Chrishayden

I just finished Best American Short Stories 2009.

I want to know what it is I'm ranting about.

If he makes it out of the Office alive, I'll be surprised.

Chris, whenever people hit 50 they start talking about the world coming to the end -- soon. Whooping Cough and this other sicknesses that were eradicated are coming back 'cause there are enough now who believe the vaccinations are actually bad for you -- good night nurse!

Cynique, I would recommend you skip Inception. It was a plodding mess of a movie. Seek alternative ways to manipulate your dreams :-)

(If you would use that wonderful educated eyes to see and that sharp educated mind to analyze it you would validate all those who have conferred degrees on you would find that I was not talking about the End of the World.

Judgement does not mean the end of the world. It does mean discomfort, pain and even death for some.

Egypt, if you remember, did not end with the Judgment conferred upon it in the Book of Exodus. It went on to suffer many more famines, conquests and failures.

American educations are defective. Americans are unable to process anything but positive effects and success stemming from their efforts, hence they have no Plan B when things take a turn.

Withness, the Bush Administration.

Witness, the Obama Administration.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128872279&ps=cprs

Read it and weep

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100804/bs_nm/us_barnesandnoble

I can see it now. They'll be adding strippers and topless waitresses. All you can eat buffets.

No more wine and croissants while you listen to string quartet music!

I mean, is we really wth it on this site, or is we ain't?

Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker--yeah, they cool--but they was hot 20-30 years ago.

Who is hot now?

Do folks on this site read PARIS REVIEW? or CALALOO? Do they look at POETS and WRITERS?

Who here has read Best American Short Stories 2009?

I see all this criticism of Urban Literature but at least they are publishing and pushing stuff.

These Litcritturs wanna lay back in the cut (up in the library) and nibble on roots and berries and sip Perrier water and wait for somebody to come to them.

Doesn't the Literary Fiction Community bear responsibility for this state of affairs by being dull torpid and irrelevant?

How thoughtful of you to provide excerpts from and a link to this book about slavery, Chrishayden. Who knows? There might be younger folks who are registered at this site and who now don't have to go through the trouble of googling "slavery" in order to learn what well-informed people have known since 1619; slavery was hell, and its repercussions awful.

You could have also recommended the option of watching the movie "Gone With The Wind" in order to provide the "ignorant" ones with an idea of what slavery involved. But, then, you claim to despise this film.

Whatever. In the year 2010, it's always provocative to be reminded how a certain element of slave descendants are now killing each other - while others argue among themselves about what constitutes a "slave mentality" - as if anyone knows what really went on inside the individual minds of those in bondage.

(Once again, you saw the mote and missed the beam.

What I am focusing on is the ATTITUDES of the poorer whites toward those blacks who had things which parallel a lot of their attitudes today.)

Your experience as a school boy in St. Louis were not comparable to your southern counterparts.

(St. Louisans especially try to deny this but St. Louis is in the SOUTH!

They owned slaves in this state. It almost went for the Confederacy. The DRED SCOTT decision was rendered here.

Come on, now! Get with the program!)

The example you gave to refute his claim was descriptive of how things were in the South.

(Furthermore, up until the Great Migration of the 1920's to 1950's most blacks lived in the South. How many people my age can go back more than two generations in the North? I know I can't. You guys are living in a Wish factory)

I agree with Thumper when he says that Blacks were better-educated back in the day than they are now - when it comes to the products of public schools.

(Maybe SOME of those Blacks from SOME of those schools were. Even in the north the education was substandard for most)

Yes, literary fiction is on its last legs, but access to its archives should always be available for those who opt for the written word to stimulate their minds.

(At this, I have to go Asian on ya. I was at a party for the launch of a literary magazine and there was this Asian professor of philosophy there. He was bemoaning the fact that nobody was interested in philosophy (this was in the 90's) I asked why. He explained that nobody wanted to think about that until things went absolutely wrong. Socrates came forth after Athens had lost the Peloponesian War.

Things are to the point now, nobody WANTS to stimulate their minds. Look at the screwball comedies of the 1930s)

Black literary fiction, literary magazines, intelligent film, serious television, music, websites, you name it, will be increasingly difficult to make commercially viable going forward.

(There it is. If literary fiction was so hip, the literary writers would write some stuff that would knock the urban lit people right out of the box. Of course, by definition and practice, literary fiction will not do it because it does not appeal to the masses.

Lit people have lost the will and desire to entertain. Poe, Dickens, Hemingway, all these cats couldalso entertain. Of course, they had lives. They moved among real people. They were not cocooned in the ivory tower all the time.

It is interesting that the lit writers so often quoted wrote before the 90s--Baldwin, Hughes, Wright, Morrison, Walker, et al.

Hasn't ANYBODY anything to say about the Iliad or Homer?

How about how some people theorize that his name was another name for Moor and that he was black--I don't really go for that one--I like the one that he was a Greek who didn't even live in Greece proper but one of the cities or Greek cities in Asia Minor, that he was descended from Myceneans thrown out of Greece by the Dorian invasion and that The Iliad was a sort of a paen to past days (when we used to kick the non Greeks asses--instead of vice versa.

How abuot asing why there are so many translations.

I like the Lattimore one because ancient Greek poetry did not rhyme--there was meter and his version catches that.

I like the pome anyway because it shows how bloody and crazed with religion the Greek was--and musical, you should't forget the musical. The Greek had a style that emphasized rythm and imgae and metaphor and symbol--"rosy fingered dawn" and all that. Kind of like Africans or African Americans.

Indeed, the poem reminds me of some stories about Shaka Zulu I read--the Greeks of the Iliad were armed and fought in a similar manner--the issuing of challenges, the clash of the heroes and champions before the main scrimmage

Where is the guy who started this White Lit conversation.

IS YA REAL OR IS YA AIN'T?

the budding black writers of the next generation are more likely to read Urban Lit and aspire to that writing style, than to learn the craft by studying a wide variety of black authors

(The budding black writers of the next generation--like the budding black writers of the present one--are being produced in schools and universities and writing programs where they are exposed to the canon--Urban lit ain't on it. You think they teach Sistah Souljah at the Iowa Writer's Workshop? You think all that's what all the Fine Arts departments of all these white universities where most of these people are educated are teaching them that?

This ain't 1850 with the Negroes learning how to read and write underneath a blanket at night. Where do Negroes get this stuff? I don't even recongize the world they seem to be describing. Negroes is undereducated not like dey wuz back w'en I was a chile in de ole one room school house an at Tuskeegee wit Booker T.

Seriously, folks!

it has turned out that the education that a black person could get back in the day, not accounting for the deplorable school systems down South, was a lot better.

(You don't actually believe this, do you? Do you believe that black people were better educated "back in the day"? When they were using textbooks that were ten twenty years old? When their school days were shortened so that they could work in the fields?

This was not in 1850--this was in 1950. At the grade school I went to we got recent arrivals from the south who were 13 and 14 years old who had to go into the third grade--and it wasn't because they were dumb or not trying but they had been deliberately undereducated.

Black people are better educated today than ever.

How many black people back in the day could have worked a personal computer?)

I don't see nothing wrong with looking up words in a dictionary. It's called vocabulary building. But, then I was educated in another age and not the current one.

(Nowadays they go online to do that. They don't need a dictionary. Get with the program)

We didn't try reading those other books because they were "too hard"

(I have said this before. The average person is leading a life of such boredom and tedium you can't even believe. They don't want to sit down and work over some thick literary book--they want to relax.

I have said this before--today it's all about getting paid. Who the hell cares if you are reading Proust or Maya Angelou if you are not a teacher or a literary critic.

How can you sit here and denigrate black people for not reading when the average white adult does not read a book in a year not even one.

They seem to be doing pretty good, don't they?

George Bush didn't read books. He did pretty good, didn't he?)

I have shown my love for the books from a small independent publisher, Akashic Books. T

(

Ain't nobody but you reading them books. The number of people reading them books is statistically insignificant.

Literary Fiction is dead. Couldn't have happened soon enough in my book. All it provided was a means for some slackers and slugs to stand around who couldn't tie their own shoes to go to parties and act like they were better than somebody else.)

We need to do better than this people. We have got to learn to support our new authors as well as elders. There's really no reason for us not doing our part, because we still have to go that extra mile or extra step to get to where we ought to be, need to be, should be.

(All hell is breaking loose. Law and order is breaking down, the economy is in the doldrums, the nation is under attack from terrorists, we are going broke and all you can do is take a pinch of snuff from your silver snuff box, arch your brow, sneer and say how the unwashed masses are not reading Alice Walker.

Wonder what you are going to do if you need to use those wonderful volumes to start a fire to keep warm?)

I can’t believe what I‘m hearing on the news! It’s not bad enough that whooping cough and head lice have resurfaced, now bed bugs have made a come back, their infestation reaching epidemic proportions. “Good night, sleep tight,” has taken on a whole new meaning. Yikes!

(The U.S. is in Judgement Mode, just like Ancient Egypt.

First, the plagues. Then the deaths of the first born.

Get ready for it)

I thought some people wanted to talk some White Literature up in here? Where ya at?

Is Homer TOO white for ya?

What types of urban fiction do you like to read?

What inspires you in a novel?

(Urban fiction--Donald Goines, Iceberg Slim, Chester Himes, some Walter Moseley John Edgar Wideman.

(I don't think anything "inspires" me in a novel. What do you mean by that? What in a novel motivates me to write or read more? I can be inspired even by a novel I don't like. Please clarify what you mean by "inspires")

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs

Ch 12

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Harriet_Jacobs/Incidents_in_the_Life_of_a_Slave_Girl/Fear_Of_Insurrection_p1.html

Some excerpts

By sunrise, people were pouring in from every quarter within twenty miles of the town. I knew the houses were to be searched; and I expected it would be done by country bullies and the poor whites. I knew nothing annoyed them so much as to see colored people living in comfort and respectability

It was a grand opportunity for the low whites, who had no negroes of their own to scourge. They exulted in such a chance to exercise a little brief authority, and show their subserviency to the slaveholders; not reflecting that the power which trampled on the colored people also kept themselves in poverty, ignorance, and moral degradation. Those who never witnessed such scenes can hardly believe what I know was inflicted at this time on innocent men, women, and children, against whom there was not the slightest ground for suspicion

This is gonna be a long next two years

He should have declared victory and got the hell out the day after he was sworn in

But he didn't want to appear "soft"

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html

Well, how does he look now?

I tend to think he wasn’t personally involved. He shouldn’t have been. He’s not the President of Race Relations he’s the President of the United [cough] States of America and last time I looked the country has a few problems that need his immediate attention. His problem is that he can’t trust the folks that are supposed to have his back aka the “Administration”. How can he run the country when he has to keep putting out fires started by his employees? Where’s his Chaney?

The more important question to me is WHY was the NAACP so quick to toss her. They know this woman. They thought enough of her to invite her to speak at their conference. Yet they jump on her at the first wink and nod from the white folks. The racist a-holes barely had time to lift their fingers off the keyboard with this crap before those butt kissing Negroes were on their knees smacking their lips and yessirbossing. After all this time and all the backstabbing we’ve endured WHY would they be so quick to believe what the white man says? Especially against one of their own? WHY?

Crystal

(I'll answer the second question first.

I believe they got her because somebody from the White House told them to do it so their flank would be covered.

I'm still waiting for somebody to get fired or disciplined for it. If they are not, you'll know it was Obama.

The man has shown, as with the Gates case, that there are times he acts and speaks without thinking.

If it wasn't hm--why did HE apologize and talk to the woman?

Let's face it--America is all about Da Benjamins, and nobody will pay you for knowing about H.L. Mencken but a school or a literary magazine--and if you don't know you can google it.

I don't think it's so much dumbing down as a change of media--America has gone audio visual, and everybody who is not audiovisual is out.

These people are not dumb--they are ignorant--but reading print for pleasure cannot compete with viewing movies--you can do three four movies in the time it takes to read the shortest book--you can be with friends sharing the experience, eating, drinking, make it into a social event.

Reading takes place alone.

Reading is also passive. People want interactive now. Press a button and move the arrow and do something.

Her firing happened awful fast, as did the offer of reinstatement. There has been no word of any punishment for Tom Vilsack, the man who did the awful deed. Obama himself was quick to get on tv and get to apologizing and calling her up. A couple weeks ago he had a supposedly secret meeting with that skunk, Slick Willie Clinton--who threw Sistah Souljah under the bus in order to get elected.

Did he do it? If so, should he confess?

1) It stinks

2) It is written in a code--like that of Modern Poetry--that afficinadoes of literary fiction or intellectuals understand but nobody else does. For instace, I was rading a piece called "Homesick Blues" in Terry McMillains groundbreaking 1990 anthology, BREAKING ICE that was my Bible back in the day.

The story refers to H. L. Mencken. I know who Mencken is, and knew who he was then, because I was in the lit fiction game. But the average person does not know who James Baldwin was, much less H. L. Mencken.

(You think I am overstating the case. I spoke to a very well educated Black woman the other day who was puzzled about the hostility between the U.S. and North Korea. "Well, that was that little War we fought with them from 195-1953," I answered. She as unaware of it.

Most people read fiction for pleasure. They do not have nice cushy jobs at a college. They work awful boring jobs and do REAL work and don't want to come home, tired and have to work some more looking up every other word in a story.

I don't have to. I read and study widely. Chances are I'll come across the name of Mencken by accident.

Hemningway didn't go to no college. Shakespeare didn't go to no college. James Baldwin didn't go to no college.

They all produced work that is studied in college.

Today's college trained, college employed writer cannot produce work that can be appreciated by people who are not in a library 10 hours a day.

In other words,in the immortal words of Emil Zola when literary types wonder why nobody reads their dull, derivative works I shout out J'ACCUSE!

What brought all THIS on?

Mel is worth a billion dollars. He ain't suffering.

We were talking about SLAVE MENTALITY as exhibited by Caryn Johnson (Whoopi (she is named for the WHOOPIE cushion and usually expels sound bites of the same quality) leaping to the defence of Mel Gibson.

I know. It hurts. It pains you to see it.

No pain, no gain.

Corrected, you two dodoes may now continue the discussion.

Is this the same Chrishayden always pooh-poohing my opinions about things being better in the past than the present???

(This is the same Chris Hayden who only went TEN years in the past rather than back to Nineteen ought seven like SOMEBODY we know.

Also it was the same Chris Hayden that speaks to you of how it was for BLACK AMERICA in 1950 vs now and ALL OF AMERICA in 2000 vs now.

Cynique, you're slipping. You got all the mental power of a three minute egg. You ain't WORTH saving.

BUT I'M GONNA SAVE YA ANYWAY!

at reasonable rates.

It's the heat. It's baking your btain like a baked potatoe (topped with cheese and bacon bits). It's frying your noodle.

Go

So you wanna talk Homer?

Let’s Talk the Iliad.

Which translation of the Iliad are you talking about? There are over 200.

http://www.editoreric.com/greatlit/translations/Iliad.html

The one I like now is Richmond Lattimore’s Translation

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226469409/editoreric-20

To wit

Richmond Lattimore's acclaimed translation in 1965-7 tries to keep the long lines of the original Greek poetry. Homer used dactyllic hexameter, which is a dum-da-da rhythm with six dums to the line, and Lattimore struggles to at least fit the six stresses into each line. He also tries to stick closely to the Greek text. The result is something that sounds more like what Homer's listeners heard but makes for slower reading.

Compare a few

Examples

First lines of the Iliad by five translators

Pope:

The Wrath of Peleus' Son, the direful Spring

Of all the Grecian Woes, O Goddess, sing!

That Wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy

Reign

The Souls of mighty Chiefs untimely slain;

Whose Limbs unbury'd on the naked Shore

Devouring Dogs and hungry Vultures tore.

Since Great Achilles and Atrides strove,

Such was the Sov'reign Doom, and such the

Will of Jove.

Butler:

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled....

Hammond:

Sing, goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, the accursed anger that brought uncounted anguish on the Achaians and hurled down to Hades many mighty souls of heroes, making their bodies the prey to dogs and the birds' feasting, and this was the working of Zeus' will.

Lattimore:

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son

Achilles

and its devastation, which put pains

thousand-fold upon the Achaians,

hurled in their multitudes to the house of

Hades strong souls

of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the

delicate feasting

of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was

accomplished....

Fagles:

Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus'

son Achilles,

murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans

countless losses,

hurling down to the House of Death so many

sturdy souls,

great fighters' souls, but made their bodies

carrion,

feasts for the dogs and birds,

and the will of Zeus was moving toward its

end....

So, which translation of the Iliad are you talking about?

"I'll disagree with that. Or rather I'll say AMERICA IS FUCKED UP!compared to what?"

Short answer:

To what it was on July 19, 2000. I DEFY you to say it is better now than it was ten years ago!