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2anna_in_pdx
I really need to re-read it with all these reader aids in place.
Thanks, pyro, for your dedication to all things DFW and for all your hard work.
Thanks, pyro, for your dedication to all things DFW and for all your hard work.
3MeditationesMartini
Yeah, ditto, for real.
So, tangentially in the spirit of our World Cup thread and "who you cheering for" tribalism, I can't help but really like the conversations between Marathe and Steeply, and think about the former's sincerity and the latter's massive set of mediating walls separating him from anything resembling a spontaneous response--and yet how dogmatic the former can seem, and how toughly realistic the latter. I think of my friend's Russian wife's observation yesterday that North Americans never reply to everything with sincerity--that we treat everything like the occasion for a quip--while "we Russians speak from the heart."
In this light, and obviously I am uncomfortably deferring the placement of Canadians, or at least of myself, this is a feeling I will admit to having felt, precisely and exactly--and more in the past year, when I've been spending time around a lot of American grad students:
"Steeply removed with cool deliberation anothe Belgian cigarette and lit it, this time on the first match. Waving the match out with a circular flourish and snap. All this took time of his silence. Marathe wondered why the presence of Americans could always make him feel vaguely ashamed after saying things he believed. An aftertaste of shame after revealing passion of any belief and type when with Americans, as if he had made flatulence instead of had revealed belief."
So exact, and not something I've heard described like that before. And yet, I do not wish to see essentialist; and I have more-or-less been accused of occupying the same space as a Canadian, by my Russian friend, so maybe it's all relative? But it's interesting, both in light of the ONANistic machinations and Quebecois insurgency (both still unfolding for me), and in a broader symbolic sense, because there's this type of sort of golly-shucks American bumpkinness that doesn't seem to have really existed for a long time, but lives in myth (and not least in American self-myth; see the NYT op-ed page--Friedman, Brooks, Collins, Herbert all do this; and Maureen Dowd apes it constantly for purposes of mockery).
Thoughts? I will also admit I found the hatless, sombre Canadians, John Wayne and crew, on Interdependence Day affecting.
So, tangentially in the spirit of our World Cup thread and "who you cheering for" tribalism, I can't help but really like the conversations between Marathe and Steeply, and think about the former's sincerity and the latter's massive set of mediating walls separating him from anything resembling a spontaneous response--and yet how dogmatic the former can seem, and how toughly realistic the latter. I think of my friend's Russian wife's observation yesterday that North Americans never reply to everything with sincerity--that we treat everything like the occasion for a quip--while "we Russians speak from the heart."
In this light, and obviously I am uncomfortably deferring the placement of Canadians, or at least of myself, this is a feeling I will admit to having felt, precisely and exactly--and more in the past year, when I've been spending time around a lot of American grad students:
"Steeply removed with cool deliberation anothe Belgian cigarette and lit it, this time on the first match. Waving the match out with a circular flourish and snap. All this took time of his silence. Marathe wondered why the presence of Americans could always make him feel vaguely ashamed after saying things he believed. An aftertaste of shame after revealing passion of any belief and type when with Americans, as if he had made flatulence instead of had revealed belief."
So exact, and not something I've heard described like that before. And yet, I do not wish to see essentialist; and I have more-or-less been accused of occupying the same space as a Canadian, by my Russian friend, so maybe it's all relative? But it's interesting, both in light of the ONANistic machinations and Quebecois insurgency (both still unfolding for me), and in a broader symbolic sense, because there's this type of sort of golly-shucks American bumpkinness that doesn't seem to have really existed for a long time, but lives in myth (and not least in American self-myth; see the NYT op-ed page--Friedman, Brooks, Collins, Herbert all do this; and Maureen Dowd apes it constantly for purposes of mockery).
Thoughts? I will also admit I found the hatless, sombre Canadians, John Wayne and crew, on Interdependence Day affecting.
