I'd like that on my tombstone....
200 years from now someone wonders who you were simping for.
I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
41–50 of 187 posts
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#42This is amazing. I wonder, is one allowed to speak like this in the Bay Area, or would this mark you as a deplorable to the kind of people who erase racism by erasing race.
I understand why he chose to say it this way, and I'll probably be stealing "liberal racism" (what a phrase: that's going in my pocketbook alongside "white guilt" and "racialise"), but this is the wrong way to say it to a Bay Area audience. You'd want to say something like "erasing representation to avoid confronting racism".
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also might be worth noting that both pull quotes are things that Ah-Sen said in the questions, instead of things that Powell said in response. One is from Powell, the other from Ah-Sen. >> The attractive characteristic of a young narrator is the absurdity of it and the license of it. - Powell >> The destiny of all books is to become unmoored from the time which birthed them. - Ah-Sen
Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
Slow clap
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#44Very interesting interview, but aside from that – what a true joy to read an article with so many words I'd never even seen before!
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also might be worth noting that both pull quotes are things that Ah-Sen said in the questions, instead of things that Powell said in response. One is from Powell, the other from Ah-Sen. >> The attractive characteristic of a young narrator is the absurdity of it and the license of it. - Powell >> The destiny of all books is to become unmoored from the time which birthed them. - Ah-Sen
Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
Unless you’re going for some meta-joke, no.
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It also might be worth noting that both pull quotes are things that Ah-Sen said in the questions, instead of things that Powell said in response. One is from Powell, the other from Ah-Sen. >> The attractive characteristic of a young narrator is the absurdity of it and the license of it. - Powell >> The destiny of all books is to become unmoored from the time which birthed them. - Ah-Sen
Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
[deleted]
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#47This is a fantastic interview with Padgett Powell ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padgett_Powell ), a writer of the Southern tradition. IMO, the two things that make it great ar how candid and fluid Powell's answers are and the hilariously Newspeak of the interviewer's questions. Powell was Don Barthelme's student, his analysis of Barthelme's main thrust here is worth the read alone. If you want to dig deeper on this…
I really like the short story Typical. It is one of my favorite short stories.
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
Unless you’re going for some meta-joke, no.
Why not? If we’re starting with this nautical analogy (unmoored), immediately flipping to a biological one is odd. I strongly suspect this was a transcription error and/or intentional pun - the two are pronounced identically.
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#49In a long true account of a dust-up at a restaurant in old Austin, not new Austin, a Black man on my roofing crew came to my defense and knocked out a white restaurant manager, who was at the moment presuming to assault me. Willie had noticed that the manager had Black back-up and felt I should too. “Old Padge need him some brothers too,” he would explain later.
The piece was essentially a portrait of a hero, Willie Ebert Brown, in a terrain of racial relations that had hope in it. The sentence that announced the Black back-up for the manager was this: “A sturdy-looking Black guy came out of the kitchen.” This is choice low fruit for a sensitivity editor. “Objectifying description,” she wrote, “that may invoke associations with slavery.”
I should have desisted publishing the book, but I am a chicken-shit person and I really wanted a book with a beautiful photo of an indigo snake on its cover. My celebration of Willie was thrown out; my invocation of slavery (to which who objects, its absurdity aside?) was one of a hundred other crimes in the piece. Liberal racism had its way: remove racism by removing race.
There is not a person of color in my book except a very positive small tribute to Barack Obama as a tool by which we might argue the French can slow their roll about how racist we are and they aren’t. How that was not deemed racist is a wonder, because it somewhat is. It’s not a wonder: liberal racism is a photo-negative argument. I apologize for this rant. Chicken-shit and now tired too.
Snark is a signal of cheap argument: They have nothing more serious to say; they are signaling that there is a bandwagon and you can join in, rather than a serious argument that you can engage and reason with - just grab a drink and hop aboard! Don't spoil the party!
Chicken-shit indeed: It's very easy these days to preach to the choir, white people jumping on the anti-antiracism bandwagon, because they can deny and ignore racism's effects without personal consequence (including that it's not socially acceptable and even encouraged), and tiring of dealing with race (if white people tire of it, just imagine black people who can't avoid or ignore it).
Instead of cutting the story, how about a description of the kitchen-worker as more than "Black" (though we don't get to see the original; maybe that's already there). Instead of snark, how about an examination of what the editor meant, what aspects were racism to what degree? So sorry for tiring you.
Re: I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
Er why would that be the case. To be unmoored is to be detached from something. So the quote is saying that the destiny of every book is to be detached and read outside the context in which it was written (birthed).
To be berthed is to be attached to your home, as a boat. It makes way more sense to keep the nautical analogy going than to switch it over to biology. This was likely a transcription error and/or pun.