I have always enjoyed reading James Thurber.
I wonder how he'd do today.
Impolitic. And probably a little racist. He slips into "patter" when he puts words in the mouths of some of the maids the Thurber family had in Ohio, some of them Black.
Maybe something like this (a recitation Thurber mentions in his book "My Life and Hard Times."
Thurber says in his book (and much thanks to this blog for posting this bit so I didn't have to search it out on the bookshelf).
"Father was usually in bed by nine-thirty and up again by ten-thirty to protest bitterly against a Victrola record we three boys were in the habit of playing over and over, namely, "No News, or What Killed the Dog," a recitation by Nat Wills. The record had been played so many times that its grooves were deeply cut and the needle often kept revolving in the same groove, repeating over and over the same words. Thus: 'ate some burnt hoss flesh, ate some burnt hoss flesh, ate some burnt hoss flesh.' It was this reiteration that generally got father out of bed."
Do I want to pose the question: Is this use of patter racist?
Wills himself almost uses a Black patter, though he's in and out of it so much it's hard to tell. It might be the spelling used in the text here that influences the ear.
Arthur C. Clarke mentions such patter in his book "Imperial Earth," but it's mentioned as a passing joke that the Earth is so post-racist it was looked on as a linguistic anomaly to be enjoyed by an academic playing a role.
We are not post-racist. So the patter's use is a no-go.
But some kind of elocution is called for in the piece, or you get something like this:
This performance is good. But rather dull.
Now, if the farm hand were to have, say, a cracker accent, or rube or hick accent, probably no problem. And that in of itself might be a little racist too.
No one has to cancel Wills or Thurber these days as nobody outside of academics or old-timey aficionados are likely to be familiar with them. Not that they wouldn't try, of course.
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