Tolstoy and the Subaltern

A junior-ranking officer in the army, below captain.

“In the glade, some way from the road, Poltorátsky, and his subaltern Tíkhonov, two officers of the 3^rd Company, and Baron Freze, an ex-officer of the Guards who had been reduced to the ranks for a duel, a fellow-student of Poltorátsky’s at the Cadet College, were sitting on drums. Bits of paper that had contained food, cigarette stumps, and empty bottles lay scattered round the drums. The officers had some vodka, and were now eating, and drinking porter. A drummer was uncorking their third bottle. Poltorátsky, although he had not had enough sleep, was in that peculiar state of elation and kindly careless gaiety which he always felt when he found himself among his soldiers and with his comrades, where there was a possibility of danger.” 

Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád (1903). 

Faulkner and the Oiler from the Cotton Gin

A maker or seller of oil. Someone hired to oil or lubricate something.

“Then suddenly the empty street was full of men. Yet there were not many of them, not two dozen, some suddenly and quietly from nowhere. Yet they seemed to fill it, block it, render it suddenly interdict as though not that nobody could pass them, pass through it, use it as a street but that nobody would dare, would even approach near enough to essay the gambit as people stay well away from a sign saying High Voltage or Explosive. He knew, recognized them all; some of them he had even seen and listened to in the barbershop two hours ago—the young men or men under forty, bachelors, the homeless who had the Saturday and Sunday baths in the barbershop—truckdrivers and garagehands, the oiler from the cotton gin, a sodajerker from the drugstore and the ones who could be seen all week long in or around the poolhall who did nothing at all that anyone knew, who owned automobiles and spent money nobody really knew exactly how they earned on week-ends in Memphis or New Orleans brothels—the men who his uncle said were in every little Southern town, who never really led mobs nor even instigated them but were always the nucleus of them because of their mass availability.” 

William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948).

Celine on the Qualities of a Nice Assistant

A helper. A term that could refer to anyone from a rank neophyte to an expert still waiting to succeed.

“In principal, always and in all things, I was of the same opinion as my boss. I hadn’t made much practical progress in the course of my harassed existence, but even so I had learned the proper etiquette of servitude. All of a sudden with Baryton, thanks to this disposition, in the end we became friends, I never contradicted him, I ate little. A nice assistant in short, completely economical, without a speck of ambition, not threatening.”

(“En principe, pour toujours et en toutes choses j’étais du même avis que mon patron. Je n’avais pas fait de grands progrès pratiques au cours de mon existence tracassée, mais j’avais appris quand même les bons principes d’étiquette de la servitude. Du coup avec Baryton, grâce à ces dispositions, on était devenus bien copains pour finir, je n’étais jamais contrariant moi, je mangeais peu à table. Un gentil assistant en somme, tout à fait économique et pas ambitieux pour un sou, pas menaçant.”)

Louis Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932).
[Translated by R. G. Voorhees]

Proust + Vermeer's Milkmaid

A woman who delivers containers of fresh milk.

"The entry of the young milkmaid immediately stripped me of my contemplative calm. I dreamt of nothing except to make my tale of having a letter for her to deliver seem plausible, and I began to write rapidly, hardly daring to look at her, not to appear to have summoned her just for that. She was endowed with the charm of the unknown, which for me would not grace a pretty girl found in one of those houses where they wait for you. She was neither nude nor in a costume, but an actual milkmaid, one of those whom one imagines to be so pretty when one has no time to draw nearer; she had something of what constitutes life's eternal desire and eternal regret. whose alternating current ultimately runs off and doubles back upon us."

Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, (1922)
[Translated by R. G. Voorhees]
(Click here to learn more about the film "Proust + Vermeer.")

Knight of the Spigot

Mock-heroic name for a bartender. In the spirit of "knight of the quill" being used for a writer.

"He nods to the fellow tending bar and gives a slight shake of his thumb and forefinger. Next thing I know someone’s handing me a champagne flute brimming with effervescent gold. Aldo Pennebeck is the outgoing sort, definitely, even in his least exuberant moments. He’s a stockjobber who's making money as easily as a bartender draws a pint. A regular knight of the spigot."

Shooting Genji, Richard Voorhees (2013)