Pynchon-Tinasky

[Eric Rosenbloom]

Otto wrote:
> Anyway, being a native speaker of "the language of psychiatrists" I had my
> laughs reading the three letters and this is my favorite:
> 
> "RE: Mary Lowry's column in the March 13 AVA: the word she was wishing for,
> to describe the sudden strangeness of a normally familiar object or
> occurrence, would be VERFREMDUNG, pronounced fair-FREMT-oongk; there is a
> Greek & French word for it too, but she wanted it in the language of
> psychiatrists.
> 
> In his plays, Brecht (a dirty communist, we don't do him here in Mendocino)
> used what he called the verfremdungseffekt, to break the spell as it were, &
> remind the audience that what they are watching was not real. (Come to think
> of it, here in Mendocino we don't NEED Brecht.)"
> (March 20, 1985)

In another letter (I'm at work so I can't look up which one), Tinasky
provides a useful opposite of "schadenfreude": "gluckschmerz".

--
Eric R