A Cambridge professor has identified the earliest use of the ellipsis in English literature. Find out more at The Guardian. Sam Anderson reminds us that ellipses are good in moderation through an examination of Dan Brown’s Inferno.
The Birth of the Ellipsis
Love – Love
“When the French would go to serve, they often said, Tenez!, the French word for ‘take it,’ meaning ‘coming at you, heads up.’ We preserve this custom of warning the opponent in our less lyrical way by stating the score just before we toss up the ball. It was the Italians who, having overheard the French make these sounds, began calling the game ‘ten-ez’ by association. A lovely detail in that it suggests a scene, a Florentine ear at the fence or entryway, listening.” Whether it’s David Foster Wallace or John Jeremiah Sullivan writing about tennis, I’m reading it. Another three-namer, Jonathan Russell Clark, reviewed The David Foster Wallace Reader for The Millions.
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Borrowing Made Easy
A fledgling New York tech firm has invented a new service, Oyster, that the company claims is a lot like Spotify in its workings. Their innovation? The products they’re sharing are books.
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Minister of Defense and Propaganda of the New Cinema
Recommended Reading: On the the anticriticism of Jonas Mekas, the “raving maniac of the cinema,” courtesy of The Paris Review.
Coming Soon: Beautiful Ruins
Todd Field, who directed In the Bedroom and Little Children, is going to bring Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins to the big screen. The book was a big favorite among this year’s Year In Reading contributors.