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Deep Down Inside

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As many extremely woke people, Stephen King has a very repressed and a very itchy problem with black people. I’ve never in my life encountered such a number of racist insults as I have in his book Mr Mercedes. Of course, it’s a racist character who proffers them but… the lady doth protest too much. How many times do you need a character to use the n-word to make the point that he’s racist? Sixty? Seventy? After a few dozen uses it stops being about the character and starts pointing to the author’s need to say the word he keeps locked deep down inside.

It’s a very nice read, though, aside from the wokeness.

16 responses to “Deep Down Inside”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I have not read any of Steven King’s current non-paranormal work, and I am basing this opinion solely on Clarissa’s initial critique above:

    Steven King’s new non-supernatural fiction may be in part an emulation of the writing style of Quentin Tarantino, who has had several movie theatrical hits in which the dialogue clearly deliberately force-fed the “n-word” into a ridiculous amount of the dialogue, fair beyond what was necessary to establish the racist bona fides of the characters uttering them. Critics recognized this as a deliberate ploy by Tarantino to set his own new baseline standard for near constant repetition of “n-word”-level slurs in his tales. (Perhaps he was being deliberately satyrical in this genre–at any rate, the style didn’t seem to bother either the critics or the audiences.)

    If this is what Steven King is attempting, it will interesting to see the resulting critical and the old-time-fans’ reaction.

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  2. Charles D Arrants Avatar
    Charles D Arrants

    I have not read any of Steven King’s current non-paranormal work, and I am basing this opinion solely on Clarissa’s initial critique above:

    Steven King’s new non-supernatural fiction may be in part an emulation of the writing style of Quentin Tarantino, who has had several movie theatrical hits in which the dialogue clearly deliberately force-fed the “n-word” into a ridiculous amount of the dialogue, fair beyond what was necessary to establish the racist bona fides of the characters uttering them. Critics recognized this as a deliberate ploy by Tarantino to set his own new baseline standard for near constant repetition of “n-word”-level slurs in his tales. (Perhaps he was being deliberately satyrical in this genre–at any rate, the style didn’t seem to bother either the critics or the audiences.)

    If this is what Steven King is attempting, it will interesting to see the resulting critical and the old-time-fans’ reaction.

    Like

    Reply
  3. Charles D Arrants Avatar
    Charles D Arrants

    I have not read any of Steven King’s current non-paranormal work, and I am basing this opinion solely on Clarissa’s initial critique above:

    Steven King’s new non-supernatural fiction may be in part an emulation of the writing style of Quentin Tarantino, who has had several movie theatrical hits in which the dialogue clearly deliberately force-fed the “n-word” into a ridiculous amount of the dialogue, fair beyond what was necessary to establish the racist bona fides of the characters uttering them. Critics recognized this as a deliberate ploy by Tarantino to set his own new baseline standard for near constant repetition of “n-word”-level slurs in his tales. (Perhaps he was being deliberately satyrical in this genre–at any rate, the style didn’t seem to bother either the critics or the audiences.)

    If this is what Steven King is attempting, it will interesting to see the resulting critical and the old-time-fans’ reaction.

    Like

    Reply
  4. Dreidel Avatar
    Dreidel

    I have not read any of Steven King’s current non-paranormal work, and I am basing this opinion solely on Clarissa’s initial critique above:

    Steven King’s new non-supernatural fiction may be in part an emulation of the writing style of Quentin Tarantino, who has had several movie theatrical hits in which the dialogue clearly deliberately force-fed the “n-word” into a ridiculous amount of the dialogue, fair beyond what was necessary to establish the racist bona fides of the characters uttering them. Critics recognized this as a deliberate ploy by Tarantino to set his own new baseline standard for near constant repetition of “n-word”-level slurs in his tales. (Perhaps he was being deliberately satyrical in this genre–at any rate, the style didn’t seem to bother either the critics or the audiences.)

    If this is what Steven King is attempting, it will interesting to see the resulting critical and the old-time-fans’ reaction.

    Like

    Reply
  5. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “emulation of the writing style of Quentin Tarantino”

    That was a long time ago. I think what’s going on is much simpler.

    The left/progressives/woke have a tremendous demand for racism and since the real world supply doesn’t come close to meeting the demand they fill any art they produce with it so they can pretend the 1950s and 60s Civil Rights movement never happened (the same way feminists try to pretend the Women’s movement never happened and still engage in role-playing based on 1950s stereotypes).

    He’s living in the past (not the real past, they hyper-racist past that he’s required to believe in).

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  6. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Sigh. My grandfather was fairly racist. In a very raised-in-Georgia kind of way. He was also a well-mannered gentleman. I heard him use the n-word exactly once, in my entire life, and it was shocking. He was repeating a joke, and didn’t think any kids were in earshot (he never used rough language in front of ladies or children).

    Interestingly, despite attitudes he was raised with… he was also a really decent person. And while I don’t think he ever questioned the assumptions (black people are stupid and criminally-inclined), he never let it interfere with how he treated actual people. It’s like “black people” were this theoretical category inside his head, about which he believed many uncomplimentary things, but none of the actual black people that he actually knew, worked with, and became friends with, belonged to that category. They were friends. That’s totally different. It was a great wonder to witness. His next-door neighbors (who, incidentally and through no fault of their own, were black) were good and respectable people that my grandparents liked– particularly the teenage son who was very polite. Teenage boys can be so difficult (they would know! My uncle was a terror)– anybody raising one so well-spoken must be doing a lot right! The Chinese couple who ran their favorite takeout place were close personal friends (despite how he felt about “Asians” generally) who brought their kids, visited at the house, and exchanged presents on holidays. They had this great embroidered stuffed-elephant toy in their house that we used to ride on. It was a gift from their Indian friends at church, whom they were close with. The important thing was that they were good Presbyterians, not that they were from India.

    My aunt told me a sad story– when she got married, long before I was born, they invited their old cleaning-lady to the wedding. My grandmother was crippled with arthritis from a young age, badly needed the help, and the lady had worked for them so long they were all quite friendly and thought of her as part of the family. She did come to the wedding, but refused to sit in the pew with the family (they wanted her to!) because it was 1970 and she was scared of the all-white congregation. My grandmother was kind of heartbroken about it, and to this day, fifty years later, it still grieves my aunt. She sat in the kitchen and listened to the wedding over the PA system. It was understandable. No matter how much they loved the woman, they couldn’t really vouch for the feelings of everyone in attendance, or that nobody would say anything ugly about it 😦 My (racist!) grandparents were willing to risk it, but the lady was not.

    I was always fascinated by the whole racism thing with my grandparents. It was sort of a progressive, ongoing negotiation between their upbringing, their experience, and their essentially kind and generous natures. Their biases never survived personal acquaintance, and I think their attitudes softened with age and experience. But they were never completely able to shake it. Still, I don’t think that story is uncommon, and I find it a much, much more interesting story than racism as it usually turns up in literature– i.e. if you possess it, you are incapable of changing or growing out of it, and you are by definition evil. People are so much more complicated than that.

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    1. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
      bluebird of bitterness

      I hear you. My father was what I call a “benign racist.” His general opinion of black people was not flattering, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have wanted one for a son-in-law, but he was always polite and respectful to black people whenever he encountered them in real life. He was in management at a business where the management was all white and the labor force mostly black, and he always treated his black employees fairly. (I dare say he treated them better than he did his own family, but that’s another story….)

      Meanwhile, my mother, a descendant of slave owners, was antiracist long before it was cool. The only time I can recall being spanked for using bad language was when I was very young and I said the n-word. I didn’t even know what it meant; it was just something I’d heard someone say, and I made the mistake of repeating it when my mother was within earshot. Never made that mistake again.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        Yeah. What was even more interesting to me, was the way this progressed down the generations. My parents were hippies. They were the generation that grew up with racism, but were determined to overcome it. They have nothing against black people, but they’re way more self-conscious about it than my generation.

        My mother was in high school when the schools in our county were de-segregated. It made a huge impression on her. That first year, there were only six black students at her school– sort of a test run. My mother went and made friends with at least two of them. One of those– my mother used to drive him to his job after school– grew up to be a doctor in our town, and when I was 9, he saved my dad’s life. Karma is funny that way. He later became the DEA test case for jailing doctors for overprescribing painkillers. He was easily railroaded through the courts because he was black, and so were most of his patients. The good doctor died in prison. My father spoke at his funeral. May God rest his soul.

        Mom’s drama class did a production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that year (I know, I know, tone deafness, whatever) which the black students (even the ones in drama) were too skittish to participate in– they were not activists, they understood themselves to be potential targets, and they emphatically did not want controversy. They were in the drama class, though they declined to go onstage. My mother played one of the black roles. Her black girl-friend in the drama class did her makeup backstage, so she “wouldn’t look like a cartoon”. These days of course, she’d be sent to the cancel-gulag for blackface. Whatever.

        At least where the whole race thing was concerned, they did their best to raise us the way they wished they’d been raised– race simply wasn’t brought up. People were just people, and the important thing is that you treat everybody fairly. Nobody’s better or worse because of their parentage, only their behavior.

        That looks like success to me. I don’t understand why so much of our culture seems hell-bent on reversing it.

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        1. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
          bluebird of bitterness

          Amen sister! I could not agree with you more.

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        2. Avatar
          Anonymous

          ” I don’t understand why so much of our culture seems hell-bent on reversing it.”
          Well, it might be a cynical interpretation of the facts, but if racism becomes a spent force, that’s would the end of the anti-racism grift.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Yes, Shirky principle in action, right? “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”

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      2. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “father was what I call a “benign racist.”

        Very similar to the way Florence King described her grandmother in “Confessions of a failed Southern Lady”… she had very definite ideas about general white superiority but made lots of individual exceptions including her best friend and closest companion who she moved into the family’s shared house (not without legal difficulties but they found a lawyer with pretty much the same world view who helped).

        But no one’s interested in messy, complicated reality… (which did suck in major ways, but which wasn’t a case of the KKK on every streetcorner).
        I put it down to the infantilization of the culture in general that imposes a rigid all good or all bad (and no redemption for those who ever fall into the all bad camp).

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    2. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
      bluebird of bitterness

      I hear you. My father was what I call a “benign racist.” His general opinion of black people was not flattering, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have wanted one for a son-in-law, but he was always polite and respectful to black people whenever he encountered them in real life. He was in management at a business where the management was all white and the labor force mostly black, and he always treated his black employees fairly. (I dare say he treated them better than he did his own family, but that’s another story….)

      Meanwhile, my mother, a descendant of slave owners, was antiracist long before it was cool. The only time I can recall being spanked for using bad language was when I was very young and I said the n-word. I didn’t even know what it meant; it was just something I’d heard someone say, and I made the mistake of repeating it when my mother was within earshot. Never made that mistake again.

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      1. bluebird of bitterness Avatar
        bluebird of bitterness

        Oops, sorry; must have accidentally hit the send button twice. Please delete the duplicate comment.

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  7. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “whine when they need to teach a new class, or even teach an extra session of the same class”

    To be honest I’m more liable to whine in the latter case… I can’t imagine teaching the same few courses over and over and over… I’m always changing the content of courses too because…. we live in a society (and it’s not static).

    Last year I had a new course that I couldn’t prepare for (that is, any preparation would have been a formality with no real connection to reality) I just had to see what would happen once it started and adapt. I don’t mind new things though I mind the idea that everything should be planned out (a cornerstone of the Bologna system now infecting Europe).

    But suddenly doing three sections of a class I’d only ever done one section of…. that was not fun just because the same thing three times in a week? Blech….

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    1. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “To be honest”

      above comment was meant for another thread… feel free to delete

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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