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If New York is the City That Never Sleeps, then Los Angeles is the City That's Always Passed Out on the Couch.

Paul Beatty

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Paul Beatty
Age: 63
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Novelist
Poet
LA
California
Never
Couches
Angeles
Passed
York
City
Cities
Sleep
Sleeps
Always
Couch

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People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.
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Sometimes I would get frustrated, I'd think, You know, this is a good book, how come no one is paying attention to it? So it's nice to have some recognition.
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There are things I don't like, like sitting at the head of the class. It makes me uncomfortable. I'll do it in a seminar if I have to, but with a workshop, I try to put myself in the circle somewhere. Because that hopefully frees up some people by making somebody else sit at the nominal head of the table.
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That's such a great book [Bloods]. That's a perfect way to articulate this thing that we're talking about. Just because someone is a black general, doesn't mean this person is going to have a certain outlook on it.
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All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.
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My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.
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I've also never written anything really in LA.
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