No, he waded into the muck and wrestled and laughed and cried with us. The commenters-dubbed the Horde by our host and Khan-were special to me, distinct online personalities that I came to know and enjoy, all the more so because the Khan did not hold himself aloof or apart from his people. Hauser, Sandy Young (Corkingiron), Baiskeli, petefrombaltimore, exitr, JBColo, Craig, and on and on. I still remember many of those avatars with great fondness: Emily L. Discussing the topics he raised, from the continued salience of Spider-Man to the foofaraw of Ron Paul to the immensity of the first black president, a community formed. Comment threads were opened and a torrent commenced.
His openness and inquisitiveness attracted me, and dozens more like me. Other than his Twitter stream, I think it’s fair to say I haven’t missed something Coates has written since. Coates has the ability to string words together to form passages that make other lovers of language throw their hands up in despair.Ī mild despair-and, if I’m honest, something of a fanboy-ish obsession-were born, and I demanded constant sustenance in the form of blog posts or articles. Since that day in 2008, rarely a day went by that I didn’t navigate back to Coates’s page, enamored as I was-and largely still am-with the wordplay of the man I consider the finest prose writer working in the American tongue. Was there a link to follow? Why, yes there was! And follow it I did, to The Atlantic’s collection of bloggers, and I never turned back. Mere happenstance brought me to Ta-Nehisi Coates’ virtual door: A quoted paragraph at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish arrested my eye.
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