Holy crap. Just reading Beatty's The Sellout, and I've come across a pretty egregious error.

[Jochen Stremmel]

Haven't read it but you're aware that the "I" is not Beatty and not black?
Perhaps Beatty wouldn't even call Eggers a condescending do-gooder.

Am Sa., 22. Juni 2019 um 06:45 Uhr schrieb David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com
>:

> Like you, I wasn't aware of this "blacks" taboo.  I can't object because
> I'm not black.  This dynamic is silly, and makes Trump great for idiots.
>
> On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 10:32 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Not sure where you're going with this, or what you mean, exactly.
> >
> > That phrase ("the blacks") only appears in my email as a direct quote
> > of Beatty's text.
> >
> > Beatty is an African American author, in case you weren't aware.
> >
> > You should read The Sellout. It's fantastic, unfair attack on David
> > Cronenberg notwithstanding.
> >
> > YOPJerky
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 10:33 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Very recently I was informed (online) that "blacks" is an offensive
> > term. "Black people" is OK, though.  This semantic rule seems to be just
> > what the PC police are looking for.
> > >
> > > David Morris
> > >
> > > On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 8:58 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com
> >
> > wrote:
> > >>
> > >> And this, my friends, is an example of precisely what I was afraid
> > >> might happen actually happening.
> > >>
> > >> Let me explain...
> > >>
> > >> On page 95, Beatty writes:
> > >>
> > >> "The only certainties I had about the African-American condition were
> > >> that we had no concept of the phrases too sweet and too salty. And in
> > >> ten years, through countless California cruelties and slights against
> > >> the blacks, the poor, the people of color, like Propositions 8 and
> > >> 187, the disappearance of social welfare, David Cronenberg's Crash and
> > >> Dave Eggers's do-gooder condescension, I hadn't spoken a single word."
> > >>
> > >> I'm sure I probably don't have to point this out to too many of you
> > >> here on the P-list, but Beatty can't possibly mean Cronenberg's 1996
> > >> film in this context. He must be referring to Paul Haggis's 2006
> > >> Academy Award-winning mediocrity. And now his error is immortalized in
> > >> the printed word, in a very popular novel, indeed.
> > >>
> > >> SHIT!
> > >>
> > >> I haven't been able to find Beatty on social media at all. Is there
> > >> any way to contact him to let him know, so that maybe the error can be
> > >> corrected in future editions? It IS a pretty serious error, after all.
> > >>
> > >> Cheers,
> > >> yer old pal Jerky
> > >> --
> > >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>