Don't worry, soon tattooed barcodes and/or implanted RFID chips will make cash entirely obsolete.

I'd need someone with better eschatology (which is anyone who has any knowledge of it) than me to comment on this, but won't a number of people be raptured before then, and hence can't count on it?

Why don't we put Jean Paul Satre on Mt. Rushmore while we are at it?

The upside: they aren't running a contest for "most marginal figure in America history" and putting the winner on the dollar coin this time round.

Right, like ogged's going to be raptured.

When I pay for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine by tossing down a coin or two, it feels so much better than when I have to extract a crumpled bill from my wallet.

This might be an American guy hangup. Most American men I know walk into their houses and empty all the change out of their pockets like it was so much lint. Women's wallets (and men's wallets in Europe) have coin-purses.

purses

That's your problem right there.

walk into their houses and empty all the change out of their pockets like it was so much lint

This is exactly right. I recently found around $15-20 in coins in my car because I just dump them in the center console and forget about them. And the sound of your coin hitting the table bugs me. You can stop now.

I use a billfold. I hate coins.

Also, why are women's wallets so fucking huge? Why do we need bigger wallets than men? Fuck that, I don't need to put my goddamn checkbook in my wallet.

So what you're saying is that the dollar coin will never work because American men are that nervous about their masculinity?

Never underestimate the lengths to which American men will go to defend their masculinity.

Personally, I like dollar coins. I was hoping the Sacagawea would catch on.

Clearly, it's about men's irrational fear of purses.

I own and sometimes use a manpurse. Yeah, deal with it. That has nothing to do with the suckiness of coins. I'm not going to put my wallet in that in any case, and I'm not going to keep my money in two different places. And there's the damn jingling. Death to coins.

4: Does one "get raptured?" I didn't know how that worked.

Why don't we put Jean Paul Satre on Mt. Rushmore while we are at it?

Question: if we did this, and told people it was Polk, what percentage of Americans would believe it?

I have a small wallet, which is basically a coin-purse with credit-card slots. My small bills are pretty much always in a nasty crinkly state when they emerge, and shopkeepers always ostentaciously smooth them out, to which my reaction is: whatever.

I recently found around $15-20 in coins in my car because...

Oh, ogged, this shit just breaks my skinflinty heart.

When I was a kid, my dad would enlist us into counting that lint-change into bank-rolls. He claimed that he was depositing them into college accounts for us, so we were actually working for ourselves, but since we didn't get college accounts, I'm not sure exactly how the accounting worked out. The lesson I learned, though, was that coins are money.

In France, people made fun of me for collecting centimes. Not so in Germany--and they even had an automated banking system for turning in coins.

My bank has a coin machine that counts your change and deposits it in your account. I love it very much.

if we did this, and told people it was Polk, what percentage of Americans would believe it?

A lot higher than the percentage of Americans who could tell you who Polk was, I bet.

17: Does the machine take a cut? That's my turn off to the coin-cointing machines at the grocery store.

they aren't running a contest for "most marginal figure in America history" and putting the winner on the dollar coin this time round

Setting aside the question of the worthiness of the dollar coin's first two modern honorees, one of whom was an key figure in the expansion of American democracy and the other an essential agent of American territorial expansion (who performed her service to the country while walking from Montana to the Pacific with a newborn strapped to her back), I'd agree that the mint has treated the coin as a marginal project, not worth even the most basic design considerations. Back in the day, we had people like St. Gaudens working for the Mint.

If they were smart about making coins a product line, they'd mint just a few thousand of, say, Polk. A dollar would finally be worth something again.

Not if you have an account with that bank. It charges non-members a percentage, I think. You swipe your ATM card, pour in your coins and they go into your bank account. It is perfect. My engineer girlfriends and I talk about it in awed tones, because it is so well designed for that need. Whenever one of us has coins, we visit it together.

I'm finding it oddly hilarious that they're putting out two separate Grover Cleveland coins.

21: neat. I will henceforth spell "counting" correctly, while dreaming of magical coin eaters, eager to devour and deposit my rattle-rattle change, lest I disturb the slumbering ogged.

How do you have a purse inside a wallet? Thats like parking your house inside your car.

Neither pennies nor one or two cent euro coins are money, but all other coin denominations are. I, like JM, like paying with coins for small purchases.

My current wallet and, I think, my last wallet, which I can't find at the moment, both have coin pockets. The one on my current wallet is quite cleverly constructed! It is a good wallet.

When I was in the States I found that coins worked quite differently from what I was used to. Usually coins pile up all over the place and you have to make an effort to get rid of them, but in America they seemed to trickle into your pocket and you never had them when you wanted them. I have no idea why this is.

Does the machine take a cut? That's my turn off to the coin-cointing machines at the grocery store.

The other problem with the supermarket machines is the context. At a bank, one can look virtuous, depositing one's patiently gathered coins in a demonstration of thrift and sensible economy. It's impossible to use the supermarket machines without appearing a model of sweaty desperation, a defeated person wondering how many days of Ramen noodles the pennies from under the car seat will allow.

You don't have to use a purse. Coins are quite happy in the pocket. Dollar bills are usually shredded rags, so I don't see what the problem is.

When the ten and five pence pieces were redesigned (a few years ago) I noticed that they had become almost identical in size to US quarter and dime coins, although the weights are different. I still believe this is owing to a conspiracy involving manufacturers of coin related machinery. So maybe you'll get a pound coin equivalent? Interesting times.

If I wore mostly Spandex I wouldn't like coins either. But I'm not as buff as all that.

Polk is the greatest US President except for Van Buren. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln -- they're the big stadium-rock prezes. The indie prezes are Polk and Van Buren.

Also, why are women's wallets so fucking huge? Why do we need bigger wallets than men? Fuck that, I don't need to put my goddamn checkbook in my wallet.

Just to remind y'all of your uteri.

My engineer girlfriends and I talk about it in awed tones, because it is so well designed for that need. Whenever one of us has coins, we visit it together.

[redacted comment about fun].

Coins replacing bills is an inevitable fact of life in more advanced societies. Coins last longer, are more costly to counterfeit, and give the population a host of back problems, thereby creating a new market for chiropractors. Canada ditched their one dollar bill many years ago, and in hoser style called it a loonie. All was fine and good, until, in a typically Canadian move, the replacement for the two dollar bill was called a toonie.

God help us all when they replace the $5 bill. I can't even fathom what ridiculous name that coin will get.

And there's the damn jingling. Death to coins.

Preach it brother.

And seriously Andrew, "more costly to counterfeit"? Who on earth is going to counterfeit one dollar bills?

Women with a tendency to turn into candy bars?

My current wallet and, I think, my last wallet, which I can't find at the moment, both have coin pockets. The one on my current wallet is quite cleverly constructed! It is a good wallet.

I don't suppose you know the make and model of your current wallet? I'm in the market for a new one and require both a coin pocket and a certain amount of sveltitude.

Coins are kept in my car, or in a container just to the right of the way-out door. I grab about $1.50s worth in case I want to buy coffee, and this pretty much uses up the silver change. However, I have too many pennies because I'm sheepish about paying for things in large amounts of pennies. Part of me just wants to throw the useless things in the garbage, but then a small part feels I shouldn't be wasteful. I'd be fine with the dollar coin, but more than that I'd rather get rid of pennies.

It's impossible to use the supermarket machines without appearing a model of sweaty desperation, a defeated person wondering how many days of Ramen noodles the pennies from under the car seat will allow.

If you can bring a child with you, you can pretend the coins are his, and that you are teaching him a lesson about thrift. If the child is young enough, he will enjoy dumping the coins, and you will be able to keep the money for ramen noodles.

I own and sometimes use a manpurse.

You're an offense to masculinity, Ogged.

If you can bring a child with you, you can pretend the coins are his, and that you are teaching him a lesson about thrift.

If I brought a child with me, people would assume I kidnapped him. Which might, under the circumstances, be correct.

30 - The quintoonie?

John, I think "prez" is pluralized thusly: "prezzes".

The mint should bring back the Eisenhower dollar. Carry half a dozen of those babies in your pocket, and you knew you had some money.

I look forward to the Millard Fillmore dollar. With a pictoral on the Compromise of 1850 on the back.

Several years ago, I was interviewing a bright young lawyer, two degrees from Harvard, and made a lame joke about switching around the $10 bill, and maybe giving Fillmore a chance. He didn't laugh. He did ask who Millard Fillmore was. This is not the reason he didn't get the job, but there is no telling how many lives would have been better if I was funnier.

40 -- yeah. Also I miss the JFK half-dollar piece. (...It was JFK right? I mostly just have a sense-memory from my childhood of the heft of those things, and how happy it made me to be given one.)

Millard Fillmore? You mean that right-wing duck in the comics?

If you live in a city and own a car, quarters are worth far more than their denominated value. All other change is junk, much of which I'd gladly pay someone to take off my hands. (Pennies especially. I refuse to accept penny change from merchants. I just tell them to keep the pennies and give me the rest.)

I'd happily trade four dimes, or 9 nickels, or 49 pennies for a single quarter all day every day. I could easily be talked into trading on even more lopsided terms on a situational basis.

an essential agent of American territorial expansion

Susan B Anthony is a true hero of the Republic, I grant you. But Sacagawea? Really, does anyone think she even ranks among the top 1,000 most consequential people in American history? Hey, we don't want a white guy, that's fine. Put MLK on a coin, that's certainly overdue.

If I were a homeless person I'd hang around parking meters and trade my quarters for Brock's dimes and nickels.

Related: If a homeless person manning the parking meters noticed you were trying to park and helped you find a space, how much would you tip him?

Paying for small purchases with coins is satisfying, but carrying around small coins is not. A nice, heavy coin, like the 50-cent coin, that's what you want to have in your pocket.

If you take Susan B. Anthony off the dollar coin, how will grandfathers convince grandchildren that she was the first woman president? (Note that kids won't buy that about Sacagawea.)

the worst thing about pennies - they make your hands smell.

the government should simply issue those little rubber purses, the ovular ones with a slit down one side. they should all be pink, and emblazoned with: kiss my grits! I would use such a purse without complaint.

OKAY. I know this is the blog for neurotics, but the contaminating smell of pennies? the maddening clingclanging of coins? the oppressive thingness of things in pockets? Ever think about how dirty paper money gets?

Let's be clear: below a certain weight threshhold, the thinginess of things in one's pocket is oppressive. Give me five thingy-thing slabs of Big Nickel and woo!

Although: Sexxing on a bed of hefty dollar coins is much more erotic than sexxing on a bed of musty, limp dollar bills.

Whereas sex on a bed of quarters? Just cheap.

So dollar coins do have that advantage.

" Ever think about how dirty paper money gets?"
Panic and terror in the EU as all the Euro bills fade, crumple and tear like late autumn leaves. Transpires that people snort crystal meth through them, (we've just discovered crystal meth and it doesn't have the class attributes here that it has down your way) and something in it that isn't in cocaine just destroys the bills.

Damn your new server/comments - I've had to re-enter my "details"..

"

Why don't they replace the penny with a large copper-colored, zinc-filled dollar coin with a picture of Lincoln on it? I mean, not only is the market value of a penny less than the cost of production, but based on Coinstar it's also less than $.01

What annoyed me about the Sacagawea thing is that we don't actually know what she looked like. It's better than the computer generated scenery on the EU money though.

Brock Landers is limited by his lack of entrepreneurial vision, but he almost finds the point: How will I do laps in my money bin without gold doubloons?

I have a rugged, sporty manpurse. It's great for travelling.

I hate coins. I can't stand having them in my pocket because they're irritating, noisy, and heavy. Also they clutter up my dresser, so I've started just throwing them away at the end of the day.

FL- can't you just collect them in a coffee mug (or somesuch similar container) until it's all filled up and then go give them to a nearby homeless person or something? I've contemplated throwing them away before, but would be disgusted with myself at actually doing so.

Or dump them into a sock, Labs, and take it with you when you walk down the street, so that when a homeless person asks you for change, you can beat him with it, for irony.

Collect them in a mason jar, and I promise you, in three months' time you can exchange it for a crisp twenty—then you can say, money's not an issue.

I would be OK with a dollar coin but travels abroad have taught me that I hate $2 coins. Also, I like the quarter. I don't like countries that have a 20 cent coin instead. I also don't like currencies with too many options for making change, like the Euro. Do you really need 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 cent coins?

We should get rid of the penny (didn't miss it at all when I was in Australia) and switch to just 5 cent, 10 cent, 25 cent, and dollar coins. I have decided. QED.

My wife and I have two coin jars--one for white coins, one for pennies. Every year we cash in the white coins and it pays for a pretty nice dinner out for our anniversary--about $150.

The penny jar is a half-gallon growler. I've been working on it for 8 years, and it's just about full. I'm thinking I'll get about $30 when I cash it in.

58: Eerily, this was exactly my thought for a jokey response, but I thought it might be a bit much, since, had I written it, I wouldn't have been able to resist throwing in the phrase "you want some fuckin' change?!" Hey, this is sounding pretty good. Back in ten minutes.

Really, does anyone think [Sacajawea] even ranks among the top 1,000 most consequential people in American history?

Probably not. But her coin illustrates two of the important rules for achieving success and fame in America: Be at the right place at the right time. It isn't what you know, it's who you know.

I like the Sacajawea coin--more or less--and I like having coins--except for pennies. Pennies are the pigeons of the numismatic world. But I'm not feeling the new Presidential coins at all. They remind me of those collectable tokens gas stations used to give away.

Throwing change away at the end of the day! My husband puts his spare change ('puts his spare change' sounds like it should be a euphemism for something) in jars. Every once in a great while, we roll them and bring them to the bank. One time, we ended up with over $1,000. And that's even with me pilfering the jar for quarters for parking meters, a drink or a snack, etc.

What are the drawbacks of being married to a street musician?

Doesn't anybody here actually spend their change? Keeping a thousand bucks in coins around (or even twenty) while you're taking money out of the bank is just plain crazy.

Shit, I'm probably the only one here who even rides the bus.

65: Unfortunately, Kevin has no musical talent, hence, he only brings home change. I'll have you know, that $1,000 paid for 4,000 packages of ramen nooldes.

65: my sock.

I have met Mr. Annie, and he's just a very responsible guy. Every morning, rain or shine, he puts on his Deadhead outfit and heads to his spot at the bus terminal to dance and sing. If his partner is there he plays flute while standing on one foot. All tax free.

66: Kevin doesn't like the change in the pocket, but my pilfering actually makes a good dent in the change. I do use the change to pay for little stuff (under $5) instead of using the $X in cash I take out every paycheck.

Ride the bus? Ha! I walk to work.

69: I'm sure Mr. Annie will be pleased at your character reference, John. I thank you on his behalf.

Clearly the face on the presidential dollar coin will dictate its use. Think of the small daily triumphs: Securing a $1JFK in a stripper's garter, a gesture about which you and she can share a knowing wink. Bullies will only accept $1Polks or $1TRs as monies. $1Buchanans will be all but unspendable, sadly.

You know what I miss? Film canisters. You could fit the perfect amount of quarters in them, and have money for parking or laundry or vending machines or whatever.

Men who complain about coins jingling in their pockets would do well to be grateful to designers who give them pockets, as women's clothes continue in the maddening, decades-long tradition of impracticality over function.

And who uses change for the bus? Swipe that pass!

Dollar coins are great! Especially when you find you need to buy something and only have the change in the ashtray, and it's $20 worth!

If they want the coins to succeed, though, the government will have to pull the dollar bills.

And who uses change for the bus? Swipe that pass!

Well, here when you pay for a bus ride the bus drivers have no way of knowing how much money you put into the dispenser. It's supposed to be $1.75, but most people I know have realized that they can just put in one dollar and a bunch of pennies and the driver will be none the wiser. Sometimes it even works to put in less than a dollar in change, if you can let the driver know that the majority of that change appears to be in quarters.

Yet another example of how a state that pretends its cities' bus systems are supposed to be self-supporting and profit-making is ensorcelled by delusions.

72: The question of a dollar coin's implications for the topless industry occurred to me, too. If the transition to a $1 coin is made successfully, what will the new protocol be in strip clubs? Will there be little UNICEF-style cardboard boxes attached to the dancers' garters? If so, will it result in an all-encompassing hollow, muffled rattle that overpowers the sound of "Pour Some Sugar On Me"? Or would the clubs just sell non-refundable "Dancer Dollars" at the door?

$1Buchanans will be all but unspendable, sadly.

Not in Pennsylvania! Home state pride and all, y'know.

All of which is to say, monetary policy is hard.

Also! At least in the DC area, Che/vy Cha/se Bank has a coin-counting machine in every branch. They don't take a cut and you don't need to have an account with them to use it.

76: The answer is swipeable cards, of course. Watch "Videodrome" to get an idea of how this could be done.

My wife and I have two coin jars--one for white coins, one for pennies

I say you should have to bus some pennies into that other jar.

76: I understand that many strip clubs have begun giving change in $2 bills, which tends to increase strippers' tips. Assuming we do single-dollar coins only (unlike those crazy canucks), preserving the sanctity of the Jeffersonian $2 bill, this practice would likely become the norm in strip clubs nationwide.

a) Ogged, you used to seem fastidious. Now I can see hygiene means nothing to you; paper money is unspeakably filthy.

b) I just throw pennies away. Landfills are the mines of the future.

I live in Chile, where the buses are (semi)privately owned and the bus drivers keep their fares. This leads to some odd differences:

1) Bus drivers make change for you, while driving (sometimes they will even change big bills)
2) If you look like a student who qualifies for a discount fare, do not expect the bus to stop for you
3) If you look like someone who pays the full fare, the bus will stop for you in the middle of an intersection
4) Passes? Transfers? No, CASH MONEY ONLY.

Now I can see hygiene means nothing to you; paper money is unspeakably filthy.

It's not like I like paper money. But coins suck.

83: The buses in Chile are insane. M-fun to the max. (Minus the excess pollution caused by a a privatized bus system.)

a

I like coins - can't say I've ever missed the pound note in what, about 20 years? I have one still though, as it has Isaac Newton on it. My maths teacher at school had one that was stolen when his house was broken into, not long after they stopped being legal tender, and he managed to get a new one to keep and treasure by begging at the bank.

The two pound coins are good too - but then I'm a sucker for any coin that is two colours - supercool (as my 4 year old says).

We have a couple of charity boxes that my kids have acquired, so my coppers go into them (vultures get 2p's and dolphins get 1p's). The 4 year old gets my 5p's as she doesn't get any pocket money yet. 10p's go in a bowl for me to use for emergency milk-buying etc. And I keep the 20p's and above.

switching to dollar coins will actually save unspeakable amounts of money because the treasury will have to replace them way less often than dollar bills.

also, a dollar has so little buying power nowadays anyway.

am remembering the day when i got a dime a week as my allowance. ...

85: The state has begun to dip its toes into the water delicately -- they have taken a few thousand of the worst polluting buses off the street and replaced them with a fewer thousand of new CNG buses. They are not driven as maniacally either -- the other day, I saw one hit a car and actually stop.

Jesus Christ, what's with all the hating on Sacagawea? Have you read Lewis and Clark? She was a fucking badass! Yes, it's bullshit to celebrate a collaborator of the destruction of the Indian nations, but it's not like she was just some chick who happened to be around while white people did some shit. She saved L&C's asses about a hundred times, and managed to have babies while doing it.

81 - This will just accellerate the trend of strip clubs using their own "dancer dollar" currencies or whatever. Better for the clubs because they can take a fee off the top when the patrons convert their USD into their currency and when the dancers convert it back. The club my friend stripped at in college took something like a 15-20% cut for converting from their money into real money.

Also, I'm all for the coin jar. I cashed mine out when I moved a few weeks ago and came up with enough to pay for the movers.

My favorite coin encounter was when I tried to spend a half dollar with Franklin on it once and the person thought it was counterfeit because, duh, Kennedy is on the half dollar. She wouldn't take it despite many of my attempts to explain why Kennedy wouldn't be on a coin from the late 50s.

91: That really sucks. I don't, by the way, endorse strip clubs (never even been to one). I do endorse $2 bills.

Stanley, you're doing it wrong. You endorse checks. I guess you could provide endorsements for strip clubs, but you'd have to have an interesting kind of celebrity.

Back when we were a republic, and not a celebrity-obsessed monarchy wannabe, we put allegories on our coins, not mortals.

I hereby request suggestions for suitable modern allegories.

I used to accumulate coins a lot, but the hack that got me out of the habit was writing down all of my spending (in this case, in a palmpilot application). I track whole dollars I spend, so buying something for $1.25 with a bill and a quarter gets written down as $1, but buying it with $2 and getting change gets written down as $2. This tweaked my habits into wanting to have change on me and use exact change more often.

Put MLK on a coin, that's certainly overdue.

Oh, and you know what? There have been significant African Americans other than MLK. Really, there have!

Really, there have!

Yeah, but we're not going to get Bubbles on a coin until this silly war on drugs has abated.

but more than that I'd rather get rid of pennies.

I haven't read the entire thread but this reminded me of a brilliant idea that I had a while ago.

I would love to get rid of pennies and, I realized, I hate nickles as well. The problem with getting rid of nickles is that if you have both dimes and quarters in circulation there will be some combinations for which you can't properly make change (you can't, for example, buy a 10c item with a quarter).

You can't get rid of quarters because they're so useful and are everyone's favorite coin.

So my solution is that we should have 2 coins smaller than the dollar, the quarter and the 1/12 dollar (worth 8 1/3c). Three 12th pieces would make up one quarter. It would allow finer grained arithmatic than pieces of eight would (though, I admit, there are other reasons to like the idea of using pieces of eight) and we would only need two coins.

Are people with me on this?

I see there's a new book out about Sacagawea's son.

I've got no problem with her on a coin, especially with the bicentennial. Also no problem with more rotation.

In fact, I'd make a case that Thurgood Marshall is more deserving of recognition than MLK. Honestly, which is more important: arguing Brown v. Board, leading the NAACP LDF, and a career on the Court, or giving speeches and marching?

That's one of those rhetorical questions, isn't it?

But a serious answer to 101 is, I'm not sure. King articulated the ideals, which counts for a lot, and inspired lots of people, which, ditto.

And yet, one that always gets answered the wrong way. Where is the movement for a federal Thurgood Marshall holiday or a Thurgood Marshall Street in every city?

(That was also a rhetorical question.)

90: Good to see someone's finally got my back on the Sacagawea issue. You haters should admit that she was at least as important as Chester Arthur, and would have made a better president than Buchanan. Or the present criminal, for that matter.

What annoyed me about the Sacagawea thing is that we don't actually know what she looked like.

That the Mint didn't capitalize on this fact represents a massive failure of imagination. They could have made her teh hott, like Disney did for Pocahontas, and the dollar bill would already be a thing of the past.

King articulated the ideals, which counts for a lot, and inspired lots of people

Yes, okay, King was a great talker. Not to take away from King. But he's like, the only African American who ever gets put up for an honor.

Marshall actually got the laws changed. Marshall did at least as much and probably more than the demonstrators to establish rights to attend school and ride buses in the same places as white people.

(Note: I have no personal or professional connection to Thurgood Marshall. I just have a bee, as it were, in my bonnet. Probably you should ignore me.)

Slol, I have a feeling we've wandered into an area that means a lot to you, and not to me, but wasn't Marshall's career on the court lackluster? And you're sort of half-kidding about "leading speeches and marching," right?

99: you could call it a quarter noble.

I hate to say this out loud, but Slol and I agree on something, namely, that too much emphasis on MLK at the expense of other black leaders is a bad thing. (Partly for pragmatic reasons, in my case.)

104- bad idea. If we have a Thurgood Marshall holiday then we'll have increased pressure to start having holidays for other deservingly famous African Americans, and then we'll soon have too many and will have to adopt a compromise solution like "President's Day", so foreverafter the third Monday in January will be known as "Black Person's Day". I'd rather it remain "MLK Jr. Day", which strikes me as more tasteful.

too much emphasis on MLK at the expense of other black leaders is a bad thing

I think we can all agree to that (one might say that "too much" makes your statement tautological, but one isn't w-lfs-n, so one isn't saying that). One takes exception, however, to slol's "great talker" line, which makes King sound like somebody's drunk uncle.

This post confuses me.

1) Paper currency is much more expensive to maintain in circulation than coin currency, notwithstanding the machinations of big zinc.

2) As evidence of number 1, note the practices of basically every other nation on earth.

3) The $1 note is actually not being replaced, nor is it likely ever to be replaced.

4) These commemorative coin programs bring in billions of dollars of revenue for the federal government.

5) Thurgood Marshall almost certainly already has a commemorative stamp. People never remember stamps.

But hey, we wouldn't want your man purse to be overly jangly.

I have a feeling we've wandered into an area that means a lot to you, and not to me

Actually, I just now decided to have this bug me. Isn't that what blogs are for?

wasn't Marshall's career on the court lackluster?

Okay, skip the Court: I still say, leading the LDF, which designed the test-case strategy that gave you not only Brown but any number of other landmark decisions, is worth a holiday. And that's even leaving aside actually personally arguing Brown.

And you're sort of half-kidding about "leading speeches and marching," right?

Sort of half-, but not much more than that: King's principal contribution was as public face for a movement other people organized. Or so I understand from the voluminous Taylor Branch biography, which emphasizes all the people, who were not King, who (e.g.) organized the Montgomery boycott. Go on, put E.D. Nixon on a coin, for heaven's sake. Or A. Philip Randolph. But no, MLK is the only African American we honkies can be bothered to remember to honor. (No, this is not a slap at baa, particularly.)

One takes exception, however, to slol's "great talker" line, which makes King sound like somebody's drunk uncle.

He was articulate. It's a compliment.

Unf!

No longer using your "@unfogged.com" email address, unf?

One takes exception, however, to slol's "great talker" line

My, one's grammar is getting proper.

Why is Unf using fontana's email address?

But unfster, with this infusion of dollar coins into the money supply, people are going to be giving them to me as change, left and right. They'll be unavoidable.

To answer my own question, I'd like an allegory of White Liberal Guilt on obverse of the new dollar coin, with Sanctimonious Tokenism on the reverse.

slolernr: the battle needed a public face though. These things are won, if they are won, in public --- not in the courts.

However, I'm totally with you that MLK is emphasized at the expense of a large number of deserving people. I wonder if it is because he is safe ground now for white politicians?

It's more fun to imagine these comments being read in "sports talk caller voice." "Yeah, King-- he was a great talker, I giveyadat. But in the clutch, ya want Thurgood at the plate."

Slol, I actually finished Garrow's biography of King, for which I want a goddamned medal, and what stuck with me was how much crap King put up with-- always running around trying to raise money, keeping factions together, etc. So, yeah, public face, but that role was pretty hard on him.

I almost used Frederick Douglass as my example...

If we have a Thurgood Marshall holiday then we'll have increased pressure to start having holidays for other deservingly famous African Americans, and then we'll soon have too many and will have to adopt a compromise solution like "President's Day", so foreverafter the third Monday in January will be known as "Black Person's Day".

Solution: Find a compromise black person whom nobody particularly wants to honor with a holiday, and let him/her stand in for all the potential honorees. (This is how Pittsburgh got its current mayor) I nominate Dikembe Mutombo.

Wait, hold on. King didn't just say some nice things and lead some marches. He spent years organizing the movement. And he made sure the movement adhered to the most crucial principle, that of nonviolence. It's highly doubtful that it would have been as successful without King, since nonviolent protest gave the Civil Rights movement the ultimate trump card in moral authority.

I agree that people should honor more black people than just one, but if you're going to honor one, it really should be King. He's maybe the most corageous American of the 20th Century.

courageous, too.

I have a standing policy that any money left lying around countertops like so much lint goes into a little box on my side of the bathroom sink (since much of the lint money is left on the bathroom conter) and from there into my wallet. Therefore, I am entirely in favor of dollar coins.

Also, I like the Sacajawea coin, but I refuse to be baited into arguing about why she was historically important.

Also, while it is of course true that other people deserve enormous credit, it's really useful to have a single, unifying heroic figure we can use to valorize the civil rights movement. Who wants to hear about how Lincoln was really the front man for XYZ, and just made lots of pretty speeches?

Be it resolved that Unfogged supports a dollar coin with the face of the Honorable Elijah Muhammed.

Leaders lead, other people do the work. Leaders get put on coins, other people don't.

Similarly, I wish we had a Labor Day that focused on a single individual, like Samuel Gompers or Saul Alinsky or Cesar Chavez. We'd learn a hell of a lot more about what the Labor movement is.

We aren't *really* having the "which one black person do we think is most important" argument, are we?

wasn't Marshall's career on the court lackluster?

Interestingly, you can see for yourself -- Supreme Court oral arguments have been recorded since the 1950s.

Excerpts available for purchase through this audiotape/book set.

Full arguments for free at Oyez. (Search by year or by case name.)

These things are won, if they are won, in public --- not in the courts.

But I don't agree. Brown was decided in 1954, before Montgomery. And before that, there was Sweatt v. Painter (against law school segregation) in 1950, and Morgan v. Virginia (against interstate travel segregation) in 1946.

And what actually decided Montgomery? Gayle v. Browder, 1956.

Thurgood Marshall, I tell you. A great, great American.

That came off oddly. I really meant that it's interesting that the arguments have been recorded and are freely available. It wasn't meant to be snarky.

bitch: I don't think so. slo's comment boils down to the fact that there are a lot of underrecognized people who were involved; i don't think that is controversial.

but maybe someone makes baseball cards to keep tabs

He spent years organizing the movement.

I think a much better case can be made for others -- Bayard Rustin, for example -- in this role.

We aren't *really* having the "which one black person do we think is most important" argument, are we?

That's not the argument, you know that, right?

Justice Marshall has an airport named after him. I've noticed that the Amtrak people have started using the new name when they announce that they are arriving at the airport train station.

You haters should admit that she was at least as important as Chester Arthur, and would have made a better president than Buchanan

AFAIK, neither Chester Arthur or James Buchanan ever got a Schoolhouse Rock episode and deservedly so.

I unite recent threads by recounting Lyndon Johnson's remarkable line on appointing Marshall, rather than another black jurist: "If I'm gonna put a n*&$^! on the supreme court, I want everyone to know he's a n*)#*@." A complete prick in the service of a noble cause, ol' BS Johnson.

The latest turn of this thread is the kind of thing that makes me love the site. Thank you, Slol.

Damn, wasn't Rustin also gay? We could get a twofer.

The father-in-law of someone at work just stored his change for a long period of time in his house. When he finally took it to one of those machines it was over $3000.

slo: i'll go futher: nobody has ever decided something like this in a courtroom. Things become formalized there (and in the legislature), but you don't have a chance to shift cultural norms until you have a public will behind it with some momentum, and that doesn't come from a courtroom.

Naming a school after Rustin was fairly contentious (it did eventually happen):

So proudly did West Chester, Pennsylvania, claim the civil rights luminary Bayard Rustin as its most famous native son that the school board decided to name its new high school after him.

But that was before they found out that the late Mr. Rustin was gay, had belonged to a Communist group, and had refused to serve in World War II [he spent three years in prison as a conscientious objector]. Now the board is rethinking its decision, sparking a debate that is drawing national--and unwelcome--publicity.

Source.

140: The more anecdotes I hear about Lyndon Johnson, the more he seems to be the presidential equivalent of that Dexter guy in the TV show.

"I hate niggers...I have no respect for women...I hate girly-men and the poor...but my sister has convinced me to use my talents for good by undermining the evil US government from within."

144: What you've just said is the premise of Gerald Rosenberg's The Hollow Hope.

I disagree with it, and your comment. Yes, public will and momentum are important, but you legitimize that will (and in some cases, like Brown, anticipate it, and therefore have a hand in giving rise to it) with decisions.

137: Kind of it isn't, and kind of it is. I don't think there's a lot of need to denigrate MLK in order to talk about other important black Americans, and the whole "MLK is overrated" argument is one I'm kinda tired of. It seems to have become the meme educated folks use to differentiate themselves from middlebrow culture, and it strikes me as being unnecessarily contrarian and kinda zero-sum.

Which isn't to say that yeah, the civil rights movement was collaborative and collective (else it wouldn't have worked). Or that MLK gets trotted out by a lot of jerks to prove their lack of racism, especially in the service of racist arguments. But those are separate issues.

140: Ooh, he used the n-word, he's a racist. He should've simply refused to consider any black candidates for the post and kept his mouth shut -- then he wouldn't have been racist at all.

147: I probably overstated my position. I'm certainly not trying to say that the court cases weren't important, in *parallel* with other fronts. Brown didn't come out of thin air though, and the timing of it was important, I believe (in that too much earlier, it wouldn't have worked, imo). I was objecting to the sense that I was (mis?) reading slo's comments to be: all that talking and marching etc. wasn't very important, the real work was done in the courts. My feeling is that the work in the courts, whether here or any similar struggle, is a vital, but in some sense secondary.

not familiar with cite, but i'll look it up.

bitchphd has a good point, in that it certainly isn't necessary to diminish MLK's achievements in order to celebrate other people.

149: not quite. It's more about Johnson's habit of being completely awful and dehumanizing to people in person while fighting (sincerely) for noble ideals.

Seriously, I think the decisive event in favor of the civil rights movement was the great migration of African Americans out of the South. That created two important phenomena:

1. a significant-sized, educated black middle class, capable of funding and staffing the NAACP LDF. (Which, pace soubz, I think played a major role in getting rights established.)

2. a significant-sized black bloc of black voters in places where blacks actually could vote.

I'd add, as catalyst, World War II, which (a) accelerated the move of African Americans to cities to work in defense industries, (b) raised consciousness, through anti-Nazi messages, about the evils of racism, and (c) (because of a and b) increased membership in the NAACP something like tenfold.

After that, it's just events, my dear boy.

Oy. 2 should be "a significant-sized bloc of black voters," of course.

Maybe (d) created a group of african americans who felt entitled to better treatment after their service. Weren't a bunch of the SCLC guys veterans?

Yeah, I thought of that as coming under (c). There was actually a wartime slogan, the "Double V" -- victory against racism in Europe and in America.

Yes to (d), including getting a college education on the GI Bill* and (e) Truman's desegregation of the Army.

*It's my understanding that this worked much better than the other piece of the GI benefits -- federally endorsed redlining policies limited the number of black veterans who could become homeowners.

People with piles of coins lying around: start carrying 3 quarters, 1 dime, 2 nickels and 4 pennies where ever you go. Only make one (cash) purchase everytime you leave the house. You will soon have far fewer coins.

We should put the frickin' GI Bill on a coin.

Brown didn't come out of thin air though, and the timing of it was important, I believe (in that too much earlier, it wouldn't have worked, imo)

It failed pretty famously in 1897.

If, as FL indicates, Rustin was gay, then I think slol has a pretty good case for putting him on a coin. Who else among the civil rights leaders can make any sort of claim to have fucked the shit out of bears?

When was G.I. Bill president?

Yes to (d), including getting a college education on the GI Bill

Actually, as I understand it, the GI Bill didn't work all that well on either education or housing benefits for black veterans. Universities often had color bars or quotas that kept blacks out. Historically black colleges took a lot of veterans but turned a lot away, simply for lack of space.

Timbot, Washington wasn't fucking these bears.

158: Are you supposed to spend the coins or just carry them? I assume that cutting down on cash purchases is the mechanism at play here.

164: You do not know that.

You do not know that.

Wrong.

167: Is B really going to have to discuss "metaphor" at length?

Also, for Apo, Dean Smith is a living god: And Russell kept bringing up Smith's efforts to join the lunch counter sit-ins in North Carolina.

161 was awesome. I don't understand the need to nit-pick.

168: No can do today, I have lunch plans.

I know youre really sad about that.

(Anyone who wants to explain why my goddamnfuckinglaptop thinks that every time I try to type an apostrophe, Im giving it the fucking "find" command--see, it doesnt happen with quotation marks!--feel free, because its driving me absolutely bonkers.)

I don't understand the need to nit-pick.

It's just personal animus, baa. We all voted for Bush, you know.

Parody would explain a lot, actually.

Parody and hate.

Also, Brown wasn't enforced until the civil rights act passed congress, ten years later. And who was instrumental in getting that piece of legislation passed?

B is right though, this exercise is dumb.

170: It's a Firefox feature to search only among links (to search through the whole page, type the forward slash) but it isn't supposed to happen when you're typing in a text box. Have you installed any extensions recently?

You could try going to about:config, find the option 'accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart' and set it to false.

Also, if you've been using Mozilla/Firefox on that computer through several version updates, you might do well to delete the whole profile and start over.

I didn't actually vote for Bush. But I did disenfranchise a dozen black people!

One of them probably would have voted for Bush, so you only get credit for 10 votes, Michael.

B is right though, this exercise is dumb.

It vexes me you should think so. It's dumb to suggest that we shouldn't put all our honorary chips on MLK, because in doing so we mischaracterize the civil rights movement and thus, the causes of some stuff we all agree is good and important? How's that dumb?

That's all, like, history slol. We're phasing that out. The future's got no history, man.

MLK? I nominate Scarlett Johansson for the dollar coin.

What's dumb is to pit one historical black personage against another, for no apparent purpose. Denigrating MLK on the altar of Thurgood Marshall will not cause the spirit of Thurgood Marshall to be pleased.

honor isn't a finite quantity; we aren't alloted a set amount of it to be spent on black historical figures.

Cala gets it exactly right: $1 coins will only be used when $1 bills are being taken back and burned. That said, I'd love them. I like coins.

This may re^n-confirm my status as an idiot, but my first thought was whether the snack-and-soda-machine industry would be more likely to condemn or endorse the universal adoption of a $1 coin. Pain in the ass or opportunity to sell a bunch of new vending machines? Hmm.

to pit one historical black personage against another

This would make an awesome series of educational claymation videos, though.

Oh, back to the argument, our public honor is limited.

our public honor may be finite, but it's still vast enough to include more than one black person, without need for denigrating that one black person.

the original point that baa was being an ass by just throwing out MLK''s name is valid; the subsequent comments were irksome, and also historically incorrect.

baa was being an ass by just throwing out MLK''s name

This is insane.

the original point that baa was being an ass by just throwing out MLK''s name is valid; the subsequent comments were irksome, and also historically incorrect.

WTF?

historically incorrect

The thing about bears was a joke, I think.

"The thing about bears was a joke, I think."

Oh, ok. objection rescinded. As for the other shocked reactions, (1) I meant "ass" in a gentle way, and (2) it's being a bit foolish to say "all those speeches, what did they do, nothing in comparison to all these wonderful opinions!" when in fact, the opinions meant nothing without the legislation caused by the speeches.

and yes, the legislation may not have gotten rolling without the opinions. it's a wondrous tapestry. I felt as though we were getting into Elway v. Montana arguments.

Denigrating MLK on the altar of Thurgood Marshall will not cause the spirit of Thurgood Marshall to be pleased.

Thurgood Marshall on the Montgomery bus boycott: "All that walking for nothing. They might as well have waited for the Court decision."

You're arguing Marshall was a prick?

I want American scientists to be on coins.

No need to denigrate either MLK or Marshall or Douglass or Carver (peanut butter, man!) We certainly have had more than enough useless presidents who really don't deserve a coin. William Henry Harrison? Boot 'im off the coin. Polk? Filmore? Ford? Boot, boot, boot.

Who gives a fuck about Polk? I wish we could have movie stars and professional athletes on our currency. That would make me a proud American.

Who wouldn't be in favor of a Britney Spears nickel or a Patrick Ewing dime?

A sort of interesting and not well known (to me, who hadn't heard about it until I read the article which I'm linking to) aspect of Marshall's life.

Physicists on money.

Our currency should look as much like play money as possible. We've already started down that road. What we need are giant $$$$, more colors, and a man in a top hat. It will kick start the economy.

also: serial killer commemorative coins.

Carver didn't invent peanut butter.

I just hope this will shut up all of those wingnuts who want to see Reagan on the dime. Doubt it, tho.

201: But he is credited with a new use for it.

I nominate Scarlett Johansson for the dollar coin.

We don't put living people on coins. But as far as I'm concerned, this is no longer an issue.

201: Oh Lord. Not the old rumors about Skippy Henderson and Jeff "Jiff" Hayes.

who had purchased George's mother

Phrases like that still shock.

Why? I purchased your mother last night.

*rimshot*

You know what's funny, Michael? That I posted a video of my buddy raping your mom, and you sent me a link to it this morning.

208: Dude, can we not? Can't you just head-butt him like your co-religionist?

What's with the nice police?

We need more mysteriously disappeared aviators on our money.

Your "tivo" will count to 10,000 days, inshallah.

Dunno. "Rape" is just one of those words for me, I guess. Feel free to mock or ignore me. Or more free.

I'm all in favor of dropping all political hacks from the currency, in favor of some figures who contributed distinctively to the American voice/experience. Some choices, in addition to Thurgood Marshall: Emily Dickinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Richard Feynman, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ralph Ellison, Albert Einstein.

Feynman would be there, of course, for his unique contributions to womanizing, a vital part of the American experience.

I was going for the whole, "Nobel-prize-winning physicist who speaks about physics in ways ordinary people can understand" thing, but hey, some people have multiple talents.

Also, his performance during the Challenger disaster inquiry was a minor piece of brilliance.

216: w-lfs-n's right. "Physicist who had sex" strikes me as significantly greater discriminator than anything you've mentioned. (Ducking now.)

Physicists get it on, too, dammit! Sometimes. We just like to conserve energy.

Physicists: Fuck entropy.

Santorum is a species of fuck entropy.

Some physicists I know think that both Feynman's and Hawking's contributions are overstated because of their personal fame. I will now urinate on your fun.

The dude did win the Nobel, but fine, I'll take Einstein. Who also represents the great possibility of Becoming American. So there.

A whole series of naturalized Americans would be pretty cool.

Not really.

Einstein is hopeless if you are trying to counteract the magnifying effect of personal fame. Deeper physicist than Feynman or Hawking though.

Labs is right though, a series of naturalized americans would so kick the ass of a series of presidents.

226: damn, got cut off somehow

... but they shouldn't be famous ones.

Who are the great naturalized Americans, anyway [you mean besides Volokh and Schwarzenegger? /wingnut]?

I'm all in favor of dropping all political hacks from the currency, in favor of some figures who contributed distinctively to the American voice/experience.

How about Carol Shelby and Smokey Yunick. Maybe also Samuel Colt and Oliver Winchester.

Wikipedia knows. Am I on that list? Not telling!

oh, and Joseph Lodge, creater of Lodge Cookware. while we're at it, Jack Daniels.

or to heck with Jack, wikipedia says Dr. Jason S. Amburgey was the inventor of the sour mash process.

I'd like to see Noble Drew Ali money. Also Ignatius Donnelly. These people are infinitely more American-qua-American than a bunch of candy-ass scientists who might as well be French (Nicola Tesla gets a pass because of the whole death ray thing; Edmund Teller because of his lunatic plan to nuke Alaska -- those are good solid Americans!).

Were I given my druthers for one in the 214, how about George Herriman?

A George Herriman dollar coin would be awesome.

I'm with 233 and 4.

Also what about a mushroom cloud $5 piece?

Since we're talking about important Americans, I was thinking of writers, and I've often heard Faulkner is our greatest writer. A friend recently lent me As I lay dying. I'm halfway through and feel the victim of a bad joke. A small but significant part of this book is just nonsense. I'm just curious, since y'all are a well-read crowd: does anyone here like this book? Did you not find it, at least, annoying?

I vote that the verso of the George Herriman coin should feature a brick.

As I Lay Dying is not my favorite of his works, but I am puzzled by the "just nonsense" comment.

238: Agreed. Maybe with some buttes in the background.

What don't you like about Faulkner? I love Faulkner, although, oddly, haven't read AILD. But I'm willing to defend it sight unseen as neither nonsense nor annoying.

I've been away from the computer all day. This has been a great thread. If we're going to put anybody on a coin, it ought to be George Clinton.

I tossed the book down on several occasions in disgust. I don't mark all those parts, so I can't really list them all, but here's a little something:

Then I pass the stall. I have almost passed it.

It's completely unimportant to the plot, so I continue reading, but those sentences flat-out contradict each other, and it annoys me.

A more general complaint is the lack of small, orientating details. The novel often forces me to puzzle over trivial happenings. It distracts my attention from the larger points the book is making, and for no good reason that I can fathom. I feel like Faulkner is saying, "I'm going to confuse you because I like to confuse you," and I think it makes it a worse book.

"disgust" is too strong a word. I'll stick with annoyance.

Then I pass the stall. I have almost passed it.

There is no contradiction here, necessarily -- "I pass the stall" can be taken to mean he is walking past it; "I have almost passed it" can be taken to mean he is almost finished walking past it, i.e. it is almost behind him.

fine, my predisposition towards this novel just might be going towards uncharitable.

I still maintain that it would be a better book if Faulkner hadn't obfuscated so much.

213: Agreed. Rape jokes = not funny. Jesus, Ogged, who are you, Michael Richards?

Although, having now read this thread, I have to concede that *some* rape jokes are funny.

B is Michael Richards!

Oh no, I'm outed.

237: I do love As I Lay Dying. "My mother is a fish" is a great chapter.

Michael -- perhaps some Richard Brautigan would be more to your taste.

I agree with Michael. If I'm reading a novel, I don't want to read poetry, dammit. I want the sentences to contain some sort of content. Brautigan is a poet.

(a) Poetry has no content?
(b) Sentences like "I have almost passed it" have no content?

You're making a strange leap, it seems to me, from something like "the language in this work features more ambiguity than I prefer" to "these sentences don't mean anything." Take care, too, with that idea that sentences "contain" a meaning (or fail to). It's more useful and accurate to think of them as referring to things, presupposing things, implying things and so on.

I read As I Lay Dying in 10th or 11th grade and liked it a lot. I remember almost nothing about it now, but I love Faulkner's style. I remember thinking that he was writing like someone who's telling a story but not a storyteller, who's trying to keep you in the moment with them to build immersion. You know, the person who's telling a story and says, "So I went to the store. There I am, at the store, and this guy says..."

If you don't enjoy Faulkner's voice on the grounds that it is nonsense, allow me to recommend against The Sound and the Fury, which is one of my favorite novels of all time. However, it took me for fucking ever, when reading it for the same big research paper, to figure out that when the book opens the narrator is watching people play golf. He calls it "hitting." The character is mentally handicapped, if I remember correctly, so the first - gods, I forget how much, but the first a lot of the book is very heavily shrouded behind this character's ability to understand and describe the world. Unless I'm misremembering, chronology is particularly mangled in that part.

I really didn't like anything by Faulkner that I was told to read in high school, so I avoided him all through college. In a grad school class, I read AILD and Absalom! Absalom!. The latter is truly incredible, and has little of the annoying "Look at me I'm a writer!" stuff that mars his shorter novels. (I kinda liked AILD, actually, but it is way too fancee-stylee for me.) A!A! has these moments that really slayed me, especially because I have that "I don't hate the South! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!" thing.

I read The Hamlet two years ago (along with the other two, which I dind't like as much) and thought it was totally great.

The first time I tried to read As I Lay Dying, it didn't really 'click' for me in the same way that seems to have happened to Michael. The chapters are written as inner monologue, all of the repetition and such are really key to establishing the details. I was surprised you called it low on details because I found it to be just the opposite, totally immersive, dreamlike.

Just look at the first chapter, it's key. Read it to yourself out loud, it helps with the poetic aspects. If you can immerse yourself in the carefully crafted word picture of that chapter, rather than wading through a stream of gibberish, then you should easily be able to enjoy the book. Read it to yourself out loud, it helps with the poetic aspect.

Related: I guess it's supposed to be all symbolic and stuff, but I didn't think about that at all when reading it.

For those of you who are not in Oprah's Book Club, you can also enjoy reading the first chapter to yourselves.

and Joseph Lodge, creater of Lodge Cookware.

"Creator". Also that guy who started the Favorite Stove & Range Company.

especially because I have that "I don't hate the South! I don't hate it! I don't hate it!" thing.

Oh ... don't we all. Now I'm perfectly happy to put Mr. "I won't ever again have to be at the beck and call of every son of a bitch who's got two cents to buy a stamp" on a coin, but if we're gonna put American authors on coins, then I demand a dollar Henry James.

Unless I'm misremembering, chronology is particularly mangled in that part.

No, that's correct. The character is completely adrift in time. And just when nearly we're out of his head, Faulkner introduces a new character with the same name as another one.

Oh, Caddy, Caddy.

I read some Faulkner in HS, but which novel I'm suddenly forgetting. What I do remember is that we were assigned a reading quiz for the climactic fight scene, which asked us, basically, to chart the fight sequence. We all failed the quiz.

Since then, I've heard so many people of so many different backgrounds praise Faulkner to the skies that I've decided to wait to read him until I'm ready to be patient and receptive.

Maybe that's a copout.

I've never read any Faulkner.

257: The Hamlet isn't as good as The Macbeth or The Othello, and they're not by Faulkner either.

Most of the Faulkner I've read has rolled off my back -- pleasant reading and tricky but didn't stay with me. The exception is The Hamlet which is the first (maybe 2nd?) book in the Snopes trilogy and which was a huge lot of fun deciphering. Wait -- actually I seem to remember a similar experience with Absalom, Absalom! -- So I'm not sure now. I was going to say keeping a diary of the reading was what helped with The Hamlet but looking back over that diary I'm not seeing what would have been so helpful about it. My hunch is in general Faulkner is really good if you devote sufficient time and energy to really understanding it, that it pays hard work well.

In the city the other day (taking Sylvia to the Museum of Natural History) I saw a bookseller set up on the sidewalk whose entire stock was first editions of pulp paperbacks from the 30's and 40's; one I noticed was Faulner's Mosquitoes.

Reviewing the thread since last night I see that my comments on Absalom, Absalom! and The Hamlet are only faint echoes of comments already posted by A White Bear and Ben w-lfs-n; it is an honor to be preempted by such as these two.

And as regards Robust's recommendation -- I think this sort of proves (for certain nonstandard definitions of "to prove) my point about needing to pay close attention when you're reading Faulkner -- I did not pay sufficient attention to The Sound and the Fury, and it did not stay with me at all. But I bet if I had, it would have.

I'll take this thread to 268 myself if I have to!

Preach it.

A!A! utterly amazed me in high school. The Sound and the Fury also, but I was more prepared for it. If you can get through the first (very confusing!) part of the latter while paying attention as best you can, things become clear later on and you get flashes of illumination, echoes of the mess you slogged through at the beginning suddenly coming back to you and making sense.

things become clear later on and you get flashes of illumination, echoes of the mess you slogged through at the beginning suddenly coming back to you and making sense.

I thought I remembered this to be the case, but it's been fifteen years and I'm terrible at remembering things. (I remembered I needed to get up a little early this morning but forgot why. My brain is a sieve.) I'm so glad to have it confirmed.

And just when nearly we're out of his head, Faulkner introduces a new character with the same name as another one.

He's such a cantankerous writer. I love him!