The New Tragic Narrative

[Jasper Fidget]

This quote is actually from MAO II (156-157), and the elipses are there
because the full quote is a conversation with another character.

This is kind of--something.  I had forgotten what the cover of _Underworld_
looked like: http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/sec5/wtcdelillo.html

Jasper Fidget

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 2:36 AM
Subject: The New Tragic Narrative


> Can't recall if this has come up already, but, from
> Don DeLillo, Underworld (New York: Simon & Schuster,
> 1997) ...
>
> "There's a curious knot that binds novelists and
> terrorists ... Years ago I used to think it was
> possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the
> culture.  Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that
> territory.  They make raids on human consciousness.
> What writers used to do before we were all
> incorporated ... What terrorists gain, novelists lose.
>  The degree to which they influence mass consciousness
> is the extent of our decline as shapers of sensibility
> and thought.  The danger they represent equals our own
> failure to be dangerous ... Beckett is the last writer
> to shape the way we think and see.  After him, the
> major work involves midair explosions and crumbled
> buildings.  This is the new tragic narrative."
>
> Cited in Tony Tanner, The American Mystery (New York:
> Cambridge UP, 2000), Ch. 11, "Don DeLillo and 'The
> American Mystery': Underworld," pp. 201-21.  I don't
> have DeLillo's novel handy, and Tanner (maddingly)
> provides no pagination, so not only do I not know the
> page number(s) here, I don't even know whose ellipses
> those are.  The following chapter, by the way, is on
> Mason & Dixon ("'The Rubbish-Tip for Subjunctive
> Hopes,'" pp. 222-38) ...
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals.
> http://personals.yahoo.com
>
>