News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn - Gawker Comments

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Cthulhah Bankhead — Thu, 22 May 2008 19:05:30 EDT

Verlyn Klinkenborg is a dude? I've been amused by the name for ages, but assumed it was female.

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Saxon 212 — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:16:02 EDT

Is he talking about upstate?I've been there and it really sucks even if you describe it in bad poetry.
PS poetry is always embarrassing.

Saxon 212

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

SheWalkedWithAZombie — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:52:04 EDT

@BeRightBack: Precisely. It's not about small town country living unless there's some news about a meth lab explosion.

And wedding announcements for pregnant 16 year old brides whose moms are 30 year olds: "The Breedins sent us a photograph from the special day showing six generations of their family together!" Do the math. It's scAAry.

SheWalkedWithAZombie

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

sippyiscrazy — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:36:18 EDT

What is an even more interesting critique of Verlyn's pastoral prose is that by focusing on the natural elements of his rural landscape, he diverts the attentions of urban readers away from their own home landscapes. How are we to convince urbanites that they too should care about the natural world when we continually reinforce the notion that the natural world is always "someplace else." Why work to keep the Hudson clean when the streams and tarns of Klinkenborg's upstate world remain pristine and untouched? Urban ecology is the topic which the Times really should be investigating, not such Thoreauvian celebrations of a world that is, to most of its readers, as exotic and far-away as the jungles of Madagascar.

sippyiscrazy

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

BeRightBack — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:08:38 EDT

@BeRightBack: OMFG. "Genteel," I mean. Is this worse than if I'd written "genital"?

BeRightBack

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

kitkatsplash — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:03:26 EDT

I went through a major Veryln phase. I think that I even once blogged about my obsession with him during college. I heart the idea of Verlyn libs

kitkatsplash

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

BeRightBack — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:56:23 EDT

@slackerina: Indeed. The annoying aspect of this guy's writing is not that it's about country living, it's that it's about gentile, romanticized, moneyed "country living." The problem isn't really the content but the smug, "this is what real life is all about" tone. Actual small towns and their newspapers (escpecially in the letters!) are more like Jim-Thompson-in-a-teapot studies in the politics of micropower and moonshine.

BeRightBack

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

slackerina — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:44:12 EDT

but, um, have you read the small town newspapers? there is some crazy-ass weird shit going down in rural america.

people always read the jail log first to see who got arrested. and then they move onto the news.

though i'm not saying there isn't some crap writing out there.

slackerina

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

SheWalkedWithAZombie — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:29:34 EDT

Inspired suggestion Hamilton.

This is the way I feel about most poetry that gets published. I call it the "Nice Life" genre.

The only way you can get away with writing in that genre is if you end with the line "I have wasted my life."

SheWalkedWithAZombie

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

TheHonJudgeSmails — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:38:10 EDT

@ragepotato: Awesome.

TheHonJudgeSmails

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

GORDONGARTRELLE — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:31:24 EDT

His New Year's Day piece was quite powerful. Sue me.

GORDONGARTRELLE

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

if_i_only_had_a_heart — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:28:30 EDT

also: the annoying implication that he owns, oh, 200 acres

if_i_only_had_a_heart

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Multiphasic — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:17:12 EDT

@MostlyHarmless: Ahh, ye small, uncorrupted hookers. Let us pontificate upon thee.

Multiphasic

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

RocketSurgeon — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:12:47 EDT

@Multiphasic: I just mad-libbed the second one and discovered how well it worked if you just replace every bird name with hooker. Great minds.

RocketSurgeon

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

RocketSurgeon — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:11:54 EDT

@Multiphasic: How do you think the hummingbird died?

RocketSurgeon

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Multiphasic — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:11:22 EDT

And I keep a downy woodpecker in the freezer too, right next to the dead hooker.

Multiphasic

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Multiphasic — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:10:04 EDT

@JohnQPublic: Hoping for it's own sake that the woodpecker's dead, too.

Multiphasic

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

ragepotato — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:05:16 EDT

I really enjoy his writing. But I also find Garrison Keillor to be too "edgy" and I am 106 years old.

ragepotato

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

if_i_only_had_a_heart — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:03:43 EDT

fucking a yes -- go watch the grass grow in the other 99.9 percent of the us

if_i_only_had_a_heart

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

MisterHippity — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:03:03 EDT

Viewed from the window of my drawing room, the undulating surface of my swimming pool dances and sparkles invitingly. But the diving board simply squats, mute and stupid, and I find the sheer thingness of this thing to be vexing. Like the ball-serving machine that crouches on my tennis court, it has no life absent human interaction. Without the presence of myself or my family — when, for example, we retire to the Hamptons — it is a dead thing, shorn of purpose.

MisterHippity

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

beppolina1 — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:37 EDT

Verlyn Libs!

This is a deeply contentious time to VERB. The NOUNS have torn off their NOUNS without fully melting their NOUN. What the PROPER NOUN promises, the SAME PROPER NOUN itself retracts. Unless you knew better, you'd hardly believe there was the readiness of NOUN to be found anywhere. The NOUN is PROGRESSIVE VERB, but undemonstratively, not in a way that really means anything.

beppolina1

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

winniemc — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:57:48 EDT

Why don't you just offer the time-honored gentleman's agreement: two loaded pistols, ten steps in opposite directions, and blam! Country-style.

winniemc

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Private Hangnail — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:57:26 EDT

I looked out my window and laid out before me was the flat wasteland of Queens and then I stepped in cat vomit. Fin.

Private Hangnail

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

JohnQPublic — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:55:50 EDT

"I keep a dead hummingbird and a downy woodpecker in a bag in the freezer."
Because tonight, it's my turn to cook.

JohnQPublic

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

BadUncle — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:54:59 EDT

As I wistfully gazed through the coin-operated window at Show World, my arms trembled.

BadUncle

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

JohnQPublic — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:52:43 EDT

As I gaze at the sheep in the meadow
I realize
Oh my God... now I remember
How I got this embarrassing itch.

JohnQPublic

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

mindbling — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:51:58 EDT

I dug up my canary five years after it kicked it. Death is very corrupting to small, dead birds.

mindbling

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

Jenniferhdaniel — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:50:27 EDT

So sayeth the city mouse to the country mouse:

"But really: America is absolutely packed with small-town country papers that reflect on the weather, and the seasons, and livestock with no real purpose, because that's all that is going on in much of America."

Oh, go spin your bowtie, slicker.

Jenniferhdaniel

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

flossy — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:46:05 EDT

Verily, like the summer storm that ravages the prairie, unrepentantly drenching the parched earth and its lowly inhabitants with a flood of awe-inspiring magnitude and munificent wetness, it seems the storied Clan of Wu-Tang is, indeed, nothing to fuck with. Tra la la, etc.

flossy

News, Nature, And New York City: A Plea To Verlyn

thwarted — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:45:53 EDT

Worse than Cary Tennis? Tra la.

thwarted