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I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton
- Jun8 2y agoThis is a fantastic interview with Padgett Powell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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-american-letters-oddest-elder-statesman-1005 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flann_O'Brien.
- ailun 2y agoIt'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 2y agoThe little info box about the interviewer at the end of the article tells you all you need to know.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoYou got something against Canadians?
- wmil 2y agoNo one has more issues with Toronto writers who claim to be part of the "Canadian literary underground" than other Canadians.
- atuladhar 2y agoHmm, 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.
- galaxyLogic 2y ago"The little info box about the interviewer at the end of the article tells you all you need to know." That is a very round-about way of saying something negative about this article. Why not say straight out what you think is wrong with it? Why not? Maybe because it is easier for some people to agree with you when you don't present any actual facts. What does that little info-box say? And why do you think that is ALL we need to know?
- culi 2y agoI think the implication is that this interview is more about the interviewer than about the interviewee. Not sure I agree. Infoboxes about the author of an article are a common practice. I see them even on recipe websites
- Mtinie 2y agoYour comment tells me all I need to know about you. Obtuse commentary is worthless for discussion.
- HillRat 2y agoIt'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 2y agoIt 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoAlso, shouldn't it be "berthed" not birthed?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Ar-Curunir 2y agoEr 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).
- phren0logy 2y agoI absolutely love this! As you have noted, both the ability and the courage to speak plainly have made it a lost art.
- Simon_ORourke 2y agoFlann 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!
- glassconclusion 2y agoI really like the short story Typical. It is one of my favorite short stories.
- Jun8 2y agoSo do I! In fact I searched for Powell this morning, after lazily taking down my 1990 Best American Short Stories collection, which was where I first encountered “Typical” and his unique voice.
- simplyluke 2y agoI found this interview almost unreadable, but I'm also quite sure I'm not the target audience for it despite being a pretty avid reader.
- sdwr 2y agoI find the author almost unlikeable! He acts like an actual author - under-acknowledged, cloyingly clever, desperate for attention instead of an author fantasy - cool, knowledgeable, enmeshed in the subject to the point of unselfconsciousness
- a_random_canuck 2y agoI found the interviewer comes across as incredibly pretentious. I can’t stand this style of writing, he is trying way too hard.
- Nition 2y agoIt all kind of reaches an apotheosis when the interviewer makes the second big red pull quote one from their questions, instead of one from the author's answers. I couldn't believe it, I had to double check!
- et1337 2y agoWow that’s incredible. What a sentence too. Slides right through your brain without any meaning getting caught on it.
- gadders 2y agoI think they're both trying to show how smart they are - the interviewer in a big-brain intellectual fashion, and the author in an arch way to show what a rebel he is.
- blackmesaind 2y agoDespite Powell's almost cringe worthy rage against "liberal racism", at least his responses had force of personality behind them. The interviewer's questions show a distinct lack of awareness. An interview only works if you're setting the stage for the interviewee, not for yourself.
- gadders 2y ago>>An interview only works if you're setting the stage for the interviewee, not for yourself. Yeah, unless the interviewer is a big name in their own right (so not in this case), your aim is to let the subject shine and fade into the background. The quality of your questions is only judged by what answers they elicit.
- blackmesaind 2y agoUnless it's investigative in nature, even the best interviewers still don't take the spotlight. Larry King, on his interview technique, said "The key of interviewing is listening. I hate interviewers who come with a long list of prepared questions, because they're going to depend on going from the fourth question to the fifth question without listening to the answer" Though I can't say I blame the interviewer. If I spent that much time flipping through a thesaurus crafting my questions, I wouldn't want to divert from them either.
- gadders 2y agoYeah, but I assumed that the interview was done via email. I could be wrong.
- 2y ago
- nkurz 2y agoSince it's a central to the interview and not well explained, here's a link to Barthelme's short story "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby": https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/gone.too.far https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/gone.too.far It's very short, and very worth reading.
- Olesya000 2y ago[dead]
- boogieknite 2y agoNot 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 2y agoInteresting, neither Google, nor GPT-4 know anything about that term, outside of TFA.
- standardly 2y agoHe 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 2y agoI obviously need to pay more attention. Thank you very much. Cheers!
- adammarples 2y agowell you could use understanding
- pxc 2y ago'intellection' has a more playful connotation, especially as the author interviewed used it, because it's needlessly academic and sounds made up
- robocat 2y agoPadgett 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 2y agoA group of people just asked me what verisimilitude was, now I'm excited to come back and tell them about verisimilitudinously.
- jeremyjh 2y ago> A group of people just asked me what verisimilitude was This happens all the time! Glad it’s not just me.
- verisimilitude 2y agoI picked my username so I'd remember that very word...
- Rumudiez 2y agomissed opportunity to put the definition in your bio
- airstrike 2y agoNext up is probably vicissitudes, then
- thfuran 2y agoNope, heteroscedasticity.
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoVoila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the “vox populi” now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoThis 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 2y agoYes, 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.
- riehwvfbk 2y agoSomehow a particular audience in the Bay Area decided that they must be the only ones with a voice.
- komali2 2y agoPerhaps you're getting downvoted for being weirdly coy. It sounds like you want to paint a bunch of people with one brush, why don't you just go ahead and do it? I'll never understand this smirking form of reactionary elbow-nudging.
- mock-possum 2y agoWhat is ‘in the bay area’ code for
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoIt's a domain-specific language, but it's about prose instead of e.g. legal, medicine, or IT tech.
- ryandvm 2y agoPeople are going to know you're pretentious.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoI 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 2y agoI'd like that on my tombstone....
- nashashmi 2y ago(meta) the site is a dream. It can be browsed without css/js.
- mondobe 2y agoAlthough, on the topic of site design, the Tweets on the sidebar do take up 2/3 of the page. Is it really necessary to see posts all the way back from April 2020?
- pictureofabear 2y agoThat was a nice read. Thanks for posting!
- hkt 2y agoI've never felt as seen as when I read that title
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- tony_cannistra 2y agoVery interesting interview, but aside from that – what a true joy to read an article with so many words I'd never even seen before!
- otteromkram 2y agoverisimilitudinously!
- Cthulhu_ 2y agoI'm finally going to beat someone at scrabble!
- wolverine876 2y agoIn 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 2y ago>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.
- roughly 2y ago> 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.
- Aeolun 2y agoShould I read anything into this other than the response making fun of the tone of the original message?
- phoenixy1 2y agoThe context isn't fully spelled out, but Powell is describing the inspiration for "The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?" Those lines are the beginning of his novel and the novel itself is entirely in the form of questions.
- roughly 2y agoThe article’s worth a read, but no, I was just experiencing vicarious catharsis from the response.
- Dudhbbh3343 2y agoSo he's just mocking the melodramatic message of his colleague? As someone who's not that well read, I find his response nonsensical, so I imagine I'm missing a reference or two.
- briangray 2y agoI may be reading too far into it, but I think he _is_ mocking his colleague by responding to questions with similar questions. > Are your emotions pure? Are you thinking through this with clear thought and emotion? > Are your nerves adjustable? Do you feel so strongly about this that it has affected you this whole time, since spring? > How do you stand in relation to the potato? Can you not support yourself? Are you as wellrounded or less so than a potato? > Should it still be Constantinople? Can the outcome not change even when history repeats itself? The last one to me seems like the indicator that these questions are not nonsensical. As it is is direct reference to the colleague's question about history repeating itself and refers to a location which changed back and forth numerous times.
- MarcoZavala 2y ago[dead]
- YugyDugan 2y ago>Black and white Tell us what you really think, loxist
- hindsightbias 2y ago“JMA: Does the prose voice that you adopt develop in parallel to the thematic concerns that you will tackle in a given work, or does it emerge as a result of other considerations? PP: It emerges with no consideration for anything but the next correct word.” PadgetGPT
- pictureofabear 2y agoGenerative Padgett Tranformer
- notnmeyer 2y agothis will be the subject line of my next resignation email!
- gred 2y ago> Donald Barthelme in particular praised you for writing about things readers had never heard before between Black and white characters. It's bizarre to me that in certain circles some Colors are capitalized, while other colors are not.
- boplicity 2y agoIt may be bizarre for you, but it is often a reasoned and thoughtful use of the word, meaningful in the context of a complex and consistent consideration of the general meaning and usage of words. I encourage you to consider and understand the perspectives of those who do capitalize the word. This serves as an introduction to some people's thinking: https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php Note, the standard practice to capitalize ethnic groups: For example jewish would be considered incorrect. There are those who consider Black to be an ethnic group, hence, capitalizing it encompasses a way to "describe the people, culture, art and communities" that make up the ethnic group. In which case, it's not a color, exactly, which I think is what you may be missing, when you consider why some capitalize the word. Case in point: We already capitalize many other groups that are often associated with "color." Color, of course, being a construct we often see as "real," when in fact it is a cultural interpretation. > After all, she pointed out, “We already capitalize Asian, Hispanic, African American and Native American.”
- Dudhbbh3343 2y agoYou and your link make reasonable arguments for capitalizing black, but I don't see any justification (other than to be contrary to supremacist groups) for not doing the same for white, which leaves it inconsistent with the naming of all other racial/ethnic groups.
- hotdogscout 2y agoLeftist activists circles have grievances with white people and this is a small token of revenge. Depersonifying white people. Asians don't get internally consistent treatment because of intersectionality. Are we really pretending it's a coincidence all the time? This naivety is rightfully never applied to right wing bigotry. I'm not white myself but I'm genuinely confused as to why this kind of blatant ethnic antagonization is so normalized in western elites and extremely taboo to point out.
- neilk 2y agoI went looking for more Padget Powell; in particular I wanted to hear his voice. This one is pretty good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69cvhp6h2cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69cvhp6h2cc In the interview he also uses "made-up people doing made-up things", so this was not an nonce invention. Perhaps he uses the phrase when teaching literature. Also I would not judge him for this, every person who is frequently interviewed learns to deploy a few stories and phrases that have a reliable effect.
- stefanon 2y agoI am a singleton
- bitwize 2y agoQuote in the title is a near-perfect description of where I am in the job search process.
- mr_pinnen 2y agoGreat interview. If you liked it then here is another with the same author that is also worth your time: https://lithub.com/in-which-padgett-powell-employs-an-extended-scatological-metaphor/ https://lithub.com/in-which-padgett-powell-employs-an-extend...
- eszed 2y ago> I learned to write the English I have written by taking three years of Latin, in the putatively desolate educational backwater of Jacksonville, Florida, ending in the tenth grade translating The Aeneid. I was in homeroom sitting with Allen Collins of Lynyrd Skynyrd. We was gettin’ it. We did not know we was gettin’ it. This is great.
- dash2 2y agoThis I did not expect: > I learned to write the English I have written by taking three years of Latin, in the putatively desolate educational backwater of Jacksonville, Florida, ending in the tenth grade translating The Aeneid. I was in homeroom sitting with Allen Collins of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
- prewett 2y agoI took me some reflection and some education from the comments here to see this, but it seems like Powell had the same pique to the interviewer's questions as he did to his colleague's. So he answers the questions, but at the same time he critiques the interviewer: - "I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton," suggesting that the interviewer still has said juice. This also allows some subtle critiques like "I'm ignorant of 'malapert'", which on the surface is a sort of back-handed compliment to the questioner on their ability to coin a phrase like "malapert urbanity" that a "simpleton" like they are interviewing does not understand. But it also suggests that if the "legend" they are interviewing does not know the word, perhaps this is excessive juice. - "It emerges with no consideration for anything but the next correct word." Questioner, stop overthinking things. - Then when the interviewer asks Powell to agree with his assertion-as-a-question that there is no wrong way to read a book, Powell responds with a story about how he wants to focus on making writing better but people like the interviewer that say there are no wrong ways to read a book are actually teaching that there are wrong ways to say things. Furthermore, people like the interviewer eviscerated a recent book in the style that people like the interviewer celebrated, on the grounds of racism, despite the fact that the content of his books is from actual black people who said those things. So the implied answer the question is that no, a book does not get unmoored from its time period, because he cannot actually publish those books today, and that there may or may not be a wrong way to read a book, but there certainly is a wrong way to write one, namely his (celebrated) way. But then it all goes completely over the interviewer's head (no doubt as expected). I wasn't impressed with Powell on the first read, but wow, that is some finesse!