From a very worthwhile article:
The important thing is to be interesting. What better way to demonstrate that you’re not a humdrum worker bee, afflicted with a lackluster personality, than to carefully and selectively express the right kind of righteous indignation?
Yes, it’s all about showcasing your quirk.
This is well-written satire by a very successful, politically conservative American (first-generation) author of South Asian ethnicity. He obviously knows the territory that he mocks very well.
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For some bizarre reason, everybody who knows how to write is at the National Review. So I have to read it even though I disagree with 85% of it.
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” it’s all about showcasing your quirk”
But what’s the quirk? Quirk implies non-conformity and originality.
The Jeong woman (f’rintance) strikes me as incredibly tedious and boring. No one wants quirky they want malleable second rate minds who will unthinkingly and dutifully spout the current orthodoxy – duckspeak as Orwell put it.
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To elaborate, here are some possible quirks
maintains a web page exploring the hypothesis that turtles are slow because they serve as esp reception towers (if they were faster it would interfere with the transfer of psychic messages)
belongs to a Pearl Sisters tribute band (the Peal Sisters were a South Korean pop act in the 1960s maybe 70s… don’t ask how I know that….)
video link:
teaches cats to square dance
Simply regurgitating the currently fashionable academic twaddle could not be less quirky…
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That would be quirks for more intellectually sophisticated people. 🙂 I study Basque, which is very quirky for me. But not everybody has the intellect for this sort of quirk. It’s easier to write idiotic tweets.
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You want quirky, you could read some Anne Tyler fiction for fun. And enlightenment! There is no one quite like Anne Tyler & her quirky characters with unlikely but believable stories, usually set in the quirky city of Baltimore. Her “Accidental Tourist” was made into a movie, which has become an American favorite over the years. Her “Breathing Lessons” won a Pulitzer for fiction, but I think “Ladder of Years” may be my favorite.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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