January 23, 2015

***Received comments:

***1/23 al_zorra: "Pretending things are not what they are / were, destroys all sorts of integrits, and makes literature study irrelevant because one is studying phony content."

Further in the NYTimes piece: the word "rigger" was annotated, giving its meaning and other information about riggers.

The text has since been returned to what Faulkner wrote, including use of a similar word which begins with n.

***1/23 don_fitch: "I was a bit vexed by your assertion about non-native-French-speakers in France... until I realized that you'd said "cities". I suppose there are still plenty of villages and towns that have few or no Tunisian, Turkish, British, or other immigrants.

"Mind you, West Covina (here in California, mostly south of Covina) might possibly have a minority of native-English-speakers by now. In the Best Buy computer store, the other day, I was impressed by the child-like Enthusiasm displayed by four stocky Asian guys in their late 20s (I'd guess) as they played with various computer stuff. The were marvelously tattooed (in both area & quality) and each had at least one finger-joint missing. I was tempted to go over and ask them whether they were Yazuka [sic] (Japanese Mafia, approximately) or Seriously Dedicated Actors, but decided against it because actors can get dangerously temperamental."

1/23 thnidu: "Yikes.

"(Yakuza, not Yazuka. Doesn't rhyme with ;bazooka'; closer to "J'accuse".)"