Re: RAT Re: Flanders

[leewochner@movingarts.org (Lee Wochner)]

All right, I admit it. I'm an uncultured nabob. Maybe I've just been
spending too much time with Dostoevsky, et al. Who is Flanders? I've been
enduring not getting this reference for oh, about 165 posts so far, but now
I've had enough.

Lee,
Flandless




At 4:22 PM 4/29/99, josh@whirl-i-gig.com wrote:
>Last night, after a reading I gave of some of my fiction, a
>twenty-something ultra-yuppy lawyer approached me.  This is what he said:
>
>"I want you to know that I had to leave the room halfway through your
>reading.  It was so...depressing--I mean, I thought I liked it until I
>thought about what you were saying, and then I was...I just don't want to
>hear about that stuff.  Why don't you write about happy stuff?"
>
>I thought about answering him by saying, "Because I'm not Flanders"
>Instead, I smiled ingratiatingly and asked him to elaborate; what
>specifically was so depressing?
>
>He couldn't really say.  What he did say was that the most disturbing thing
>about my reading was that I seemed to be happy to get this distressed
>response from him.
>
>And I have to admit that I was.
>
>As I left, he cornered me one more time.  He asked for my phone number.  He
>asked me if, given the right situation, I would be willing to put my work
>up for sale.
>
>I said yes.
>
>This made me happy as well.
>
>I'm sure he will remember my work.  And to me, that's what it is to be not
>a flanders.  A flanders is someone who's so actively trying to be
>inoffensive as to offend the seekers of wisdom--no matter how myopic and
>homerlike these seekers are.
>
>The world is not a happy place and acting like it is will not make it
>so--it'll just leave you less prepared for the stab in the back.
>
>Up with People kills more souls than it saves.
>
>Joshua Furst
>Self Centered Pit Bull

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