from the gallery of jerks

I’ll adopt the word “jerks” to replace the earlier word, which required semi-censored spelling. Some members of my audience are less profane in speech than others, and I want to keep things comfortable for everyone.

Here’s an entry for the gallery of jerks, without a name of course.

Jerk trait #1: He would often criticize books while holding them. There was usually a sneer on his lips. He would turn the book over, sarcastically reading the blurbs, asking how they could be so ridiculous as to heap such abundant praise on a book this mediocre. He would then toss the book contemptuously toward the center of the table with a thump, like a mafia don rejecting the $200,000 cash offer for a piece of the garbage contract.

Jerk trait #2: When I was then invited to his home, he made a point of dragging one of my own books off the shelf, and giving it the same little petty toss onto the center of a wooden table. He then raised his voice aggressively and kept it at that level for 5 or 6 minutes for no evident reason, except to continue the “I am boss here” theme. But in fact he’s just a fairly dull, mainstream, utterly replaceable Heidegger/phenomenology person, and if you ever hear of him it will be miraculous.

He then also criticized one of my prefaces, not because he dislikes it, but because “certain people” might dislike it. In other words, make a criticism, but saddle anonymous others with the responsibility for it.

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Another entry from the gallery of jerks…

Jerk trait: He must always control every conversation in which he participates. Generally this entails physical control. One thing he does is make provocative statements while leaving the room, meaning that you can’t respond without jogging after him to do so, which would look ridiculous. Another thing he does is that if you say something that surprises him, he immediately gets up and moves for no reason, thereby forcing you to follow him to the next room and restoring control of the conversation to himself. Yet another thing he does is repeats negative things that others said about you (a classic trick from the gallery of jerks) thereby getting himself off the hook while still delivering the payload. Unfortunately, he smirks while doing this, thereby showing his true colors.