Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

He is pretty cool. I can cut him some slack for a clunky thing here and there. He hasn't gone full Greenwald just yet.

i think his self-seriousness is inseparable from what's good about his writing when it's good.

naw he is v capable of greater self awareness and is much better in that mode

TNC will end up writing about the lack of ethics in modern poltical propaganda or epistemic closure or how the interwebs have empowered pit-bull journalism or something, but I doubt he will linger much over Brietbart himself all that much.

oh man, maybe it's TNC that is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Sincerity

i think his self-seriousness is inseparable from what's good about his writing when it's good.

― horseshoe, Thursday, March 1, 2012 2:24 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

actually forgive me for not thinking abt this deeper, i do think whats good abt his writing is maybe p closely related to his ponderousness, he does a thing thats p endearing where you can feel him thinking, he s lets you in, which is not easy, but he tends to go off the rails w/it which is maybe not surprising considering what a delicate operation it is

also id like to say that his blog is ime much better than his long form writing but why

eh his problem isn't that he's too sincere, paul krugman is sincere too, his problem is that he spends too much time thinking outloud and being nice

(xp)

he spends too much time thinking outloud

― iatee, Thursday, March 1, 2012 2:30 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is his problem, yes. twitter is bad for him, i really think, although now i sound like a crazy person who thinks ta-nehisi coates is her friend. which lol is how i actually think of him tbh. i'm fine with him being nice.

i don't really disagree with anything jho has said, though. i originally typed "ponderousness" instead of "self-seriousness." dude has a lot to say.

i'm making sure i'm putting that waxpapery ring thing on the seat before i take shit in this toilet. #breitbartpocalypse #thoughtfulguy

and he says it slowly. i always am jealous of people who can write like that; i do the opposite.

I am glad I only sporadically read his stuff as I've never come across anything exhibiting the problems/issues you guys are describing (which I half suspect are a pattern that emerges via exposure).

'i think' the thinking out loud part is just the clumsy failed aspect of what he does well when he does it well which then leads to people thinking hes their friend which is a p good trick

to be clear i really like him which is whats lead me to develop this critique of him

instead of tweeting ta-nehisi should just call me up and vent. we are on a first name basis like that.

the funny thing abt tnc on twitter is he spent so long turning his nose up at it and now hes on it all the time basically demonstrating its shortcomings in real time in the manner he previously described

sometimes I wonder - (and again I think he's 'worthy of being a tier 1 blogger' regardless) - how many people use him as their go-to source for 'what a black person thinks' because he is what a lot of people would like black people to be

...

and it's hard to disassociate that w/ the fact that he actually is an interesting writer but I see him celebrated in ways that I don't see w/ many other bloggers, like the way people compliment him out of the blue 'one of the best writers. everyone should be reading him. just great.' etc. is...different

im really glad he has started talking abt the nba and stopped talking abt video games

iatee, the "Is this racist?" thread is over here

I'm not arguing 'tnc is the result of affirmative action' I'm saying 'is it a total coincidence that the most popular africam-american blogger among white people is like the least shrill person on the internet'

africam

fyi, tnc used to kick it on ilm a bit back in the day. i've been following him since he was at the voice doing the press clips column -- he was killer funny. sometimes he can (or could, don't read regularly now) go hella hard, albeit with some dry irony.

what was his usr name

CRW

I'm not arguing 'tnc is the result of affirmative action' I'm saying 'is it a total coincidence that the most popular africam-american blogger among white people is like the least shrill person on the internet'

― iatee, Thursday, March 1, 2012 2:46 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in this post he talks a lil bit abt his feelings on the topic, tho obvs he doesnt get at the particular explaining black things to white folks angle itatee is talking abt

I consider myself a writer of some merit and talent, who says some interesting things from time to time. That's all very nice. But I understand that if I were in my exact same job, and happened to be just another white dude from an Ivy, I'd attract less interest. Race, as lived by individuals, is biography and people are always interested in biography when it differs from the norm in any field. I have no idea why it should be any different with Lin.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/02/the-jeremy-lin-backlash/253076

i remember him writing about the hip hop cops at the voice

didnt realize that was him, i loved that story

so fn nuts

Of course his background/bio make more people notice him. That question is a textbook example of "begging the question".

My issue is that iatee basically said, "well he's good, but he's not that good, so people must be heaping all of this praise on him because he is the platonic ideal of the good Negro, so much calmer and more pleasant than all those angry black people (although I can't stress enough how talented he is so that someone won't call me on the gross assumptions spilling out in my thoughts)" and, unsurprisingly, the general reaction aside from me was "hmm, makes you think *strokes chin*"

tbf you and i were the only people who reacted at all to his posts and you should know by now that i never stroke my chin while passively condoning racism

I never said 'he's not that good', he is on my rss feed even though I have problems w/ the think out loud stuff. I said the way people praise him and talk about him is 'different' and sometimes kinda awkward and his role as that 'one and only go-to black guy blogger' in the blogosphere might have something to do with how nice he is

I'm glad you could find the secret racism tho, I thought I was hiding it so well

and it's hard to disassociate that w/ the fact that he actually is an interesting writer but I see him celebrated in ways that I don't see w/ many other bloggers, like the way people compliment him out of the blue 'one of the best writers. everyone should be reading him. just great.' etc. is...different

The direct implication here is that you think he's good but he's not THAT good, otherwise it wouldn't be so weird or awkward. Or conversely, these people don't actually think he's that good, but because he's the non-threatening black guy he gets held up as the token example, which both implicitly downplays the quality of his writing and implicitly posits the existence of a slew of equally high-profile black writers who are surly rage demons too edgy for white America to handle but more like what the average black person is like (cf the he is what a lot of people would like black people to be comment).

iatee basically said, "well he's good, but he's not that good, so people must be heaping all of this praise on him because he is the platonic ideal of the good Negro...

After a certain level of 'goodness', the great majority of people have no scale by which to measure any further gradations or distinctions. The average person is just as likely as not to heap up mountains of praise on Stephen King or Ann Coulter. At that point you have to examine what their yardstick is, to see what they are measuring. It is not inconceivable that for some of them, iatee has sussed out the mark TNC is meeting. This is not the same as endorsing that measurement.

the point was that I don't see the same 'everyone should be reading him. just so great.' talk in the same manner w/ *any* other blogger and it's awkward in that he's talked about *differently* not that he's talked about *too much*. you can read whatever 'direct implication' you want into that.

fwiw i find him a v good explainer of racism, am wite btw

im not trying to beg the question fyi, just an aside, and as an additional aside i was unaware of the original meaning of beg the question until today, also i think i used it kinda backward there but w/e

The direct implication here is that you think he's good but he's not THAT good

I read that less as a critique of his writing than as a way of marketing him.

would be curious to hear whether he feels like explaining racism to white people has become part of his job or hes just talking abt stuff that interests him and if the whole blog xposting/commenting internet communication/feedback loop has affected how/what he chooses to write on the topic

yep, too nice by far:

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/03/on-making-yourself-right/253889/

trying real hard here to follow tnc's example and not accuse certain posters of certain things that aren't true in a somewhat escalated way, but goddamn it would feel good to do so...

(and yeah, tnc's take on sncc is problematic and one-sided, to say the least, i think. but there are ways you talk about that, and there are ways that you absolutely do not talk about that [and tnc's rejection of precisely some of those ways probably informs his take on sncc, in fact])

you have followed his example in more than one way

About half finished. Damn compelling.

man I get emotionally invested in pieces like this

probably why I read so much fantasy

Hey, so does he.

"Stellar piece" understates.

i wasn't sure where exactly to post this article, but i didn't realize T-NC already had his own thread. compelling indeed. and damn long, i'll need to reread it soon...

I heard that she's hot.

yeah, i dug this piece a lot. i think he leans kinda hard on the "google searches for racism" datapoints when he really doesnt need too... otherwise so great.

i assume he knows how to "keep a plot moving" but faltered a bit as he was trying to synthesize several different versions of the book into one narrative.

i didn't read it, just what it sounds like.

I've read at least one other negative review. The most depressing part of that write-up, though, is the byline. The idea that someone who writes that poorly is an editor at Simon & Schuster, with other people's manuscripts in their custody, is terrifying.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Monday, December 2, 2019 8:57 AM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm assuming this is a young dude who is like a year or two out of grad school for literature. probably will mellow a bit as he ages.

using "apophatically" and "aporia" in one paragraph tho, bravo lol.

He is not the worlds best comics writer either. I think it's okay to be fantastic at one style, and merely ok at others.

The worst faux pas to me is that he just quotes Cornel West on 'We Were Eight Years in Power', without it seeming that he himself has read it. That's bad work.

i assume he knows how to "keep a plot moving" but faltered a bit as he was trying to synthesize several different versions of the book into one narrative.

I've been editing novels for a few years now on a freelance basis and all the errors of structure and tone called out in the Vox review are extremely familiar to me. I just finished a manuscript the other week where entire chapters were taken up by literal classroom lectures on the author's pet issues, so it's not at all surprising to me that a political essayist (and, yes, sometime comic book writer) would think his Big Novel needed multiple "slavery is bad, mmmkay?" monologues. Or that his protagonist has a sledgehammer-to-the-forehead metaphorical superpower.

i can't fucking believe there's an actual "he's not a great novelist, and that's ok!" in the vox piece

no one should be allowed to write imo

Haven't had a chance to read this yet, tbh, but I got a copy when I went to see him get interviewed about it last month. His thought process and the in-depth research he did make it sound like it could really be interesting, but at the same time I could see how it ends up muddled and disappointing.

surprised VOX writer didn't say, "Hey, Baldwin's novels were blah too!"

that vox review is just flat out embarrassing

i mean apart from gushing over how "beautiful" the sentences are (not really a good sign in most novels tbh), there's literally a paragraph where the reviewer suggests that the novel would be better if it were MORE LIKE AN AARON SORKIN SHOW

gushing over how "beautiful" the sentences are (not really a good sign in most novels tbh)

Not the greatest example, either; I was already editing that one sentence in my head, and it definitely didn't make me want to read 400 more pages.

https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/article/21135953/city-lights-join-tanehisi-coates-and-natalie-hopkinson-for-a-discussion-of-gogo-history

12 noon eastern time Facebook live chat w/ Natalie Hopkinson on his 2000 article on history of dc go-go, and he as a rap fan coming to gogo, plus more. Live on Make gogo forever page plus will be archived by DC Public Library gogo Archives

They may talk about more than go-go per the poster

what else is there to talk about

i thought it was really cool of him to show up in my parents town, where my mom taught, to support a teacher who was reprimanded for teaching "between the world and me" to a high school AP class. my mom got a chance to talk to him and called me immediately afterward like she was on cloud 9

That’s awesome!

I wish he’d write another polemic - not a novel, not a comic book, not an opera, nor a screenplay, not a poetry collection. (But I get that he wants to try other stuff, etc.)

“You can’t behold evil and then return and not speak on it.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates speaks about how an experience in Palestine illuminated the connections between the African American and Palestinian liberation struggles, and the moral responsibility to speak out. pic.twitter.com/y0HrXibUJz

— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) November 2, 2023