Monthly Archives: February 2009

CORRESPONDENCE CHESS AND LOVEMAKING. I posted a few days ago that my first reaction to Judith Thurman’s opinion that “A monthlong game of Scrabble…is about as appealing as a monthlong sex act” was that people have always enjoyed playing correspondence … Continue reading →

NOUNS AND VERBS. When we played Scrabble with my family forty years ago, my father was a staunch believer that the prefix “re” could be placed before any verb to express the thought of repeated action. Similarly “ing” could be … Continue reading →

ANOTHER VALENTINE THOUGHT. When I was young and unmarried, I read E.M. Forster’s opinion in ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL that the novel tends to focus on a person’s love life even though on the whole nobody thinks of love as … Continue reading →

A VALENTINE THOUGHT. My second thought after reading the opinion that I quoted yesterday was that you could think of a marriage as one long act of love interrupted from time to time by all the other events of life.

SCRABBLE AND LOVE. Judith Thurman, the distinguished biographer (Mary Jane loves her biography of Colette), had an article in the January 19 New Yorker about how important playing Scrabble is to her. She noted, however, that on Facebook some games … Continue reading →

LUCITE. The February 11 Wall Street Journal had an article on the decline of about 50% in sales of “deal toys.” A “deal toy” is a memento of a large transaction, an acquisition, say, or a large financing. It is … Continue reading →