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

[Mark Kohut]

To All:

My impressionistic memory can often be wrong and if Jochen knows Ford's
work much better than I do, and he doesn't know
of my example, then it may be a created memory.
I cannot remember nor find for sure on Amazon the book I think I remember
reading. Bad sign.

Sorry.
Mark


On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:14 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Better: "next time I'll try to remember to signal when I am ruining
> someone's reputation especially my own".
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 8:12 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> C'mon, Jochen.
>> This is my memory and judgment on the Plist.
>>  All can stop reading me if they don't like my "accusations"--what a
>> word.
>>
>> next time I'll signal when I'm ruining someone's reputation.
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 7:44 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> 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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