Speaking of DeLillo...

[davemarc]

An article by Richard Bernstein in today's NYT sez that Tuesday night
DeLillo'll be one among numerous people at an NYPL (that's New York Public
Library, foax) reading of Wei Jingsheng's The Courage to Stand Alone:
Letters From Prison and Other Writings.  Also present will be E. L.
Doctorow, Arthur Miller, David Henry Hwang, Liu Qing, and Liu Binyan.

Bernstein sounds remarkably like Pynchon in this paragraph:

"The main feature of [Wei Jingsheng's] writing is not eloquence or passion
but rather calmness and precision.  His letters and essays are marked by a
steadfast appeal to a sort of Lockean rationality spiced here and there by
bursts of anger and sarcasm against the Chinese leaders who, in Mr. Wei's
opinion, refused to get straight the elementary distinction between truth
and power."

Here's an excerpt from a letter Wei Jingsheng wrote to Deng Xiaoping from
prison on June 15, 1989:

"So, now that you've successfully carried out a military coup to deal with
a group of unarmed and politically inexperienced students and citizens, how
do you feel?...I've long known that you are precisely the kind of idiot to
do something foolish like this, just as you've long known that I am
precisely the kind of idiot who will remain stubborn to the end and take
blows with his head up.  We know each other well; probably better than
anyone can imagine.  It's just that we have an intimate mutual disgust that
probably also exceeds anyone's imagination."

Talk about flaming....

davemarc