RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

14
Double talk
Radical Middle | 149
Tony Sutton gave me a rolling Stone article on Korea,
with a byline I didn’t know: PJ O’rourke.
This was a masterpiece, the kind of writing you’re sorry to
reach the end of, and immediately turn back and start again.
Writing like that is what floats my boat: I have to publish it. I
did publish it. I sent Rolling Stone a copy, with thanks and hopes
that they wouldn’t mind, and invited PJ to apply his beady eye
to the tip of africa.
Too late. He had already done so. His article appeared soon
after, and was a disappointment. He’d rounded up every cliché
in the book and presented them as features of his first-hand
experience. I’d relished O’rourke’s account of a place I didn’t
know. When I saw his account of a place I did know I smelled
truth and accuracy being subordinated to the need for a slick
phrase.
O’rourke described afrikaners as: “no-account people”. Say
that of armenians, Xhosas, bricklayers, Parisians, you’d get