Homage and Imposture

[jbor]

From: David Simpson <dsimpson at condor.depaul.edu> 

>  While reading
> Rushdie's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" (a very ingenious, droll,
> satirical novel about politics and pop culture in the rock 'n roll
> era--and a book, incidentally, which Pynchon lovers are almost sure to
> enjoy), I came across the following exchange, said to take place in some
> "auction rooms in San Narciso, Calif." (p 400-401):
>
> "So you're here for what, Yul demands . . . .
>
> First let me tell you why you're here, says Mull. Turns out you're
> interested in conspiracies, underground organizations, militias, the
> whole right-wing paranoid America thing. Who knows why. You're here to
> bid for the memorabilia of some defunct immigrant cabal, used to go
> around writing DEATH on people's walls. Don't Ever Antagonize The Horn.
> They had a trumpet logo. Nice."
>
snip

As with everything there are degrees. Nods to a(nother) master such as
Rushdie's here and, say, Gibson's in *Neuromancer* (or Pynchon's in
*Vineland* to those "geniuses with wood who could build you anything from a
bowling alley to a Carpenter Gothic outhouse" i.e. Gaddis) are one thing;
even the sorts of stylistic and thematic emulation which DeLillo, Foster
Wallace, Neal Stephenson, Barry Westburg, Larry Daw and the like go in for
have their appeal; but there is something quite sad -- pathological even --
when apparently intelligent people overtly *pretend to be* someone else as,
say, that Wanda Tinasky character for example. Quite quite sad.

best