[Ads-l] a couple of quotations: sources needed

Thu Sep 3 21:03:42 UTC 2015

Wonderful! Thanks GAT for precisely locating the quotation and
obtaining page scans from the March 29, 1941 issue of New Statesman
and Nation.

Garson

On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 4:44 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: a couple of quotations: sources needed
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Garson's quotation crediting Margaret Irwin with a variant of the
> Bloomsbury tag is from the New Statesman and Nation, March 29, 1941, p.
> 317, the 3rd paragraph under the headline A London Diary.
> A pdf attached -- with luck it will be allowed through.  [no luck: i've
> sent it directly to Garson, and will sent it to any one else, upon request]
>
> I note that the writer attributes the quotation when I hear of culture I
> reach for my revolver to Goering.  I recall, from decades ago, that it has
> been attributed to a Spanish Fascist general, during the Spanish Civil
> War.  I no doubt saw this in Hugh Thomas' book.
>
> GAT
>
> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 1:42 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Garson's quotation crediting Margaret Irwin with a variant of the
>> Bloomsbury tag is from the New Statesman and Nation, March 29, 1941, p.
>> 317, the 3rd paragraph under the headline A London Diary.
>> A pdf attached -- with luck it will be allowed through.
>>
>> I note that the writer attributes the quotation when I hear of culture I
>> reach for my revolver to Goering.  I recall, from decades ago, that it has
>> been attributed to a Spanish Fascist general, during the Spanish Civil
>> War.  I no doubt saw this in Hugh Thomas' book.
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 3, 2015 at 12:24 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
>> adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The quotation about Bloomsbury has many variants. Below is an instance
>>> attributed to Margaret Irwin in the Google Books database in a book
>>> with a GB year of 1960. Only a snippet was visible but the snippet
>>> revealed a date of March 29, 1941. Apparently, the excerpt below
>>> appeared in the New Statesman in 1941. Maybe something similar can be
>>> found in the 1920s or 1930s.
>>>
>>> Year: 1960
>>> Book title: Critic's London Diary: From the New Statesman, 1931-1956
>>> Book author: Kingsley Martin
>>> Date within text: March 29, 1941
>>> Quote Page 94
>>> Publisher: Secker & Warburg, London
>>> Database: Google Books Snippet View; data may be inaccurate and should
>>> be checked on paper; 1941 date is visible in snippet with quotation
>>> text
>>>
>>> https://books.google.com/books?id=mKYeAAAAIAAJ
>>>
>>> [Begin excerpt]
>>>                                                             29 March, 1941
>>>
>>> I wonder what people mean by "Bloomsbury"? I asked myself as I looked
>>> at the dismantled flat. Certainly it is no longer what Margaret Irwin
>>> used to describe in the twenties as the place where "all the couples
>>> were triangles and lived in squares". Whatever it was once, it is gone
>>> now.
>>> [End excerpt]
>>>
>>> Garson
>>>
>>> On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 10:56 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>> > Subject:      Re: a couple of quotations: sources needed
>>> >
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> >
>>> >> On Sep 2, 2015, at 8:12 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
>>> =
>>> > wrote:
>>> >>=20
>>> >> An article in the August 14, 2015 TLS refers to an "apocryphal =
>>> > description"
>>> >> by Dorothy Parker of the Bloomsbury group as "living in squares, =
>>> > painting
>>> >> in circles and loving in triangles".  It's not in YBQ -- i didn't look
>>> =
>>> > in
>>> >> the other quote books I have, and in general, I don't look things up
>>> >> on-line -- sorry about that.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Hmm.  An wonderful line from Dorothy Parker about the Bloomsburys to be
>>> =
>>> > sure, whether or not apocryphal (though a shame if it is).  And it is =
>>> > all over the web, without an obvious source.  But it was the phrasing =
>>> > that caused a brief double-take for me.  I took the reference to
>>> >
>>> > 'an "apocryphal description" by Dorothy Parker of the Bloomsbury group =
>>> > as "living in squares, painting in circles and loving in triangles"'
>>> >
>>> > as thrusting Parker herself from the Algonquin Circle into the complex =
>>> > group algebras of the Bloomsburys (which she might have enjoyed for a =
>>> > bit).  And all because of the syntactic versatility of "of"; "Dorothy =
>>> > Parker's 'apocryphal description' of the Bloomsbury group..." wouldn't =
>>> > have allowed those same enticing possibilities.
>>> >
>>> > LH
>>> >
>>> >> Whoever said it, it's a witty remark, and all too true.
>>> >> It's been taken for the title of a new book on the group, by Amy =
>>> > License:
>>> >> Living in Squares, Loving in Triangles.
>>> >>=20
>>> >
>>> > ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> George A. Thompson
>> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
>> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
>> Univ. Pr., 1998..
>>
>
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998..
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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