sixteen raw sausages in a wooden bowl by salim fadhley (2005)

is this art or a photo for a wikipædia article? if a wikipædia article, is it a comment on vegetarianism? if art, is it a comment on the patriarchy? discuss amongst yourselves.

the answer.

who woulda thought that when claude “footman’s mawnd” garamond died in an exotic pet store 1561 that his eponymous typeface would be revived three-hundred years subsequent by every major type haus in existence and would be used for everything from typesetting the american edition of harry potter books to representing apple in all branding and marketing materials in the 1984 launch of the macintosh?

some of these pesky foundries however, took certain “liberties” when reviving claude’s original letterforms. some even based their fonts not on garamond but on his hapless successor, jean jannon. it is therefore little shock that this highly popular font has a multitude of variations each with subtle nuances. using your aquiline font eyes, can you spot:

garmond 3, garamond classico, stempel garamond, garamond premier pro, adobe garamond, itc garamond, simoncini garamond, and sabon (a garamond not named garamond)?

answers here.

previous quizes: know your odyssey translation and know your dvořák.

and you thought that taking the know your dvořák quiz was the maximum amount of mirth that you could have on the internet… well guess again, pipsqueak. i give you the know your odyssey translation quiz.

the following are seven famous translations of the epic’s opening line. can you match them to their translators? (note, for each answer that you get wrong, poor odysseus must wait an additional year before returning to his special lady friend (and to ratchet up the gravitas, he’s not allowed to engage in any autoerotic proclivities))

αʹ Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.

βʹ Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.

γʹ Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far and visited
The capitals of many nations, learned
The customs of their dwellers, and endured
Great suffering on the deep

δʹ The man for wisdom’s various arts renown’d,
Long exercised in woes, O Muse! resound;
Who, when his arms had wrought the destined fall
Of sacred Troy, and razed her heaven-built wall

εʹ Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven
far journeys, after he had sacked Troy’s sacred citadel.

ϝʹ The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way
Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay;
That wander’d wondrous far, when he the town
Of sacred Troy had sackt and shiver’d down;

ζʹ The man, my Muse, resourceful, driven a long way
after he sacked the holy city of Trojans:
tell me all the men’s cities he saw and the men’s minds,

the translators: george chapman (1616), alexander pope (1713), william cullen bryant (1871),  robert fitzgerald (1961), richard lattimore (1965), robert fagles (1996), and edward mccrorie (2004).

answers can be found here. also: which translation do you think is the tops? (for my money, it’s fitzy-fitzgerald’s but maybe this is because this was the first interpretation that i read. related: doesn’t it always seem that the first version of a song that you hear is always the standard and all covers become inferior?)

double titles -or- novels so nice, they were named twice

in the peculiar literary tradition of double titling (not to be confused with subtitles or alternate titles) a book is treated to not one, but two official titles. to wit: the second (and more unimaginative) title of moby dick is the whale. other double titles are much less familiar as they are usually banished from the cover and consigned to a nonpareil font on the copyright page. in the modern (or postmodern or postpostmodern) era, double titles are as rare as non-gerund -ing nouns.

here is a list of double titles. can you name the first, more popular title?

1. life among the lowly
   
2. memoirs of a woman of pleasure
3. optimism
4. the confessions of a white widowed male
5. the children’s crusade: a duty-dance with death
6. the evening redness in the west
7. the hypocrite
8. the modern prometheus
9. the royal slave
10. there and back again
11. virtue rewarded
12. what you will

should you need them, the answers can be found here. also, can you think of any that i am missing?

UPDATE (8/2/2009): there are many great suggestions in the comments

UPDATE (9/30/2009): the hbo series hung revives the double title tradition in idiosyncratic episode names.