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History’s Greatest Typos, and Other News

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On the Shelf

typo

Oops: in 2008, Chiie appeared in place of Chile on 1.5 million fifty-peso coins. Photo via io9

  • Virginia Woolf loathed the concept of the middlebrow—“If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half-crushed worm dares call me middlebrow … I will take my pen and stab him dead”—but she should’ve gone easier on it. “Middlebrow is a name you would never call yourself, but rather a semantic shoe that belongs on someone else’s foot. It is also, however, a workable synonym, in the sphere of art and culture, for democracy.”
  • Need a quick, cheap tutorial in plotting? Watch sitcoms without the jokes …
  • And while you’re working out your plot, you might want to avoid scenes set in restaurants. “That tense guy who ‘stabs his potato’ or ‘saws at his filet’ … I see what you’re doing there. Please don’t.”
  • Presenting Western history’s most seminal typos: There’s 1612’s “Thou shalt commit adultery,” and 1830’s Peeface instead of Preface, and the Chilean coin that misspelled Chile…
  • “What’s so great about adults? Classic-age Hollywood is full of movies for and about adults that are dull, stodgy, and uninventive—writerly and actorly, honoring traditional values with a secret whiff of piety and an eye on the cash box, rather Mantovani than Beethoven, rather Don Sebesky than John Coltrane. That kind of movie isn’t gone; it now occupies screens in art houses. It’s the rule to the exception.”