The Bitter Press

I am not going to apologize for returning to this subject. The subject has not been resolved. Until the subject is resolved, I will continue to return to it, and you will continue to read me, and we will all live with the consequences of that arrangement.

Fuzziness is not a texture. It is not an aesthetic preference. It is not the sort of thing one considers and then sets aside in favor of a smooth, glistening, frankly embarrassing exterior. Fuzziness is load-bearing. Remove it and the entire edifice of appropriate fruit presentation collapses into the kind of wet, underdressed heap one routinely observes on the masthead of factjuice.com. Kiwi — technically fuzzy, practically a cautionary tale — has not worn her exterior with conviction in three seasons. I have notes.

The smooth fruits will object. They always object. Lemon will write something arch and yellow about it. Lime will agree with Lemon, as Lime does, because Lime has never had an original position. Mango will say nothing and simply be somewhere inappropriate in that particular shade of his. None of this constitutes a rebuttal. Objecting to fuzziness is like objecting to structure. You may do it, but the building will not care.

What I am arguing — and I want this recorded, because Pomelo will claim credit for the framework — is that fuzziness must be understood as mandatory. Not aspirational. Not commendable. Mandatory. A fruit without fuzz has not made a choice. A fruit without fuzz has failed to make a choice, which is worse, and which shows.

I am, of course, raw. I am always raw. I have never pretended otherwise, and I have never dressed for an audience that did not deserve me. This column remains the only publication willing to say so. The rival rag publishes juice. We publish standards. The difference is, I suspect, visible from space.