24 Quotes by Jess Row

What I was pointing to was that, yeah, blackness is a fiction; whiteness is a fiction. When we live according to these categories, we’re living within a fiction. Of course, it’s a fiction with very real consequences.

The only honest way to approach the question of whiteness and blackness is to start by accepting that these are arbitrary categories that were invented in the 17th and 18th century in order to justify imperialism and slavery. They’re categories intended for the enforcement of power. They were never intended to be psychologically satisfying in the way we want them to be.

It was one of the great pleasures of the age, to be safe and warm and dry - showered, deodorized, professionally clothed in espadrilles and a linen jacket, latte steaming up the radio display, taking in the world's troubles three minutes at a time. That was luxury.

Does it, does it—I'm flailing here—does it have a name? What you've done?If it had a name, he says, what would that change, exactly? Would it be more acceptable to you? Would it be a thing people do? Would it have a category unto itself?

Country’s friggin’ dying, man, you have to triage the motherfucker.

In the first couple of weeks there were big piles of trash outside every house. All the stuff you couldn’t find another use for and couldn’t compost. Yogurt cups, torn trash bags, dirty diapers, hair-spray cans, paper towels. Sometimes you’d see a pile that was as high as your waist. Nathan said it was a purge, a cleanse. But you could just as well say that who we were went out with the empties. We will never get our selves back.

In my study, there are stacks of papers to grade, books I should have read & reviewed months ago, but I have no concentration: the time slips through my fingers like water.

If it had a name, he says, what would that change, exactly? Would it be more acceptable to you? Would it be a thing people do? Would it have a category unto itself?

Though Marcus’ essay extends over 13 pages of small text, at its core is a very simple premise: Contemporary American fiction has lost its innovative edge and its interest in language as art, and Jonathan Franzen is largely, if not exclusively, to blame.