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Who?
posted by notyou at 5:45 PM on March 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


This reminded me of this blog entry from Gin and Tacos about points of reference for a modern audience.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:55 PM on March 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


Hold my watch, because if it breaks I'll kill everyone on this train.
posted by valkane at 5:58 PM on March 11, 2015


Who?

Veronica Lake? Isn't she that teen girl detective that had a TV series a while ago?
posted by happyroach at 6:12 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I do really love John McPhee's writing (especially Annals of the Former World, which I think featured the geologist with the tetragrammatonic moustache), now that I have google available at all times, am happy for him to keep having fun with his words. That's one of my favorite kindle features, too, actually - the ability to move my cursor over a word and get a dictionary definition. It's a nice way to keep myself honest, keep from skimming, and really sink my teeth into a book.
posted by ChuraChura at 6:16 PM on March 11, 2015 [7 favorites]


This is why I make my references as obscure and personal as possible, or you know just an old honey and egg try.
posted by The Whelk at 6:16 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


And before the inevitable get off my lawn joke, John McPhee has already been told to leave by an angry greenkeeper (New Yorker essay on McPhee's habit of collecting lost golf balls; the last paragraph is a small treasure).
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:18 PM on March 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


I love Veronica Lake.
posted by spitbull at 6:23 PM on March 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Obsure referents are for historians and steeple-jacks.

The distinction is your own.
posted by clavdivs at 6:24 PM on March 11, 2015


I really enjoyed the John McPhee I've read (which is limited I should say to parts of two books; I'll finish Annals of the Former World one day, I swear), but I imagine reading him pre-Google was a very different experience. I found myself stopping to check references, look up words, and get background on things he mentioned in passing often.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:26 PM on March 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


If I didn't know what sprezzatura meant I should look it up. Oh, here we go:
sprezzatura
(ˌsprɛttsaˈtura)
[It.]
Ease of manner, studied carelessness; the appearance of acting or being done without effort; spec. of literary style or performance.
But then, I'm not being paid to put on an air of faux naïvety, or to name-drop people who might educate me.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:28 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Isn't she that teen girl detective that had a TV series a while ago?

No, that was Ricki Lake. Right?
posted by drinkyclown at 6:36 PM on March 11, 2015


Who framed roger rabbit?
posted by clavdivs at 6:40 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd, This Gun For Hire--time to see that again.
posted by librosegretti at 6:42 PM on March 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Am I missing something? Is there a reason he writes "starboard out, starboard home" instead of 'port out', not just once, but twice?
/twirls unliteral moustache
posted by unliteral at 6:45 PM on March 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


It's explained in the article -- the people in that club are one rung below the people who can afford the good side of the ship in both directions.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:50 PM on March 11, 2015


Good grief. I read that part 10 times at least and missed the 'one below Ascot' every time.
posted by unliteral at 7:15 PM on March 11, 2015


"I'm not a paranoid deranged millionaire. Goddamit, I'm a billionaire."

-Howard Hughes.
posted by clavdivs at 7:16 PM on March 11, 2015


Veronica Lake, IMDB

Must see: Sullivan's Travels.
posted by spitbull at 7:17 PM on March 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Oh, for goodness sakes, just look at Veronica in this trailer for "Sullivan's Travels"
posted by TDavis at 7:22 PM on March 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


As a college teacher I've given up on any and all musician references. Van Morrison? Jackson Browne? Tom Petty? No chance. But what pushed me into giving up was when, a few years ago, only ONE student in my class had any idea who Bob Dylan is.

Even Marilyn Monroe is a mystery name.
posted by cccorlew at 7:28 PM on March 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


TDavis, right? She had a tragic career arc, but she totally coulda been a contender.
posted by spitbull at 7:53 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Thanks. I love John McPhee.
posted by jferg at 8:28 PM on March 11, 2015


Sprezzare, to disdain, and found not just in Castiglione, so it's a little surprising that he and his Italophones were unable to figure it out.

C'mon, throw another one at me!
posted by BWA at 8:28 PM on March 11, 2015


"Gavagai"
posted by clavdivs at 8:38 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


But what pushed me into giving up was when, a few years ago, only ONE student in my class had any idea who Bob Dylan is.

The times they are a-changing. When I was in college (back when John McPhee – whose work I too love dearly – only had three books in print), some of us got into an argument with our English professor about whether or not Dylan's work had literary merit.

She said definitely not, then went on at great length about why this was so... until it became apparent she was talking about Dylan Thomas. She had no clue Bob Dylan existed.
posted by LeLiLo at 9:00 PM on March 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Baldassare Castiglione Is definitely the absolute best name of all time!
posted by monotreme at 9:03 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


As a college teacher I've given up on any and all musician references.

Did you ask them about Taylor Swift? They've usually heard of her. Many of my students know songs, but they don't know singers or bands because they listen to 8tracks.com or spotify on their phones.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:45 PM on March 11, 2015


The current J Crew catalogue uses Sprezzatura as a descriptor, so someone, somewhere must know the word.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:26 PM on March 11, 2015


Huh. My mother's name was Verona Wake. She once stood for the Senate. She was most amused when print journalists referred to her/labeled her campaign photos as Veronica Lake. (Wish it had helped her campaign.)
posted by taff at 3:07 AM on March 12, 2015


Even if you've never seen a gooseneck because you're a city slicker, you should recognize the reference because you read the Sam Sheppard play, True West, right?
 
posted by Herodios at 4:20 AM on March 12, 2015


Way back in February of 1993, I sat down to learn about this web thingy, and joined several discussion lists. It amazed me that I could crowdsource my questions (though to be fair, that word hadn't yet been coined, as far as I knew). By 1999, when my officemates and I needed to settle a bet having to do with Bachman Turner Overdrive, we went down the hall to the guy who had a terrific command of trivia; he fired up his browser, asked the internet, and had an answer in seconds. I remember standing there thinking "We will never have to carry around trivia in our heads anymore." Which turned out to be not strictly true; later that year, my fiance and his buddies were well pleased when my command of obscure knowledge won us a free pitcher of beer on Quizzo night.

But it was largely true. You no longer had to run and get E.D. Hirsch's "Dictionary of Cultural Literacy" off the shelf when you came across a reference you didn't know, or call a friend with a specialty, or feel like you had missed out on a liberal education -- like Maria Bamford says. in the role of her 60-something mother, "Why don't you Google it?" It's a terrific leveler (not without its own questions of access and class inflection) in terms of making the obscure available, and changes the cultural geochronology in some way: it's a huge single layer, and anybody can, theoretically, track down obscure referents. The Pynchon wiki is a terrific online concordance of all sorts of references from Pynchon novels, all organized, in one place, making the books more accessible. That work is done and available, and resides in a distributed brain. Does that change the relationship to a work, not catching the cultural referents on sight, but looking them up in order to understand them? Did the New York Times crossword puzzle change the body of knowledge required to answer its clues when Will Shortz came on board? It wasn't just a matter of bringing them up to date, but of diluting the emphasis on classical knowledge and adding newer referents to the mix, maybe to increase participation or bring new puzzlemakers on board: from rosy-fingered dawn to "Blurred lines."

So I think McPhee's musings are important, from a writer's perspective. What happens when the perfect descriptor is one that 1 on 10,000 readers will get? It's one thing to be Umberto Eco and make a book about the Rosicrucians and the pendulum, packed with literary/cultural references, another to pitch a piece to a magazine or website in a time when the readership's cultural anchors are at once so fixed (Beloit College mindset list, Douglas Adams's rules of technology: "Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works," etc.) and so fluid. What's going to work?

[As a complete aside, I have a gooseneck trailer; MeFites are a smart and varied bunch, and some will know what this is, but many won't. Yet look how many of us get together to answer the King William's College General Knowledge Quiz! Because as a group we can bring collective trivia knowledge to bear. It's an interesting elicitation frame of reference, in addition to its wonderful nature as a puzzle.]

We have some cultural overlap; we have reference collapse; and I like McPhee's questions about knowing what kind of references will endure long after an essay has been published. I picture a future freelancer texting with an editor over whether at least one in ten thousand readers will appreciate the meaning of "May the odds be ever in your favor."

Long live John McPhee!
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:47 AM on March 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


> "She said definitely not, then went on at great length about why this was so... until it became apparent she was talking about Dylan Thomas. She had no clue Bob Dylan existed."

The woman ain't got no culture
But its alright, Ma, everybody must get stoned
posted by kyrademon at 5:30 AM on March 12, 2015


A keystone plot element in James Ellroy L. A. Confidential is a really rich pimp who has prostitutes plastic surgeried to look like movie stars and his superstar is worked up to look like Veronica Lake. I confess that when I read his book I didn't know who she was yet but for a lot of people who have read that book it is hard to forget it.
posted by bukvich at 6:18 AM on March 12, 2015


Isn't she that teen girl detective that had a TV series a while ago?

No, that was Ricki Lake. Right?


Right. Veronica Lake was Archie's rich girlfriend.
posted by briank at 6:23 AM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


As a shitty writer, I appreciate when good ones like McPhee explain how to avoid shitty writing pitfalls. I tend to avoid references that date quickly out of fear of being misunderstood and a distaste for shorthand, and here McPhee shows how to do it correctly, to make it work for you. "Paying back the vividness." Of course. Dang.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 7:13 AM on March 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


in college (back when John McPhee only had three books in print) . . . our English professor . . . had no clue Bob Dylan existed.

Interesting. Around the same time I had an English prof cracked some kind of remark about Dylan Thomas vs Thomas Dylan.

First: Blank -- vaguely frightened -- stares.

Then: "Did -- did you mean Bob Dylan, teach?"

"Ohh, is it Bob? . . . that's not as good, is it?"

The woman ain't got no culture
But its alright, Ma, everybody must get stoned


I lost my harmonica, Albert . . .
 
posted by Herodios at 7:42 AM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Mentioned in this essay: Sprezzatura . . . together with McPhee's charming argument for keeping, rather than striking, the word or phrase that will reach 1 in 10,000 readers.

The key skill is doing this is such a way as to delight that one reader, challege another 99, and minimally alienate the remaining 9,900.

Extra points for making the meaning reasonably clear from context. Minus one hundred points for the attitude that everyone you care to communicate with will be able to read a famous quotation in its original Greek language (unless they actually should).

Speaking of Greeks and unneccesary obscurity, dj'ever see the Odd Couple episode where Oscar and Felix appear on the game show Password? They start out okay, but then for the password "bird", Felix offers the clue "Aristophanes" . . .
 
posted by Herodios at 8:04 AM on March 12, 2015 [2 favorites]


Veronica Lake is nearby Frostbite Falls. You know, where Omar Khayyam kept his Ruby Yacht.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:10 AM on March 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


I thought Veronica Lake wore the famous Kirwood Derby.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:16 AM on March 12, 2015


There really has been a shift in the way this works, in recent years, at least in the articles & sites that I read. Part of it is that writers know their readers can google, and feel freer to make more and more obscure references. Part of it is a shift towards an aggressive mix of high & low culture references which are treated as rhetorically parallel - maybe as a reader I feel inadequate if I miss a reference to Hamlet; I'm less likely to have that response if I don't recognize a reference to The Bachelor. Writers and readers seem more conscious that any given reference will be recognized by some in their audience and not by others, and that that's ok - for the ones that get the reference, there's a feeling of mutuality, like you're in the same club (even if it's not always a club you're proud to be in); for the ones that don't get it, there's a tiny expansion of the web of associations. That only works in a non-alienating way if readers don't think they are supposed to get all the references - and including super-obscure references is one way to signal that.
posted by yarrow at 8:23 AM on March 12, 2015


a shift towards an aggressive mix of high & low culture references which are treated as rhetorically parallel

Beware, for that way lies madness Pynchon Python Dennis Miller.
 
posted by Herodios at 8:45 AM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Very much enjoyed this, thanks. (I was confused how anybody wouldn't know what a gooseneck trailer is - that in itself was informative.) I find the pleasure of reading John McPhee largely comes from those little gems of new things to learn. I don't read John McPhee for what I already know.

I like to joke that I became a geologist because I had to look up something in a John McPhee essay and then just kept going. It's a kind of true joke, though - Annals of the Former World, particularly Rising From the Plains, had a huge impact on me as a teen.
posted by barchan at 9:36 AM on March 12, 2015 [5 favorites]


I love John McPhee too, but I confess I didn't really understand this piece. His point was that... some readers will get some references while others won't? Yes, and? I mean, I enjoyed his collection of allusions too (though I frankly don't believe he had never heard of Gene Wilder), but to the extent that I can extricate a point it would seem to be that you shouldn't allude to anything you don't "pay back" by explaining it at great length with elaborate detail. Which is absurd. You're not writing for all mankind and an eternal posterity, you're writing for a particular audience, and you assume that audience will know what you mean when you mention Veronica Lake or the Quaker Oats guy or whatever. People not in the target audience may not get the allusion, and of course all allusions fade with time, but so what? And then he ends with an anecdote about how he insisted on keeping an obscure allusion for the sake of the one reader in ten thousand who will get it. I dunno, it left me with a feeling that he had just sent the mag several thousand words of elegant literary ouroboros because he knew it would print anything he sent. But maybe I'm just a lousy reader.
posted by languagehat at 9:39 AM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


The current J Crew catalogue uses Sprezzatura as a descriptor, so someone, somewhere must know the word.
posted by Ideefixe at 1:26 AM on March 12


Sprezzatura as a word and concept is really big in online menswear circles, so I'm guessing it's trickled down to enough of the population likely to be reading J Crew catalogs that it makes sense to use it. I don't think the word was nearly as used in the early 2000s (nor do I think John McPhee is reading Ask Andy About Clothes, but you never know).
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:06 AM on March 12, 2015


I totally agree, languagehat. The past few years McPhee has been publishing these doddering retrospective things about writing and his career which are charming enough because I love him and occasionally hold an interesting detail or anecdote but don't really have anything in common with the totally sui generis mindblowingness of his best work.
posted by raisindebt at 12:12 PM on March 12, 2015


...these doddering retrospective things [that] don't really have anything in common with ... his best work.

True enough (especially because his best work is just about the best anyone has ever done in that style), but the guy (as of last Sunday) is 84 years old. Which seems like a pretty good time in life to dodder.
posted by LeLiLo at 12:46 PM on March 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Veronica Lake (slyt) was a great 90s indiepop band from Ann Arbor, MI, I thought everybody knew that?

My mother, along with every white woman in America in the 40s, had a Veronica Lake hairstyle like the one she sports in TDavis's link. She was an icon far beyond what her relatively slender filmography would suggest.
posted by Fnarf at 3:09 PM on March 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Right. Veronica Lake was Archie's rich girlfriend.

NO, NO, NO! Veronica Lodge was Archie's rich girlfriend. Veronica Lake was on Small Wonder, I think or Manimal...
posted by Divine_Wino at 4:04 PM on March 12, 2015


Right. Veronica Lake was Archie's rich girlfriend.

NO, NO, NO! Veronica Lodge was Archie's rich girlfriend.


And Betty Grable was the Other Woman! Or was it Betty Boop?
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:42 PM on March 12, 2015


Wimbledon is the annual convention of this stratum of English society, starboard out, starboard home.

Arthur Kretchmer said, “What does that mean?”

Assuming a tone of faintest surprise, I explained that when English people went out to India during the Raj, they went in unairconditioned ships. The most expensive staterooms were on the port side, away from the debilitating sun. When they sailed westward home, the most expensive staterooms were on the starboard side, for the same reason. And that is the actual or apocryphal but nonetheless commonplace etymology of the word “posh.” Those people in the All England Members’ Enclosure were one below Ascot: starboard out, starboard home.
Just a few short hours after I read that, I watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Turner Classic Movies, and noticed for the first time that the chorus of Grandpa's traveling song ends with, "Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P-O-S-H, posh!" I must have seen that movie a hundred times before and never caught the lyric or wondered about it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:37 PM on March 14, 2015


Interesting. Around the same time I had an English prof cracked some kind of remark about Dylan Thomas vs Thomas Dylan.

They once did a hilarious routine on the TV sitcom "Wings," where they went on for what seemed like forever trying to differentiate between Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Bob Denver, and John Denver. Wish I could remember it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 4:40 PM on March 14, 2015


Chain Of Corrections
Lowell: It's like Dylan said. "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage, for the times they are a-changing."
Roy: I think you're confusing Bob Dylan with Dylan Thomas.
Lowell: Don't be silly, Roy. Dylan Thomas was the poet laureate of Wales. Bob Dylan was the star of Gilligan's Island.
Roy: No, no, no, that's Bob Denver!
Lowell: No, Bob Denver was the guy who sang "Rocky Mountain High".
Roy: Oh, right.
posted by unliteral at 7:25 PM on March 15, 2015 [2 favorites]


Chain Of Corrections
Lowell: I was only in the band for like two months.
Roy: I think I'm holding you back cuz I'm a mexican.
JCB: How're you guys gonna play the blues when you got such little feet?
 
posted by Herodios at 6:17 AM on March 16, 2015


Bob Denver was the guy who sang "Rocky Mountain High".


I thought that was Joe Walsh.
 
posted by Herodios at 6:21 AM on March 16, 2015


You might be thinking of Joe Strummer singing Rock the Boat.
posted by unliteral at 6:29 PM on March 16, 2015


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