Tuesday, August 02, 2005
NJ, BTW
In a feature in today's NYT, about the poet August Kleinzahler, I came across this aside:
"The New Jersey character - at least this part of Jersey - is straightforward, plainspoken to the point of bluntness, though not at all unfriendly," he wrote in a recent essay. "The humor is deadpan, ironical, playfully depreciating. Affectation is quickly and viscerally registered. It's a beer-and-a-bump kind of place. There's a swagger, a bluff air of menace that many of the males carry."The swagger/bluff air of menace business might apply in the northern part of the state, Sopranos country; the rest of it is pretty fair about the southern as well.
In San Francisco, Mr. Kleinzahler once gave a panhandler a dollar. "Thanks, Jersey," the man said.
"How did you know I was from Jersey?" Mr. Kleinzahler asked.
"Are you kidding?" the man asked.
