The Price of Wisdom
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Here's (some of) Google Street View for 7 Coulter Avenue in Ardmore PA:
Why am I showing this to you? Read on…
In Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice, which I've recently been re-reading for purely phonetic reasons, there's a passage where Larry ("Doc") Sportello takes Penny Kimball out to dinner. Penny is a Deputy D.A. who had previously tricked Doc into an interrogation session with the F.B.I.:
Penny shared her cubicle with another deputy DA named Rhus Frothingham. When Doc put his head in the door, Penny did not exactly gasp but did start hiccupping uncontrollably.
“Are you all right?” said Rhus. Between hiccups Penny explained, though all Doc could make out was “. . . the one I was telling you about . . .”
“Should I call Security?”
Penny threw Doc an inquiring look, like, so, should she? It might as well be stewardii out at the beach around here. Rhus sat rigidly at her desk, pretending to read through a file. Penny excused herself and headed for the ladies’ lounge, leaving Doc immersed in Rhus’s glare like an old car radiator in an acid bath. After a while he got up and ankled his way down the corridor and met Penny coming out of the toilet. “Only wondering when you’d be free for dinner. Didn’t mean to freak you out. I’ll even spring for it.”
That sideways look. “Thought you’d never want to speak to me again.”
“The FBI has actually been fantastically stimulating company, so I figure at least I owe you some ribs or somethin.” What it turned out to be was a recently opened gourmet health-food joint off Melrose called The Price of Wisdom, which Doc had heard about from Denis, who’d given it a rave. It was upstairs from a dilapidated bar where Doc remembered hanging out during one of his seedier phases, he forgot which. Penny looked up at the flickering red neon sign and frowned. “Ruby’s Lounge, uh-huh, I remember it well, it used to be good for at least one felony arrest per week.”
So of course
Directed by a hand-lettered sign reading, THE PRICE OF WISDOM IS ABOVE RUBY’S, JOB 28: 18, Doc and Penny ascended into a room full of ferns, exposed bricks, stained glass, tablecloths on the tables and Vivaldi on the sound system, none of these for Doc too promising. Waiting for a table, he eyeballed the clientele, many of whom seemed to have fitness issues, gazing at each other over and around salads detailed as the miniature mountains in Zen gardens, trying to identify various soybean-derived objects with the aid of pocket flashlights or magnifying lenses, sitting with knife and fork gripped in either fist regarding platters of Eggplant Wellington or rhomboids of vivid green kale loaf on plates too big for them by an order of magnitude.
Just in case you don't get the joke yet, here's Job 28:12-18 in the KJV:
[12] But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?
[13] Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.
[14] The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.
[15] It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.
[16] It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.
[17] The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
[18] No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.
But in Ardmore PA, it's J. Crew that's above Ruby's. Waste of a good location opportunity — gourmet vegetarian is big in the Philadelphia area these days. And the contrast with Ruby's Diner would be just about as big as if Ruby's were actually a dive bar.
Update 1/4/2015: For those younger readers who aren't aware of the 1960s stewardess stereotype, see Victoria Vantoch, The Jet Sex: Airline Stewardesses and the Making of an American Icon, 2013, reviewed here.
rwmg said,
December 16, 2014 @ 11:03 pm
"Penny threw Doc an inquiring look, like, so, should she? It might as well be stewardii out at the beach around here."
I'm sorry, I just do not understand the second sentence here. Is 'stewardii' a typo for something? What? Even if I knew that, the sentence as a whole still doesn't seem to make much sense.
[(myl) As explained in other comments below, "stewardii" is a vulgar fake-Latin plural of "stewardess". And the "inquiring look" is thereby evoking the idea of flirtatious off-duty flight attendants, 1960s stereotypes that play a more extensive role in the novel, as in this earlier passage:
Penny shrugged. “Lagonda describes the matter as ‘very sensitive’ there. The body’s already been cremated, and she won’t say any more than that.” She watched Doc eat for a while. “Well! And how’s everything at the beach?” with a low-sincerity smile he knew enough by now to beware. “‘ Groovy’? ‘psychedelic’? surf bunnies all as attentive as ever? Oh and how are those two stews I caught you with that time?”
“I told you, man, it was that Jacuzzi, the pumps were on too high, those bikinis just kind of mysteriously came undone, it wasn’t nothin deliberate—”
As it seemed she never missed a chance to do lately, Penny was referring to Doc’s off-and-on partners in mischief, the notorious stewardii Lourdes and Motella, who occupied a palatial bachelorette pad in Gordita, down on Beachfront Drive, with a sauna and a pool, and a bar in the middle of the pool, and usually an endless supply of high-quality weed, […]
]
Thorin said,
December 16, 2014 @ 11:57 pm
@ rwmg
Wiktionary says stewardess is a humorous plural for "stewardess". And from my own experiences attempting to read Pynchon, your reaction is exactly the same I had.
Mark Mandel said,
December 17, 2014 @ 12:15 am
I tripped over that, too. Then I googled it. This refers to a different passage, but it must be the same bit of punnery:
[(myl) This is not the only case of fake Latin plurals, or even fake Latin plurals falsely in -ii.
rwmg said,
December 17, 2014 @ 1:21 am
But the suffix vowel sounds in 'stewardess' and 'stewardus' are, for me at least, nothing like each other.
Martin J Ball said,
December 17, 2014 @ 1:49 am
Posted under 'humor' – really!?
Bob Ladd said,
December 17, 2014 @ 3:50 am
I'm old enough remember the jocular plural "stewardii" (for that matter, I'm old enough to remember when flight attendants were called stewardesses), and I can confirm for rwmg and Mark Mandel that this is all for real. As for rwmg's contention that the final vowel is all wrong for the joke to work, can I speculate that rwmg is not a speaker of North American English? The suffix -ess (to the extent that it is still used at all) typically has a reduced vowel in NAmEng (so stewardess and "stewardus" really do sound the same), whereas in BrEng it normally has the vowel of e.g. guess and in at least some cases (notably princess) often even has the word's main stress. Obviously, any speaker for whom that's true is going to find the stewardii joke a little obscure, even ignoring the antiquarian aspects.
rwmg said,
December 17, 2014 @ 3:56 am
Yes, for me, the -ess is similar to guess, not -us. But even knowing that it means stewardesses, I don't really get what image stewardesses out at the beach is supposed to convey.
Michael Watts said,
December 17, 2014 @ 4:19 am
There's more than one misconception going on there. If "manus" were a Latin word ending in -us, it would be feminine and the plural form would also be "manus". "Anus", plural "anus", is also feminine, unsurprising given the meaning "old woman". ;)
Sticking with the second declension, which does pluralize into -i, tree words are systematically feminine (so pinus "pine tree", malus "apple tree", etc.).
In my (AmE speaking) mind, waitress, stewardess, buttress, mattress, and actress all use a reduced vowel in the final syllable, but princess doesn't. However, princess also doesn't have ultimate stress, so I guess it wouldn't be difficult to see it degrade to using a reduced vowel.
Michael Watts said,
December 17, 2014 @ 4:21 am
The situation with "princess" reminds me of how surnames ending in -man use a reduced vowel, but Batman doesn't, despite its penultimate stress.
John Swindle said,
December 17, 2014 @ 4:24 am
@rwmg: Whereas in American English they're the same. For "stewardess," Merriam Webster online gives \ˈstü-ər-dəs, ˈstyü-; ˈst(y)u̇r-dəs\. They don't give a pronunciation for "stewardus," probably because it isn't a word, but if it were a word it'd be pronounced the same.
I do think "stewardii" is a somewhat humorous, nonce plural for "stewardess," intended to avoid the piling on of sibilants. I suspect, though, that it could encompass stewardesses of either sex.
Keith said,
December 17, 2014 @ 5:39 am
I don't think I've ever read the book of Job, but the reference to the price of wisdom was definitely familiar.
However, the stewardii went over my head. For a while, I wondered if it was supposed to be some sort of bacteria that Penny had picked up at the beach, and that had induced the hiccoughs.
Am I alone in finding the quoted passages from Pynchon particularly difficult to read? I wondered if ML had typed too quickly and maybe skipped a couple of lines here and there…
The "humour" in Pynchon seems to me to be like that of a shaggy dog story that makes you groan when you finally hear the punchline.
Pflaumbaum said,
December 17, 2014 @ 5:45 am
Martin J Ball said: "Posted under 'humor' – really!?"
Maybe not laugh out loud funny, but if you're a Pynchon fan you do look forward to this sort of super-contrived, frame-breaking joke and would miss them if they weren't there.
My favourite probably remains the off-hand reference in Gravity's Rainbow to the law firm of Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus and Short.
Pflaumbaum said,
December 17, 2014 @ 5:49 am
There's also the quite astonishingly contrived "For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can't be rowing", which requires a good couple of paragraphs of set-up, in my recollection, and a Texan accent.
Aaron said,
December 17, 2014 @ 9:15 am
I don't envy the scholar of ancient English literature who, in a thousand years or so, decides to tackle Pynchon.
Rube said,
December 17, 2014 @ 10:18 am
@Pflaumbaum: Wow. Just. Wow.
CNH said,
December 17, 2014 @ 12:00 pm
It reminds me of something which would make my mother laugh:
"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies." which is one translation of Proverbs 31:10.
'What was Ruby's price?' she would ask.
J. W. Brewer said,
December 17, 2014 @ 3:11 pm
I'd like to think that I would have found the jocular meaning transparent if he'd gone with "stewardi," but the doubled i threw me. I haven't gotten around to this particular book yet, but fwiw some of the online reviews say that the prose style is unusually accessible compared to much of Pynchon's previous work . . .
I haven't checked all of their locations, but if you go a bit beyond Ardmore it sounds from the internet that the Ruby's at the King of Prussia Mall is on the upper level, so now we're in need of a learned allusion accounting for whatever sort of business is "beneath rubies."
Adrian said,
December 18, 2014 @ 6:40 am
Nice to see toilet instead of bathroom.
Mark Dowson said,
December 18, 2014 @ 11:08 am
I just re-read Inherent Vice in preparation for the movie (in "limited release" which probably means it won't turn up here in Northern Virginia). The reviews are good, and commend the bravery of any director who attempts to adapt Pynchon for the screen, much less succeeds.
But I sympathize with the commenters who have not encountered Pynchon before, and are bewildered by the extracts provided. Inherent Vice assumes at least some second-hand familiarity with 70's Californian drug culture (in my case, more like third-hand) and can otherwise be a tough read. Most Pynchon is something of a tough read, but rewarding if you persist and tune into it, but Inherent Vice is not the place to start (neither is Gravity's Rainbow). Try The Crying of Lot 49 – short and in places extremely funny, but not lacking Pynchon's characteristically paranoid world view.
Theophylact said,
December 18, 2014 @ 1:25 pm
I also like "Rhus", which is the genus of sumac — and also poison ivy.