I loved this- funny, cruel, and dead-on. And Rhode Island is as much of a character as librarian Dorcas or her blowsy twin Abigail.
"Rhode Island natives, including those born overseas, are under ordinary circumstances so shy and mistrustful around people they don't know as to seem almost deranged. They never look a stranger in the eye, or if they do, they unfocus their own eyes. I don't mean a stranger you pass in the street, I mean a stranger who's lived next door to you for twenty-fine years, or a stranger you ask directions from or hand his dropped wallet to or knock down with your car.
This probably has something to do with the tradition of overcrowding, of living cheek by jowl for two hundred years. Whatever the cause, we have no stage presence at all, no Southern theatrics, Midwestern irony, Western hyperbole, New York cynicism. We don't even have the famous and overrated Maine understatement. We have instead an Unfortunate Manner.
We literally don't know how to act. We have no roles to play. We are the nakedest of Americans..."
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