[Vwoolf] "New Yorker" cartoon from 2003

Wed Sep 13 15:40:52 EDT 2017

As Anne astutely pointed out, "Car Talk" is referring to the NPR show. What
follows does not attempt to explain the joke but traces Woolfian
references/associations with the show. "Car Talk" featured the
personalities "Click and Clack." http://wikidiff.com/click/clack
"Click":
- * 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), *(w
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary#w>, Jacob's Room
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary#Jacob's Room>) *Chapter 1There
was a click in the front sitting-room. Mr. Pearce had extinguished the lamp.

http://www.npr.org/2014/11/03/360731558/tom-magliozzi-as-warm-in-real-life-as-he-was-on-the-radio?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202503
"Funny and smart and bighearted, Tom was as warm in real life as he was on
the radio. They invited me up to their Good News Garage in Cambridge for a
sock hop. His wife, Joanne, made me a poodle skirt. Tom was the perfect
host: welcoming, gracious and so generous and good-spirited."

[image: View image on Twitter]
<https://twitter.com/cartalk/status/529365334596546560/photo/1>

 Follow <https://twitter.com/cartalk>
Car Talk
✔@cartalk <https://twitter.com/cartalk>

Remembering Tom. http://bit.ly/1yqxWWp  <http://t.co/0ekgwHmVlY>
4:11 PM - Nov 3, 2014
<https://twitter.com/cartalk/status/529365334596546560>

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https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/car-talk-america

"Too much has been made of the Magliozzi brothers’ M.I.T. education and how
they weren’t *really* car mechanics but, rather, educated men who had
taught college courses and would, on occasion, talk about the grades they
had received in advanced algebra and applied physics. I suppose the NPR
crowd who listened every week, especially those who had been among the
people in Harvard Square who knew Dewey, Cheetham, and Howe as “Huey, Duey
and Louie,” sometimes needed a comforting reference point, something to
signal that “Car Talk” was something more than a “Saturday Night Live” skit
about Boston accents. To be fair, both Tom and Ray played up the educated
part of their backgrounds perfectly: they didn’t discuss it with false
humility like Brenda Patimkin in “Goodbye, Columbus,” who tells Neil
Klugman that she “goes to school in Boston,” but rather with* amused
contempt (emphasis mine; perhaps Virginia is not amused).* With their
endless jokes about hippie towns (Vermont always got it the worst) and
their dismissiveness of anyone who might dare call in with a question about
a Saab, Tom and Ray chastised the typical NPR listener with just the right
amount of bite and sarcasm."

Semiotics of cars by Updike, also entitled "Car Talk," can be related to
Woofl's "Craftsmanship"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/03/31/car-talk
"Meaning is, as with other languages, a matter of context... If no response
is indicated, the same utterance, more insistently intoned, takes on a
suggestion of rebuke and heightened anxiety: "Hey, you're riding me into
the median strip!" And if the swerve does take place, within inches of
one's front fender, a strengthened intonation moderates the meaning to,
roughly, "You crazy blind idiot, go back to driving school!"... As with
birdsong and insect stridulation, impressive amounts of information are
packed into virtually indistinguishable sounds... The highest, most
prolonged volume of the horn transcends communication and expresses--at,
say, the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel-frustration to the point of
insanity... Car lights, too, say more than they used to. Having the
controls on a stalk behind the steering wheel has considerably enhanced
their eloquence. "

Linked to from "Car Talk" blog: "The Bird, the Wave, and the Shaka:
Reading the Informal Language of Road Signals"
http://www.slate.com/id/2242777/

On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 2:33 PM, Neverow, Vara S. <neverowv1 at southernct.edu>
wrote:

> Dear Stuart,
>
>
> Could the witticism be related to the woman on the right who has her face
> turned away and her hand to her throat as if the conversation has no appeal
> to her? Perhaps the cartoonist did not know that Woolf was interested in
> cars, as indicated by Ann Martin's research?
>
>
> Vara
>
>
> Vara Neverow
> Department of English
> Southern Connecticut State University
> New Haven, CT 06515
> 203-392-6717 <(203)%20392-6717>
> neverowv1 at southernct.edu
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+neverowv1=southernct.edu at lists.osu.edu> on
> behalf of Stuart N. Clarke <stuart.n.clarke at btinternet.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 13, 2017 2:28 PM
> *To:* vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
> *Subject:* [Vwoolf] "New Yorker" cartoon from 2003
>
> Much as I like Wm. Hamilton’s cartoons, I don’t get this one.
>
> Stuart
>
> [image: image]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Vwoolf mailing list
> Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
> https://lists.osu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwoolf
>
>
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