It's totally doesn't make this the whitest blog ever if no one comments on this. No worries, pals.
There are a lot of posts these past few days.
I'm about to read the article but didn't we just recently have the the discussion that Coates is no Baldwin?
The new biography of Iceberg Slim must be of interest to somebody, he typed whitely.
Thanks for posting. This is much more illuminating than the huffy "Coates is no Baldwin" discussion -- talks about their influences, their contexts and their times in ways that explain the differences in their styles. The question of whether or not Coates is worthy of the title was always unfair to both Coates and Baldwin.
I'm reading The Fire Next Time right now.
I am reading The Revolutions, which I would not mention if I didn't like it owing to the authorship/commenter overlap thing, but I do. It's like the Out of the Silent Planet/Perelandra that one wishes to have had.
About Baldwin and Coates: Baldwin is writing as a gay man, and that really informs all his writing. It's sort of odd, now that I think about it, that in all the stuff I've read about Baldwin and Coates, I have read very little that talks about Baldwin as a gay writer and Coates as a straight one. I don't really have a fantastic analysis about all this, but I've read and reread Baldwin since my early twenties and...I dunno, I just feel like everything in the ways that he talks about love and family and social relationships is profoundly shaped by being gay (particularly at a time where he was sort of known to be gay but wasn't exactly able to be all gay lib about it) as well as by being Black.
I'm reading The Fire Next Time right now.
Hey, me too.
9. Is/was Gilman a commenter here? Didn't know that. The Revolutions is quite good.
7: YOU ARE SCUM.*
* "Mr. Kingsley Amis is so talented, his observation is so keen, that you cannot fail to be convinced that the young men he so brilliantly describes truly represent the class with which his novel is concerned....They have no manners, and are woefully unable to deal with any social predicament. Their idea of a celebration is to go to a public bar and drink six beers. They are mean, malicious and envious....They are scum."
11 He wrote the greatest jaw-droppingest awesomest "Naming of Parts"/"Fuck you, clown" mash-ups in the history of forever.
11. Gilman used to comment here before he was famous. His contribution to the "Fuck you clown" thread was immortal.
I don't know about his characters, but Amis was never sober after lunchtime. If your world view had been set as a liberal Tory in about 1930 and had never changed in any detail, you apparently found him amusing company.
"jaw-droppingly awesomest"? Something like that. He's really good on the twitters too.
14 Thou has been pwned, chris y, with specifics and added linkage value too.
On that thread, Chopper said it best.
9: Have you read this? I was also struck by the letter to my nephew/letter to my son contrast.
9: Have you read this? I was also struck by the letter to my nephew/letter to my son contrast.
Thank you, that was good.
Speaking of rap: I don't know how many unfogged-oids will remember the Sean Price who is now dead, I'm gueesing maybe Heebie and one or two others? But he was a fairly big deal in Nineties hip-hop.
14 Thou has been pwned, chris y, with specifics and added linkage value too. thanks for sharing...
Holy shit, the AI spam revolution is here.
Its worse than you think: I've been an AI spam bot all along.