is it o.k. to be michael naumann?

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 ... yes, the radio show was o.k. (- & since that crucial moment i, too,  
 silently await the new work) ... 
 
 hanns zischler's outread from vineland and m&d was quite adequate. a great   
 voice! dark & clever. (he's also doing, so i was told, brilliant outreads of 
 gaddis.) 

 of ickstadt i would have liked to hear more. in a way he and the moderating 
 scheck were too polite. whom i really disliked was friedrich kittler. media  
 history, once more (- like i predicted here). rockets, computers &  
 "togetherness". not that it's all wrong. but we've heard that before, and  
 kittler still presents it like there hadn't been 80s & 90s. pomo rebellion,  
 institutionalized. boring & penetrative at the same time. i have to correct 
 myself: this is not "refreshing" anymore. and then, like our staatsminister für 
 kultur pointed out: "pynchon's novels cannot be understood adequately as  
 engineer prose". wo der mann recht hat, da hat er nun mal recht.

 what brings us to the question: is it o.k. to be michael naumann? first of all, 
 i'd like to say that i do appreciate the fact quite a bit that a german 
 minister can publicly express his joy about the high degree of pot smoking in 
 trp's novels. this wouldn't have been possible in the years of the kohl 
 government. & according to my perceiving naumann was also the only one who, 
 during his speaking, came once across those deep layerings in pynchon's prose  
 which were once called here by keith the "sub-sub-text". but then naumann 
 ruined the sudden sensitivity he had sailed into with his oh so tough-minded 
 urban irony: trying to tell us that thomas pynchon is only ironically playing  
 with the myths of mankind. if i were you, i wouldn't believe this ...

 in schlingensief's theatre revue "die berliner republik" michael naumann 
 appears, as a running gag, now & then saying: "i've been long enough to new 
 york city to know how things go!" in a way (- only in a way, of course) this 
 sez all about the public appearance of naumann. his narrow arrogance is really 
 a pain in the ass. no wonder somebody like this gets dissed when he mixes up 
 in public the abbreviations of the international monetary fund and the 
 international wrestling federation (- see "spiegel" 13/00: 309):   
 "ai-dabbeljuh-ef" (in germany the imf is known as "der internationale  
 währungsfond".) 

 two more of naumann's pynchon-anecdotes, then it'll be enough. both have to do 
 with presents, naumann gave to our man. when pynchon was given a prototype of  
 the sextant he could, at once, tell the manufacturer and the date of    
 production without looking it up. the second present naumann gave to trp was a 
 leica camera from the 30s. we are told that our man does not use it. i'm not so 
 sure about that ...




                              sitting right inside the soup: kai frederik