How long will Vance have to suffer the misappropriation of his heritage? Barack Obama is campaigning for your vote, Vance. Now that’s retail politics, folks.
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36 comments
September 8, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Vance Maverick
This is awesome. Joining EotAW was only a stepping-stone to glory.
Just in case, here’s the link again for the NPR segment on the word, in which they interviewed my father. (Also some guy who used to write political speeches.)
September 8, 2008 at 3:16 pm
eric
Also some guy who used to write political speeches.
But there is no conservative media bias!
September 8, 2008 at 3:30 pm
zunguzungu
Wow, I heard that. I thought it was charming when he said he was pretty much a conformist who accepted society’s judgments (I paraphrase).
September 8, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Vance Maverick
Yeah, Dad called himself a “bad conformist”. I suppose that could have been like Philip Marlowe saying, “I test high on insubordination”, but zz is probably right that he was disavowing the flattering label.
September 8, 2008 at 3:41 pm
ari
Does this mean we can monetize the blog? Or should we just sell Vance?
September 8, 2008 at 3:43 pm
zunguzungu
I took it to be a disinclination to play the game that people like McCain love to play; ooh look at me! I’m so independent minded! It’s so incredibly juvenile, in a very particular (and annoying) way, and a kind of vanity that illustrates exactly how dependent the person actually is on the judgments of others.
Which is to say: there’s something quite maverick about refusing to call oneself a maverick.
September 8, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Sam-I-am
Hey, I just listened to the NPR Maverick podcast, and I sat down at the computer to look up the link, and stopped by my latest favorite blog to find this.
The world gets smaller and smaller, the more obsessive I get.
September 8, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Vance Maverick
Whoa, looking at the top of that NPR link, I see that the angry letters by my Texas relatives to correct the record have actually paid off. I’m not sure what it means to call Samuel Maverick a “progressive Democrat”, though. He voted against secession, but he owned slaves, and he sent his sons to fight for the Confederacy…
September 8, 2008 at 3:50 pm
SEK
Wait, did Chandler really say that, Vance? I found this, which would seem to indicate so, but I can’t find anything else. I only ask because if he did, that would be all kinds of awesome.
September 8, 2008 at 3:54 pm
SEK
Also, the OED entry on “maverick” is hilarious:
But only if you, like me, think it’s referring to a particular unmarked log.
September 8, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Vance Maverick
Yes. It’s in The Big Sleep. According to Google Snippet View, it’s
– Marlowe, presumably to the General.
September 8, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Gene O'Grady
Chapter 2, to General Sternwood. Right after he says he’s unmarried because he doesn’t like policemen’s wives.
September 8, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Jason B
I’m not generally one for genre fiction–especially detective stuff–but Chandler is pretty much awesome.
September 8, 2008 at 5:02 pm
urbino
I’d like to cosponsor that remark.
September 8, 2008 at 5:07 pm
zunguzungu
thirdsies.
September 8, 2008 at 5:08 pm
ari
Groupthink. Just appalling.
September 8, 2008 at 5:09 pm
eric
Also, check out all the brainiacs hating on genre fiction.
September 8, 2008 at 5:10 pm
ben
Fuckin’ brainiacs.
September 8, 2008 at 5:14 pm
zunguzungu
I was swayed by their rhetorical gifts. But now that the genre-hating arugula elitists who hate america have been unmasked for what they are, I’m ready to think for myself. Just let me know what to think, okay?
September 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm
zunguzungu
genre: I was for it before I was against it.
September 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Vance Maverick
Comity! (though Hammett is even more awesome. Say, wasn’t he out in the American West sometime? Serving in the Aleutians, or maybe drinking?)
September 8, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Tiny Hermaphrodite
AFAIK he volunteered in WW2 and served in the Pacific Theatre.
September 8, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Tiny Hermaphrodite
Yep, served in the Aleutians, edited an army newspaper and presumably didn’t stop drinking.
September 8, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Vance Maverick
Reporting to the Aleutians would be a hell of a time to stop….
September 8, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Gene O'Grady
Hammett went from Maryland to San Francisco. Sort of the Nancy Pelosi of his era, I guess. Was still sort of a local celebrity when I was kid — Herb Caen famously questioned whether he and the loathsome Lillian Hellman were actually an item on the grounds that no one had ever seen them together. I believe one of Hammett’s children still lives in Santa Rosa or some place in that area.
There’s a car chase from San Francisco to Sacramento in an early Hammett story that I have always considered the most important literary reference to Davis.
September 8, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Vance Maverick
SF has always been a city people moved to, and from. I’ve lived here since ’91, and it took many years before I got to know any natives. Similarly, my maternal grandfather was born in Washington State in 1900, grew up in SF, graduated from Lowell, went off to college and never came back.
September 8, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Ben Alpers
I guess that whole Aleutian/WWII Pacific Theater connection makes Sarah Palin practically a Japan expert, too. Hatin’ on her is like hatin’ on Ruth Benedict!
Or should we just sell Vance?
So your true feelings about slavery finally come out! Skydog was right!!!
September 8, 2008 at 6:54 pm
Gene O'Grady
I’m not quite a native (my parents were married in SF but I was born where my father was in law school), but I was privileged to know some natives when I was growing up. Foremost among them were the childless older couple who were honored Christmas guests from 1951 to 1999. Wife social worker, husband worked for APL — “I didn’t really have a job, I had a position.”
Plus the guy I met at the opera house looking at the picture of Claudia Muzio from the original opening night who shared his memories of the performance.
Plus a lot of the Italian-Americans one meets have been there for several generations and have fascinating memories.
September 8, 2008 at 7:01 pm
ari
the most important literary reference to Davis
A high bar indeed.
September 8, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Gene O'Grady
They have bars in Davis? I thought it was a dry town.
September 8, 2008 at 9:03 pm
eric
Why do you hate Davis so, Gene?
September 9, 2008 at 12:13 am
andrew
though Hammett is even more awesome
I wouldn’t go that far.
September 9, 2008 at 8:32 am
Gene O'Grady
Thanks to Andrew for expressing the view I’m usually embarrassed to express.
And I don’t hate Davis, I’ve just hardly ever been there, except to stop in the Amtrak station. I think the last time was my brother’s graduation in 1976. Although I did drive past it when I was lost in February and said, “Oh, so this is the Davis I’ve heard so much about.” I hear it’s a nice place.
The really funny thing is that when I started graduate at Stanford the town really was still dry.
September 9, 2008 at 8:59 am
Vance Maverick
I think the Dashiellites and Raymondines can coexist without mutual excommunication.
September 9, 2008 at 9:12 am
Ahistoricality
SF has always been a city people moved to, and from.
As opposed to those towns people just leave, and the villages people go to die….
September 9, 2008 at 9:14 am
Vance Maverick
Right, or as opposed to the conurbations where people grow up and stay.