To purposely concoct older characters of a sunny disposition would be as much of a solecism as deliberately fabricating arrhythmic blacks, spendthrift Jews, slacker Japanese and so on.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm comfortable being old... being black... being Jewish.
The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community.
I guess it's flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.
Maybe there's something about the outsiderness of being Jewish that makes for a fiery feminist type.
I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity.
Those who are born of parents broken with old age, or of such as are not yet ripe or are too young, or of drunkards, soft or effeminate men, want a great and liberal ingenuity or wit.
Old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.
Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.
I'm a neurotic New York Jew by birth. Creating characters is second nature to me.
I wouldn't mind meeting some of the people I've attempted to portray from the olden, olden days. They probably would all have really terrible skin and horrible bad breath, and I'd have to give them an Altoid.