Talk Stories by Jamaica Kincaid

me feel as if I am living in Chicago and not, say, Cleveland, but there it is. I love Chicago and would like to live there, but only for an hour. Some days, after watching the morning news, my head is filled with useless (to me) but interesting information about pigs. Some of the information, though, is good only for a day. Then, for half an hour, I watch Captain Kangaroo. I love Captain Kangaroo and have forgiven him for saying to Chastity Bono, when they were both guests on her parents’ television show, “Now, let me lay this on you, Chastity.” Surely a grown man, even if he is a children’s hero (perhaps because he is a children’s hero), shouldn’t talk like that.
    Then it is half past eight and no longer early morning in Manhattan, either.
    â€” October 17, 1977

Notes and Comment
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    We have a letter from an excitable young woman we know:
    I’ve just returned from a party given to celebrate the publication of a book, edited by Linda Rosen Obst, that is called The Sixties. The subtitle is “The Decade Remembered Now, By the People Who Lived It Then.” I took a look at it. It’s a great book—especially if you only look at the pictures. My favorite picture is one with Muhammad Ali holding Ringo Starr aloft in his arms as if he—Muhammad Ali—were a butcher and Ringo Starr were a leg of mutton. The other Beatles are in the picture, too. My favorite article, by Wavy Gravy, is on the Woodstock music festival. It made me glad I wasn’t there—particularly since I didn’t want to go. My favorite title for an article in the book is “Dylan Goes Electric.” To that I would like to say, “Yes, and thousands cheered.” But here’s the thing about the party for the book. It was held in a sort of high-toned discothèque called New York, New York. I heard many people say that this was a huge irony, because when
you think of what the sixties meant and what discothèques mean you reach the conclusion that the sixties and discothèques are horses of such different colors. But actually I thought that the people who gave the party (Random House) provided some nice sixties touches. For one thing, there was a full bar and you didn’t have to pay for any of the drinks you ordered. For another, there wasn’t anybody to take your coat and you had to plop it down in an alcove that was reserved for coats, so there were all these coats in an alcove and if you had a particular nice and favorite coat you just had to leave it and trust that no one would take it. I thought that the leave-it-and-trust part was very sixties. For another thing, they played “Purple Haze” at least once. In fact, they played many songs by groups from the sixties, but not many people danced to them. There were about three hundred people at the party, and I saw six people dancing to “Sympathy for the Devil.” When it was followed by “Love Is the Message,” a disco song by the MFSB Orchestra, the whole dance floor got very crowded. I also heard a group of people talking about Punk Rock and New Wave music, and they talked about it as if it were really important, but I couldn’t figure out if Punk Rock and New Wave were the same thing or two completely different things. Anyway, one man said he liked the energy in New Wave music, even though the politics of New Wave music was offensive. I am sure that in years to come he will write an article about New Wave music that has as stop-the-presses a title as “Dylan Goes Electric.” Later, a woman told me that all those people talking about Punk Rock and New Wave were
rock-and-roll critics. She said, “Do you know how Mick Jagger said that he didn’t want to be forty-five and singing ‘Satisfaction’? Well, worse than that is being forty-five and writing about Mick Jagger singing ‘Satisfaction.’” I laughed. That is the only funny thing I heard anyone say at