Edward Gorey’s Toys--The brilliantly macabre writer and illustrator also made his own stuffed dolls, which have a stylishness and craftsmanship in keeping with all his art, article by Casey Cep    Killing children is generally frowned upon, but Edward Gorey did it all the time.  He squashed them with trains, fed them to bears, poisoned them with lye, forced them to swallow tacks, watched them waste away, and burned them in fires; on his watch, they died of everything from fits to flying into bits.  In perhaps the most popular of Gorey’s eight abecedarian books, “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” twenty-six children, beginning with Amy “who fell down the stairs” and ending with Zillah “who drank too much gin,” meet their demise one page at a time in pitch-perfect rhyme.  That macabre sequence has been lovingly staged with dolls and paper cutouts as a scavenger hunt in the Edward Gorey House on Cape Cod, the museum that occupies the Yarmouth Port property where he spent the last fourteen years of his life.  Through the end of 2021, the “Elephant House,” as Gorey called 8 Strawberry Lane, is also hosting a special exhibit on the artist’s young subjects.  “Hapless Children: Drawings from Mr. Gorey’s Neighborhood” features art and prose from throughout Gorey’s prolific career:  original pen-and-ink drawings from his more than a hundred novellas, volumes of poetry, plays, puppet shows, and nonsense collections, together with illustrations and covers for this magazine and for works by the likes of Muriel Spark, Bram Stoker, T. S. Eliot, Gilbert and Sullivan, and Samuel Beckett.  Goreyphiles, like Gorey creatures, come in all shapes and sizes.  Hischak, the curator, says that the pandemic slowed traffic at the Gorey House, especially from international visitors, but, since the museum reopened this spring, the crowds are returning.  Over Memorial Day weekend, more than two hundred tourists ducked in from the rain to learn more about the man whom some passionately adored while others knew only vaguely as the creator of the animated title sequence for PBS’s “Masterpiece Mystery!”  “Edward was part of a generation of children’s authors who dispensed with the idea of the happy ending as a given,” Hischak said, explaining that Gorey was friends with Maurice Sendak, the creator of “Where the Wild Things Are”; published “The Doubtful Guest” the same year that Theodor Seuss Geisel published “The Cat in the Hat”; and was born just a few years after his fellow-Midwesterner, the “Peanuts” cartoonist Charles Schulz.  https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/edward-goreys-toys 

Casey Cep is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.”  She is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar.  Link to articles by Casey Cep published in The New Yorker at https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/casey-cep 

Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one object or idea takes the place of another with which it has a close association.  In fact, metonymy means “change of name.”  Metonymy is often confused with synecdoche.  Synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part of something is used to signify the whole.  For example, a common synecdoche for marriage proposal is to ask for someone’s “hand” in marriage.  Of course, the “hand” in this case is just the part that signifies the whole person who is receiving the proposal.  Metonymy is a figure of speech in which one word is used to replace another to which it is closely linked.  Both metonymy and synecdoche are related to metaphor, which is also a figure of speech.  As a literary device, the purpose of metaphor is to compare two unlike things without using the words “like” or “as.”  Find comparative examples of metonymy, synecdoche and metaphor at https://literarydevices.net/metonymy/ 

What's the best pizza city in the USA?  'Modernist' authors have a surprise for you.  Forrest Brown  https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/best-pizza-city-us-modernist-authors/index.html 

Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the study of sign processes (semiosis), which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the sign's interpreter.  The meaning can be intentional such as a word uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition.  Signs can communicate through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory.  Unlike linguistics, semiotics also studies non-linguistic sign systems.  Semiotics includes the study of signs and sign processes, indication, designation, likeness, analogy, allegory, metonymy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication.   Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological and sociological dimensions; for example, the Italian semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco proposed that every cultural phenomenon may be studied as communication.  In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics (including zoosemiotics and phytosemiotics).  Semiotics is not to be confused with the Saussurean tradition called semiology, which is a subset of semiotics.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

kith and kin  One's relations.  The word kith is Old English, and the original senses were ‘knowledge’, ‘one's native land’, and ‘friends and neighbours’.  The phrase kith and kin originally denoted one's country and relatives; later one's friends and relatives.  https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100039323  See also https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/kith-and-kin.html 

A hearty stew should be a simple affair--beefy, savoury, and crowned with a ring of fluffy dumplings.  No garlic required.  Find recipe by Felicity Cloake at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/feb/03/how-cook-perfect-beef-stew 

In telecommunications, 5G is the fifth generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, which cellular phone companies began deploying worldwide in 2019, and is the planned successor to the 4G networks which provide connectivity to most current cellphones.  5G networks are predicted to have more than 1.7 billion subscribers worldwide by 2025, according to the GSM Association.  Like its predecessors, 5G networks are cellular networks, in which the service area is divided into small geographical areas called cells.  All 5G wireless devices in a cell are connected to the Internet and telephone network by radio waves through a local antenna in the cell.  The main advantage of the new networks is that they will have greater bandwidth, giving higher download speeds,  eventually up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbit/s).  Due to the increased bandwidth, it is expected the networks will increasingly be used as general internet service providers for laptops and desktop computers, competing with existing ISPs such as cable internet, and also will make possible new applications in internet of things (IoT) and machine to machine areas.  4G cellphones are not able to use the new networks, which require 5G enabled wireless devices.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G 

A hive mind or group mind may refer to shared intelligence.  See uses in media at  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_mind 

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2411  August 27, 2021