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Now in Fabulous 4-D, and Other News

By

On the Shelf

3dglasses

An audience watching a 3-D “stereoscopic film” in 1951. Photo: UK National Archive

  • On the letters of T. S. Eliot: “Despite having spent years wanting to know more about Eliot, I find the prospect of his complete correspondence—of which there are three-and-a-half decades still to go—boring beyond tears … the diplomatic mass of rejection slips and luncheon appointments … [the] deadening epic of polite notes.”
  • There’s no stopping the future, and the future is 4-D movies, which integrate wind, rain, scents, motion, and bubbles into the film-going experience, making it all the more immersive—arguably immersive to a fault. “If you take issue with your seat’s lilts, jolts, and prods (or having air blasted into your ear), you’re sadly out of luck. Aggressive warning labels caution you against placing lidless beverages in your cup holder lest your Sprite end up in your lap. Hot drinks are forbidden for obvious reasons.”
  • Are you tired of referring to December 16 as “Jane Austen’s birthday”? Doesn’t have a very nice ring to it, right? It would be so much easier simply to call it Jane Austen Day, which is what the Jane Austen Centre proposes you do. Go ahead.
  • Syntactically dubious headline of the day: BLINDFOLD SEX KNIFE ATTACK EX-WIFE JAILED FOR MURDER ATTEMPT.
  • “If the snow on the roof melts off, the next storm will be rain. If it blows off, you can calculate on snow. The day of the month on which the first snowstorm comes gives the number of storms you can expect in the following winter.” New Englanders have plenty of gloriously unfounded lore about snow.