Slightest, but important, social tidbit re The Crying of Lot 49

[Jochen Stremmel]

That seems a bit cheap, Mark. If you make accusations like that you have to
have book, page and line, and then you can decide if the character in
question is racist or not or just flippant.

By the way, I'm no fan either. And I most certainly don't know the book you
are talking about.

(That would be a great PH.D. subject: The Racial Slur in American Novels of
the Sixties and Seventies) (Hi & Lo!)

2016-01-25 12:17 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> p. 98 [Oedipa].."riding among an exhausted busful of Negroes"...
>
> When did the word 'Negro' stop being used by writers, novelists
> in America at least, as THE overall descriptive word?
>
> Remember *Crying* was published in 1966, some part copyrighted
> in 65, before the Black Power movement, before all that came
> right before and then right after the period *Inherent Vice* is set.
>
> Don't know? I do. Starting and quickly happening from 1968 on,
> African-American
> and black began to be the descriptive word choice. Different conceptual
> uses but 'black' preferred usually since that was the self-identity
> preferred,
> ---see Black Power--- as argued for by those so demeaned.
>
>
> Jump cut:
> Richard Ford. Anyone a fan? I'm not. There are multiple reasons but here
> is one.
> I was reading a later work, in the 2000's probably, certainly the 90s...and
> it is set long after 1968, in the recent past of the time if I remember
> aright and
> his character, a white guy of course, says Negro! "Negro!'. And there is
> no reason
> to believe that such backward 'values' are part of his character. It may
> even
> have been an elided authorial narrator, dunno, has melted in details cause
> I haven't retold it.
>
> This novel, which i could look up, was, I think, the first after the
> industry news-making
> split with the legendary editor who helped make him a success. No one
> talks.
> Full of myself, I often wonder whether it was over such as that
> anachronistic
> use of the word.
>
> Richard Ford was born in Mississippi.
>
>
>
>
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