[HN Gopher] I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal ...
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I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a
simpleton
Author : Jun8
Score : 135 points
Date : 2024-04-24 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lithub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lithub.com)
| Jun8 wrote:
| This 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 point, here's another interview with him:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdxyd8/padgett-powell-is-ame...
|
| Flann O'Brian, mentioned briefly by Powell is an interesting
| character, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flann_O'Brien.
| ailun wrote:
| It's not really "Newspeak" at all; if anything, it's the
| opposite. Newspeak had limited vocabulary. The interviewer is
| using a bunch of ten-dollar words. Still, interesting
| interview! I might read some Padgett Powell at some point
| because of this.
| kleiba wrote:
| The little info box about the interviewer at the end of the
| article tells you all you need to know.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| You got something against Canadians?
| atuladhar wrote:
| Hmm, what is it that I needed to know? And what does the
| info box tell me? As another simpleton in this world, I did
| not understand this comment.
|
| > Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the
| Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. He lives
| in Toronto.
| HillRat wrote:
| It's an interesting contrast, because Ah-Sen is an
| experimental formalist, and his questions progress from that
| point of view, whereas Powell is (hilariously) ... not. (As
| this feels like a Q&A-by-email with all the questions
| submitted en bloc, Ah-Sen probably didn't get a chance to
| adapt his questions, and their theoretical foundation, to
| Powell's responses, lending to the surrealistic air.)
| kd5bjo wrote:
| 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.
|
| Some interviewers aim to help to tell their subjects'
| stories, but others are looking for a reason to hear
| themselves speak. This feels like the latter case.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > 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
| pictureofabear wrote:
| Also, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| 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).
| basil-rash wrote:
| 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.
| collingreen wrote:
| Slow clap
| mrkstu wrote:
| Unless you're going for some meta-joke, no.
| basil-rash wrote:
| 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.
| phren0logy wrote:
| I absolutely love this! As you have noted, both the ability and
| the courage to speak plainly have made it a lost art.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| Flann O'Brian's novel about a novel "At swim two birds" has
| been one of my favorite yearly re-reads, I must take it down
| off the shelf again this weekend!
| gilleain wrote:
| For me it's the third policeman, which is wonderfully
| dreamlike.
| glassconclusion wrote:
| I really like the short story Typical. It is one of my favorite
| short stories.
| boogieknite wrote:
| Not a lit major, never seen the term Mupdeemut before, but now
| excited to use it. Plenty of opportunity in personal and work
| conversation.
|
| _edit: back to recommend against using Mupdeemut. People thought
| i was saying something derogatory and i had to spend significant
| time explaining myself._
| consumer451 wrote:
| Interesting, neither Google, nor GPT-4 know anything about that
| term, outside of TFA.
| standardly wrote:
| He clearly made it up during the interview.
|
| I admit I spent more time right clicking -> 'search the web'
| for some of the words he used. Incredible vocabulary.. I have
| to use 'intellection' soon, I've needed to use a word like
| that before but couldn't find it.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I obviously need to pay more attention. Thank you very
| much.
|
| Cheers!
| robocat wrote:
| Padgett coins the word in the interview:
| [m]ade-[u]p [p]eople [d]oing [m]ade-[u]p [t]hings. Let's call
| that MUPDMUT. With some liberty, Mupdeemut
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| A group of people just asked me what verisimilitude was, now I'm
| excited to come back and tell them about verisimilitudinously.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| > A group of people just asked me what verisimilitude was
|
| This happens all the time! Glad it's not just me.
| verisimilitude wrote:
| I picked my username so I'd remember that very word...
| Rumudiez wrote:
| missed opportunity to put the definition in your bio
| airstrike wrote:
| Next up is probably vicissitudes, then
| thfuran wrote:
| Nope, heteroscedasticity.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| It's not just similitude. It's _veri_. Similitude.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I know you're joking but it may confuse people: It's _veri_
| (the truth, e.g. _verily_ , _verify_ ) + _similitude_ :
| something that seems like truth, but is not truth - otherwise
| we'd just call it _truth_.
| tuatoru wrote:
| True! Really?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > verisimilitudinously
|
| I might say to them that _verisimilitudinous_ is not the usual
| word (despite the OP). It 's the more elegant _verisimilar_ ,
| and thus _verisimilarly_.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| This 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.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Yes, you can speak like this. People are just going to think
| you're pretentious. This is the sort of language you use with
| specific audiences. The interviewer and the interviewee are
| simply using language for mutually exclusive audiences.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| 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".
| 1024core wrote:
| I'd like that on my tombstone....
| ozzmotik wrote:
| i know a good engraver.
| im3w1l wrote:
| 200 years from now someone wonders who you were simping for.
| nashashmi wrote:
| (meta) the site is a dream. It can be browsed without css/js.
| pictureofabear wrote:
| That was a nice read. Thanks for posting!
| hkt wrote:
| I've never felt as seen as when I read that title
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| Very interesting interview, but aside from that - what a true joy
| to read an article with so many words I'd never even _seen_
| before!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| _In 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.
| adamisom wrote:
| >Snark is a signal of cheap argument: They have nothing more
| serious to say
|
| They may well have something more serious to say, and it
| doesn't imply a weak argument in itself. I think it's fair to
| say the author does have something more serious to say; the
| question, really, is do you. All you've done is reduced the OP
| to the same tired discourse, and proclaimed which side you're
| on, but you know, there really is more to the linked essay than
| that.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > Snark is a signal of cheap argument: They have nothing more
| serious to say;
|
| and the traditional riposte as shown here is smarm:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20131207011820/https://gawker.co...
|
| _What is this defining feature of our times? What is snark
| reacting to?
|
| It is reacting to smarm.
|
| What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance--an
| assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of
| constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned
| with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves.
|
| Smarm would rather talk about anything other than smarm. Why,
| smarm asks, can't everyone just be nicer?_
|
| The existence of a "sensitivity editor" more or less defines
| smarm, so the reaction is fairly natural.
| roughly wrote:
| > I received an email from a colleague who wanted me to talk to
| the Dean that opened, "Is it time for us to have a chat with the
| dean? Are we remembering what was promised us, last spring, at
| lunch? Are we going to let history repeat itself?" I suffered
| pique at this and wrote back, "Are your emotions pure? Are your
| nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato?
| Should it still be Constantinople?"
|
| Lord, this paragraph gave me life. This is why we need Academia -
| somewhere needs be a shelter for the people with both the wit to
| write this response and the job security to actually send it, if
| only to provide the rest of us with the solace of knowing it
| exists.
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(page generated 2024-04-24 23:00 UTC)