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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
why is it that these asshats always get suprised when they are booed for slandering our president with lies during a war?
I thought they were intellectuals? Shouldn’t they see this kind of thing coming?
And WHY DEAR GOD WHY do these said asshats CONTINUE to ignore the fact that the No WMD’s/No connection to Islamic terror meme is dying a slow cruel death each and every day we are in Iraq?
How many more Sarin shells, how many more recorded transcipts and documents proving the terror connection will these morons need to see before they face the facts?
Interesting question in Doctorow’s case. Ragtime is a fabulous novel that blends historical personages and fiction seamlessly. Doctorow essentially allows himself to rewrite history—and to those who remember his accounting of events, such will BE their understanding of history. I’ll dig up some more on this from when I taught Ragtime. Not that anyone cares, but just because I like to dig.
Here it is; discussion of Ragtime on ppgs 37-39.
Cripes, between you and Whittle I’m not getting anything done today……
Sorry. Read his, if you only have time for one. Mine is just lecture notes that draw on a lot of linguistic theory. Not interesting at all to most sane people.
“why is it that these asshats always get suprised when they are booed for slandering our president with lies during a war?”
They’re surprised because, for at least thirty-five years (I started college in 1969) this sort of thing was accepted behavior on most campuses. I’m very happy that there are now some campuses where it isn’t. Perhaps it will spread.
Which part was the accepted behavior? The booing, or the lefty fear-mongering? Actually, I suppose they were both accepted in a sense.
People like Doctorow are shocked now not because of the behavior, but because the shoe is on the other foot.
Hey Jeff, question for you: is there a point to Doctorow not using any frigging quote signs in Ragtime, or is he just trying to be original for its own sake?
You may feel free to chalk Ragtime up in the column of books you admire which I couldn’t stand. I know you’ve been hanging fire for my verdict on the subject–didn’t want to keep you waiting any longer.
I don’t have a copy of it here. Did he use some other diacritical mark to signify dialogue? Italics, maybe?
Offhanded, I’d say the absense of quotation marks serves to further problematize the artifices of representation and reference.
Beck, one of the interesting aspects of the book is its ambigious narrative voice. Third person sympathetic but it still seems to make extended shifts from two to three different characters throughout to my ear. The loose attributions and no quotations marks contribute to that.
That’s my layman’s take on it anyway.
Hey Jeff, the discussion of Beloved and Portnoy’s Complaint was cool.
It’s funny how reading (or writing) something like this helps to crystalize the rather vague thoughts and impressions you are left with after you read the actual text.
Glad you liked it. My class liked it, too; our resident Morrison specialist, however, was not happy with me.
From your take on non-ownership of narratives (a discussion from long ago, somewhere in your archives but also in these notes), I’m not surprised at all.
The “accepted behavior” to which I was referring was attacks on conservative politicians and thinkers, especially Presidents, with an expectation that no disagreement would be expressed.