Word: skins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...country is old and proud. You finds dignity compressed in the ancient marble of a limbless torso; you gaze at the opaque eyes of a statue and know its vision penetrates eternity, and remember tales of heroes. There is suffering etched deep in the skin of an old woman's face. Even a child's eyes seem to recall the glory and struggle of centuries past. You ache to think that people so fiercely proud and persistent are being brutally trampled underfoot. For now the heels of marching boots crush a people against the hard earth of their fathers...
...lines. There's a pimp called Baboon who operates out of a Chinese flophouse and acts like a henchman for a Malay lumber dealer who tries to bribe a librarian to say the book he wants to borrow is a good one. A Salvation Army preacher (name unknown) whose skin is so thick "it bends anything you stick into it" lets a man spit in his face as a condition to a donation, and later shoots himself, uttering somebody else's last words. These people have the poetic, imaginative quality of other Brecht characters, but the fantasy Chicago of this...
Generally, the handicapped and those who drive them get no special consideration under state and local gas-rationing plans. They must wait in line like anyone else-a physical impossibility for some of the disabled who, because of fatigue and skin breakdowns, cannot sit in line for an hour or more-and buy gas only on odd-or even-numbered days, according to their license plate numbers. Nor can gas-station owners save fuel to sell to their handicapped customers; to do so is forbidden by a Federal Energy Office regulation that bans favoritism to regular customers, handicapped...
...short story came back from the editor with a letter full of praise, but saying that the characters were not clearly white or black. Would Hughes make them definitely Negro? The re-editing did not take long. Hughes simply inserted "black" in front of the word "man" and "Brown skin" in front of the girl's name and the story was accepted. "Just a plain story about human beings," as Hughes called it, was not acceptable from a black writer. But you have to accept Harlem in the Evening on Hughes's terms, as a story about human beings...
...dimension like sculpture. One can't avoid or escape reality on film, only distort it, so still pictures make dubious art by some people. Maybe this book will change their minds. It lets one see some beauty in a frame house where the wood slats are like ribs against skin. It lets one share a view that urges more than the registration of a frozen image, because the photo wasn't snapped just for the record, and because there's something curious about knowing it's a woman...