I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton

https://lithub.com/i-now-lack-the-juice-to-fuel-the-bluster-to-conceal-that-i-am-a-simpleton-padgett-powell-legend/

by Jun8 • 2 years ago

381 174 2 years ago

Jun82• 2 years ago

This is a fantastic interview with Padgett Powell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padgett_Powell), a writer of the Southern tradition. IMO, the two things that make it great ar how candid and fluid Powell's answers are and the hilariously Newspeak of the interviewer's questions.

Powell was Don Barthelme's student, his analysis of Barthelme's main thrust here is worth the read alone. If you want to dig deeper on this point, here's another interview with him: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdxyd8/padgett-powell-is-ame...

Flann O'Brian, mentioned briefly by Powell is an interesting character, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flann_O'Brien.

ailun• 2 years ago

It's not really "Newspeak" at all; if anything, it's the opposite. Newspeak had limited vocabulary. The interviewer is using a bunch of ten-dollar words. Still, interesting interview! I might read some Padgett Powell at some point because of this.

kleiba• 2 years ago

The little info box about the interviewer at the end of the article tells you all you need to know.

HillRat• 2 years ago

It's an interesting contrast, because Ah-Sen is an experimental formalist, and his questions progress from that point of view, whereas Powell is (hilariously) ... not. (As this feels like a Q&A-by-email with all the questions submitted en bloc, Ah-Sen probably didn't get a chance to adapt his questions, and their theoretical foundation, to Powell's responses, lending to the surrealistic air.)

phren0logy• 2 years ago

I absolutely love this! As you have noted, both the ability and the courage to speak plainly have made it a lost art.

Simon_ORourke• 2 years ago

Flann O'Brian's novel about a novel "At swim two birds" has been one of my favorite yearly re-reads, I must take it down off the shelf again this weekend!

gilleain• 2 years ago

For me it's the third policeman, which is wonderfully dreamlike.

frabbit• 2 years ago

Tell me this, do you ever open a book at all?

glassconclusion• 2 years ago

I really like the short story Typical. It is one of my favorite short stories.

Jun82• 2 years ago

So do I! In fact I searched for Powell this morning, after lazily taking down my 1990 Best American Short Stories collection, which was where I first encountered “Typical” and his unique voice.

simplyluke• 2 years ago

I found this interview almost unreadable, but I'm also quite sure I'm not the target audience for it despite being a pretty avid reader.

sdwr• 2 years ago

I find the author almost unlikeable!

He acts like an actual author - under-acknowledged, cloyingly clever, desperate for attention

instead of an author fantasy - cool, knowledgeable, enmeshed in the subject to the point of unselfconsciousness

Nition• 2 years ago

It all kind of reaches an apotheosis when the interviewer makes the second big red pull quote one from their questions, instead of one from the author's answers. I couldn't believe it, I had to double check!

et1337• 2 years ago

Wow that’s incredible. What a sentence too. Slides right through your brain without any meaning getting caught on it.

gadders3• 2 years ago

I think they're both trying to show how smart they are - the interviewer in a big-brain intellectual fashion, and the author in an arch way to show what a rebel he is.

blackmesaind3• 2 years ago

Despite Powell's almost cringe worthy rage against "liberal racism", at least his responses had force of personality behind them. The interviewer's questions show a distinct lack of awareness. An interview only works if you're setting the stage for the interviewee, not for yourself.

nkurz• 2 years ago

Since it's a central to the interview and not well explained, here's a link to Barthelme's short story "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby":

https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/gone.too.far

It's very short, and very worth reading.

boogieknite• 2 years ago

Not a lit major, never seen the term Mupdeemut before, but now excited to use it. Plenty of opportunity in personal and work conversation.

edit: back to recommend against using Mupdeemut. People thought i was saying something derogatory and i had to spend significant time explaining myself.

consumer4512• 2 years ago

Interesting, neither Google, nor GPT-4 know anything about that term, outside of TFA.

standardly• 2 years ago

He clearly made it up during the interview.

I admit I spent more time right clicking -> 'search the web' for some of the words he used. Incredible vocabulary.. I have to use 'intellection' soon, I've needed to use a word like that before but couldn't find it.

robocat• 2 years ago

Padgett coins the word in the interview:

  [m]ade-[u]p [p]eople [d]oing [m]ade-[u]p [t]hings. Let’s call that MUPDMUT. With some liberty, Mupdeemut

Modified3019• 2 years ago

Honestly sounds like something straight out of a Pogo comic strip

dash22• 2 years ago

This is as funny as the interview.

ducttapecrown• 2 years ago

A group of people just asked me what verisimilitude was, now I'm excited to come back and tell them about verisimilitudinously.

jeremyjh• 2 years ago

A group of people just asked me what verisimilitude was

This happens all the time! Glad it’s not just me.

verisimilitude• 2 years ago

I picked my username so I'd remember that very word...

Rumudiez• 2 years ago

missed opportunity to put the definition in your bio

airstrike• 2 years ago

Next up is probably vicissitudes, then

thfuran• 2 years ago

Nope, heteroscedasticity.

Cthulhu_6• 2 years ago

Voila! In view humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the “vox populi” now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin, van guarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V.

robertlagrant• 2 years ago

It's not just similitude. It's veri. Similitude.

wolverine8765• 2 years ago

I know you're joking but it may confuse people: It's veri (the truth, e.g. verily, verify) + similitude: something that seems like truth, but is not truth - otherwise we'd just call it truth.

tuatoru• 2 years ago

True! Really?

wolverine8765• 2 years ago

verisimilitudinously

I might say to them that verisimilitudinous is not the usual word (despite the OP). It's the more elegant verisimilar, and thus verisimilarly.

hn_go_brrrrr• 2 years ago

More elegant, but far less fun.

hannofcart• 2 years ago

Last time I learnt that many new words was from the monologue in 'V for Vendetta'.

Cthulhu_6• 2 years ago

Vichyssoise! Sounds like a French sauce.

raincom• 2 years ago

In Popper's philosophy of science, the concept of verisimilitude plays an important role, or is a technical term.

riehwvfbk3• 2 years ago

This is amazing. I wonder, is one allowed to speak like this in the Bay Area, or would this mark you as a deplorable to the kind of people who erase racism by erasing race.

AlotOfReading• 2 years ago

Yes, you can speak like this. People are just going to think you're pretentious. This is the sort of language you use with specific audiences. The interviewer and the interviewee are simply using language for mutually exclusive audiences.

riehwvfbk3• 2 years ago

Somehow a particular audience in the Bay Area decided that they must be the only ones with a voice.

Cthulhu_6• 2 years ago

It's a domain-specific language, but it's about prose instead of e.g. legal, medicine, or IT tech.

ryandvm• 2 years ago

People are going to know you're pretentious.

wizzwizz4• 2 years ago

I understand why he chose to say it this way, and I'll probably be stealing "liberal racism" (what a phrase: that's going in my pocketbook alongside "white guilt" and "racialise"), but this is the wrong way to say it to a Bay Area audience. You'd want to say something like "erasing representation to avoid confronting racism".

riehwvfbk3• 2 years ago

Yup, those downvotes speak loud and clear. One doesn't speak plainly around these folks but rather has to whisper.

1024core• 2 years ago

I'd like that on my tombstone....

ozzmotik• 2 years ago

i know a good engraver.

im3w1l• 2 years ago

200 years from now someone wonders who you were simping for.

nashashmi• 2 years ago

(meta) the site is a dream. It can be browsed without css/js.

mondobe• 2 years ago

Although, on the topic of site design, the Tweets on the sidebar do take up 2/3 of the page. Is it really necessary to see posts all the way back from April 2020?

pictureofabear3• 2 years ago

That was a nice read. Thanks for posting!

hkt• 2 years ago

I've never felt as seen as when I read that title

tony_cannistra• 2 years ago

Very interesting interview, but aside from that – what a true joy to read an article with so many words I'd never even seen before!

otteromkram• 2 years ago

verisimilitudinously!

Cthulhu_6• 2 years ago

I'm finally going to beat someone at scrabble!

wolverine8765• 2 years ago

In a long true account of a dust-up at a restaurant in old Austin, not new Austin, a Black man on my roofing crew came to my defense and knocked out a white restaurant manager, who was at the moment presuming to assault me. Willie had noticed that the manager had Black back-up and felt I should too. “Old Padge need him some brothers too,” he would explain later.

The piece was essentially a portrait of a hero, Willie Ebert Brown, in a terrain of racial relations that had hope in it. The sentence that announced the Black back-up for the manager was this: “A sturdy-looking Black guy came out of the kitchen.” This is choice low fruit for a sensitivity editor. “Objectifying description,” she wrote, “that may invoke associations with slavery.”

I should have desisted publishing the book, but I am a chicken-shit person and I really wanted a book with a beautiful photo of an indigo snake on its cover. My celebration of Willie was thrown out; my invocation of slavery (to which who objects, its absurdity aside?) was one of a hundred other crimes in the piece. Liberal racism had its way: remove racism by removing race.

There is not a person of color in my book except a very positive small tribute to Barack Obama as a tool by which we might argue the French can slow their roll about how racist we are and they aren’t. How that was not deemed racist is a wonder, because it somewhat is. It’s not a wonder: liberal racism is a photo-negative argument. I apologize for this rant. Chicken-shit and now tired too.

Snark is a signal of cheap argument: They have nothing more serious to say; they are signaling that there is a bandwagon and you can join in, rather than a serious argument that you can engage and reason with - just grab a drink and hop aboard! Don't spoil the party!

Chicken-shit indeed: It's very easy these days to preach to the choir, white people jumping on the anti-antiracism bandwagon, because they can deny and ignore racism's effects without personal consequence (including that it's not socially acceptable and even encouraged), and tiring of dealing with race (if white people tire of it, just imagine black people who can't avoid or ignore it).

Instead of cutting the story, how about a description of the kitchen-worker as more than "Black" (though we don't get to see the original; maybe that's already there). Instead of snark, how about an examination of what the editor meant, what aspects were racism to what degree? So sorry for tiring you.

adamisom• 2 years ago

Snark is a signal of cheap argument: They have nothing more serious to say

They may well have something more serious to say, and it doesn't imply a weak argument in itself. I think it's fair to say the author does have something more serious to say; the question, really, is do you. All you've done is reduced the OP to the same tired discourse, and proclaimed which side you're on, but you know, there really is more to the linked essay than that.

wolverine8765• 2 years ago

I think it's fair to say the author does have something more serious to say

Based on what?

All you've done is reduced the OP to the same tired discourse

The OP did that. What else have they offered?

hprotagonist• 2 years ago

Snark is a signal of cheap argument: They have nothing more serious to say;

and the traditional riposte as shown here is smarm: https://web.archive.org/web/20131207011820/https://gawker.co...

What is this defining feature of our times? What is snark reacting to?

It is reacting to smarm.

What is smarm, exactly? Smarm is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. Smarm is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. Smarm disapproves.

Smarm would rather talk about anything other than smarm. Why, smarm asks, can't everyone just be nicer?

The existence of a “sensitivity editor” more or less defines smarm, so the reaction is fairly natural.

l33tbro• 2 years ago

Snark is also fun and is often a welcome reprieve from serious argument.

jimbokun• 2 years ago

What’s the word for snark in response to snark? Like your post.

roughly2• 2 years ago

I received an email from a colleague who wanted me to talk to the Dean that opened, “Is it time for us to have a chat with the dean? Are we remembering what was promised us, last spring, at lunch? Are we going to let history repeat itself?” I suffered pique at this and wrote back, “Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople?”

Lord, this paragraph gave me life. This is why we need Academia - somewhere needs be a shelter for the people with both the wit to write this response and the job security to actually send it, if only to provide the rest of us with the solace of knowing it exists.

Aeolun• 2 years ago

Should I read anything into this other than the response making fun of the tone of the original message?

phoenixy1• 2 years ago

The context isn't fully spelled out, but Powell is describing the inspiration for "The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?" Those lines are the beginning of his novel and the novel itself is entirely in the form of questions.

roughly2• 2 years ago

The article’s worth a read, but no, I was just experiencing vicarious catharsis from the response.

hindsightbias• 2 years ago

“JMA: Does the prose voice that you adopt develop in parallel to the thematic concerns that you will tackle in a given work, or does it emerge as a result of other considerations?

PP: It emerges with no consideration for anything but the next correct word.”

PadgetGPT

pictureofabear3• 2 years ago

Generative Padgett Tranformer

notnmeyer• 2 years ago

this will be the subject line of my next resignation email!

YugyDugan• 2 years ago

Black and white

Tell us what you really think, loxist

gred• 2 years ago

Donald Barthelme in particular praised you for writing about things readers had never heard before between Black and white characters.

It's bizarre to me that in certain circles some Colors are capitalized, while other colors are not.

boplicity4• 2 years ago

It may be bizarre for you, but it is often a reasoned and thoughtful use of the word, meaningful in the context of a complex and consistent consideration of the general meaning and usage of words.

I encourage you to consider and understand the perspectives of those who do capitalize the word.

This serves as an introduction to some people's thinking:

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/capital-b-black-styleguide.php

Note, the standard practice to capitalize ethnic groups: For example jewish would be considered incorrect. There are those who consider Black to be an ethnic group, hence, capitalizing it encompasses a way to "describe the people, culture, art and communities" that make up the ethnic group. In which case, it's not a color, exactly, which I think is what you may be missing, when you consider why some capitalize the word.

Case in point: We already capitalize many other groups that are often associated with "color." Color, of course, being a construct we often see as "real," when in fact it is a cultural interpretation.

After all, she pointed out, “We already capitalize Asian, Hispanic, African American and Native American.”

Dudhbbh33433• 2 years ago

You and your link make reasonable arguments for capitalizing black, but I don't see any justification (other than to be contrary to supremacist groups) for not doing the same for white, which leaves it inconsistent with the naming of all other racial/ethnic groups.

Chris2048• 2 years ago

from your link, first paragraph:

"For many people, Black reflects a shared sense of identity and community. White carries a different set of meanings; capitalizing the word in this context risks following the lead of white supremacists."

I don't find that thoughtful.

The argument further erodes when they also capitalize "Asian", which is described as "groups that include myriad ethnic identities united by shared race and geography and, to some degree, culture" - How does that not apply equally to "white" also?

rpmisms6• 2 years ago

Capitalizing one and not the others is racist. There is no monolithic white, black, or brown experience, and to pretend otherwise is racist. It's a stupid microaggression

someuser23452• 2 years ago

It seems to me that this practice is just another example of putting white people on a pedestal. If all other racial groups have "a shared sense of identity and community", then it implies that being white is the default; that the world is split into white and not-white.

evrimoztamur• 2 years ago

Black and White is such a revolutionary PC game, I can agree to that!

7734128• 2 years ago

It is certainly hateful. A conscious choice that most publishing houses made in the summer of 2020, with a wide verity of delusional explanations.

on_the_train• 2 years ago

It's blatantly racist. Just imagine the opposite and the resulting uproar

neilk• 2 years ago

I went looking for more Padget Powell; in particular I wanted to hear his voice. This one is pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69cvhp6h2cc

In the interview he also uses "made-up people doing made-up things", so this was not an nonce invention. Perhaps he uses the phrase when teaching literature. Also I would not judge him for this, every person who is frequently interviewed learns to deploy a few stories and phrases that have a reliable effect.

stefanon• 2 years ago

I am a singleton

bitwize• 2 years ago

Quote in the title is a near-perfect description of where I am in the job search process.

mr_pinnen• 2 years ago

Great interview. If you liked it then here is another with the same author that is also worth your time: https://lithub.com/in-which-padgett-powell-employs-an-extend...

eszed• 2 years ago

I learned to write the English I have written by taking three years of Latin, in the putatively desolate educational backwater of Jacksonville, Florida, ending in the tenth grade translating The Aeneid. I was in homeroom sitting with Allen Collins of Lynyrd Skynyrd. We was gettin’ it. We did not know we was gettin’ it.

This is great.

dash22• 2 years ago

This I did not expect:

I learned to write the English I have written by taking three years of Latin, in the putatively desolate educational backwater of Jacksonville, Florida, ending in the tenth grade translating The Aeneid. I was in homeroom sitting with Allen Collins of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

prewett• 2 years ago

I took me some reflection and some education from the comments here to see this, but it seems like Powell had the same pique to the interviewer's questions as he did to his colleague's. So he answers the questions, but at the same time he critiques the interviewer:

- "I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton," suggesting that the interviewer still has said juice. This also allows some subtle critiques like "I'm ignorant of 'malapert'", which on the surface is a sort of back-handed compliment to the questioner on their ability to coin a phrase like "malapert urbanity" that a "simpleton" like they are interviewing does not understand. But it also suggests that if the "legend" they are interviewing does not know the word, perhaps this is excessive juice.

- "It emerges with no consideration for anything but the next correct word." Questioner, stop overthinking things.

- Then when the interviewer asks Powell to agree with his assertion-as-a-question that there is no wrong way to read a book, Powell responds with a story about how he wants to focus on making writing better but people like the interviewer that say there are no wrong ways to read a book are actually teaching that there are wrong ways to say things. Furthermore, people like the interviewer eviscerated a recent book in the style that people like the interviewer celebrated, on the grounds of racism, despite the fact that the content of his books is from actual black people who said those things. So the implied answer the question is that no, a book does not get unmoored from its time period, because he cannot actually publish those books today, and that there may or may not be a wrong way to read a book, but there certainly is a wrong way to write one, namely his (celebrated) way.

But then it all goes completely over the interviewer's head (no doubt as expected). I wasn't impressed with Powell on the first read, but wow, that is some finesse!

I now lack the juice to fuel the bluster to conceal that I am a simpleton

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