Just realized something

Post #151,960 by drewk 4/20/04 4:00:49 PM Reply	Just realized something While writing a followup to silverlock I remembered something. When you first posted this and several people pointed out that the author was in fact traveling on a tourist visa, your response was basically, "Oh, that's not what I was talking about. I was mocking the customs agent for asking if his novels were fiction or non-fiction." If your point was that the customs agent didn't know what "novel" meant, how are you in any way vindicated that the customs department has decided his visa was valid? === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Post #151,992 by rcareaga 4/20/04 6:15:48 PM Reply	Why quote when you can paraphrase to your advantage? Beats me. It suits drewk's purpose to represent me as saying "Oh, that's not what I was talking about. I was mocking the customs agent for asking if his novels were fiction or non-fiction." What I actually posted in this connection was while many, many customs folk over the years have impressed me with their professionalism (which is seldom encouraged, usually ignored and occasionally punished by their masters) there's also a certain hard core of ignorant, officious, narrow sensibilities who revel in the inflexible exercise of the powers their offices bestow upon them—the worst sort of small-town cop mindset—and it was this side that was delectably on display when the question of whether McEwan was in the habit of writing fiction or nonfiction novels was posed. Incidentally, it was almost certainly a customs inspector, and not an agent who interrogated McEwan: the two are very different animals, and it's a tossup which class of employees is the more affronted (they're both exasperated) by being confused one for the other. For the rest, it is not a matter of my "vindication." Without having met the individual inspectors but with damn near thirty years' experience of the class behind me, I repeat that the aforementioned small-town cop mindset was well-limned in this vignette. But if you feel that our brave sentinels are insufficiently thuggish, I wish you the joy of the type on your next inbound passage. cordially, Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Post #152,074 by drewk 4/21/04 11:12:25 AM Reply	Okay, then, I'll quote [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=150302\|Post #150302] Although Truman Capote attempted to get the notion of the "nonfiction novel" accepted a generation ago, it never really caught on, and so for the inspector to put it the way he did would be akin to...oh, I don't know, perhaps to asking McEwan whether his laptop computer used integrated circuits or vacuum tubes. Particularly in view of my long professional association with this crew, it struck me as delightfully droll and all too characteristic of a certain subset of the class. [link\|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=150418\|Post #150418] The boxter had no difficulty in identifying the intent of my original post and followups: stated clearly that he knows the custom types upclose and personal and got a giggle over the Sgt Friday types dealing with an artist. I don't fault the inspectors, or any average citizen, for not knowing McEwan from McKuen\ufffdfor my own part I know the former largely from book reviews, having read just one of his novels\ufffdwhereas I do find their apparent lack of awareness that "novel" is a more specific term than "book" richly comic, and thought to share it with my droogies here. It's hard not to read into that the inference that denying entry was somehow related to not knowing that novels are fiction. That makes him one of the "hard core of ignorant, officious, narrow sensibilities who revel in the inflexible exercise of the powers their offices bestow upon them -- the worst sort of small-town cop mindset". But it turns out entry was denied because the inspector/agent believed that the honoraria qualified as salary, and McEwan should have had a work visa. And that is an issue I belive lawyers (and certain HR drones) would love to debate. === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.

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