2015.09.29 拓展边界的天才

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The Genius of Stretching Boundaries
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s MacArthur Fellowship is a recognition of many things—but perhaps most of all, his refusal to accept arbitrary limits.

By Yoni Appelbaum

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SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
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In November of 2009, more than five years before I joined The Atlantic, I got an unusual request. I’d been going back and forth for more than a year with an Atlantic blogger, down in his comments section. “Mind shooting me an e-mail?” he asked.

That’s how I came to know Ta-Nehisi Coates. He was working on an essay on Detroit at the time. He had guessed, correctly, that I was an academic. (I’m still not sure what gave me away—wooden prose, or excess verbosity?) And he was wondering if I could answer a few questions.

He’s never stopped asking questions. Over the years, I’ve been lucky to call him my friend, and, more recently, my colleague. And with the news that he’s been named a MacArthur Fellow, I can now call him something else—a genius.


But genius is a peculiar thing. The MacArthur Foundation says it gives the grants to those who display “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.” There is no question of Ta-Nehisi’s merit as a writer—his latest book proved an instant bestseller and sparked ongoing public debate. He made himself one of the blogosphere’s most distinctive voices. He’s stitched together a remarkable résumé as a journalist, punctuated by his stories for The Atlantic on Obama, reparations, and incarceration.

But perhaps his real genius lies in indulging his hunger for knowledge. At first, I chalked this up to remarkable humility. If there was a book he hadn’t read or a concept he hadn’t mastered, he simply said so—and then asked to have it explained. That’s rare in life, and rarer still among writers with public profiles, who more often assume a pose of studied omniscience.

In time, I came to understand it less as self-denial than as a kind of intellectual greed. He wanted to know. And if that meant rendering himself vulnerable, confessing ignorance, opening himself to abuse, listening more than talking, or even wading through his own blog’s comments section—well, it was not too high a price to pay for knowledge.

And he’s insisted that his readers be similarly open to considering insights, whatever their origins. He plucked the term at the center of his latest cover story from Dungeons & Dragons, titles posts with quotes from Megatron and Wu-Tang, and for his next act, will give us a year in the life of T’Challa.


As this mixing of high and low suggests, he has never listened when told what he cannot do. He paid no heed to critics crying that reparations are impossible and mass incarceration irreversible, or that comics and hip-hop shouldn’t be taken seriously. Once, told by some readers that “conversate” isn’t a word, he went and found the editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. “Of course it’s a word,” the editor said. “The question is, is it acceptable.”

Stretching the boundaries of the acceptable—there’s a kind of genius in that.

Yoni Appelbaum is a deputy editor at The Atlantic.



拓展边界的天才
Ta-Nehisi Coates获得麦克阿瑟奖是对许多事情的认可，但也许最重要的是，他拒绝接受任意的限制。

作者：尤尼-阿佩尔鲍姆

维基媒体
2015年9月29日
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2009年11月，在我加入《大西洋》的五年多前，我收到了一个不寻常的请求。我和一位《大西洋》杂志的博主在他的评论区来来回回地讨论了一年多的时间。他问："介意给我发个电子邮件吗？"。

这就是我认识Ta-Nehisi Coates的原因。当时，他正在写一篇关于底特律的文章。他猜对了，我是个学者。(我仍然不确定是什么泄露了我的身份--木讷的散文，还是多余的言语？）他想知道我是否能回答几个问题。

他从来没有停止过问问题。多年来，我很幸运地称他为我的朋友，最近又称他为我的同事。随着他被任命为麦克阿瑟研究员的消息传来，我现在可以称他为别的东西--天才。


但是，天才是一种奇特的东西。麦克阿瑟基金会说，它把补助金给那些 "在其创造性追求中表现出非凡的原创性和奉献精神 "的人。Ta-Nehisi作为作家的优点是毋庸置疑的--他的新书被证明是立即畅销的，并引发了持续的公众辩论。他使自己成为博客圈中最独特的声音之一。作为一名记者，他有一份出色的履历，他为《大西洋月刊》撰写的关于奥巴马、赔偿和监禁的故事为他加分不少。

但也许他真正的天才在于放纵自己对知识的渴望。起初，我把这归结为非凡的谦逊。如果有一本他没有读过的书或一个他没有掌握的概念，他只是说了出来，然后要求解释。这在生活中是很少见的，在有公众形象的作家中更是少见，他们往往摆出一副研究过的全知全能的样子。

随着时间的推移，我开始理解这与其说是自我否定，不如说是一种智力上的贪婪。他想知道。如果这意味着要让自己变得脆弱，承认无知，让自己遭受谩骂，多听多说，甚至涉足他自己博客的评论区--那么，为知识付出的代价并不高。

他坚持认为，他的读者也应同样开放地考虑各种见解，无论其来源如何。他从《龙与地下城》（Dungeons & Dragons）的最新封面故事中摘取了这个术语，用威震天和武当的名言作为文章的标题，而在他的下一个行动中，他将为我们讲述T'Challa的一年生活。


正如这种高与低的混合所表明的那样，当有人告诉他不能做什么时，他从来没有听过。他不理会批评家喊着赔偿是不可能的，大规模监禁是不可逆转的，也不理会漫画和嘻哈不应该被认真对待。有一次，一些读者告诉他，"conversate "不是一个词，他就去找《牛津英语词典》的主编。"这当然是一个词，"编辑说。"问题是，它是否可以接受。"

延伸可接受的界限--这里面有一种天才的感觉。

Yoni Appelbaum是《大西洋》杂志的副编辑。