"This Day In P-List History"

[s~Z]

From: ckaratnytsky@[omitted]
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 11:34:31 -0400
Subject: exactly like
To: pynchon-l@[omitted]


     Just so you all know what's going on in other worlds, let me tell
     you what's been posted lately on some of my other lists:

     On the Joyce list, we've had posts about the Illuminati, about
     harmonicas and mouth harps, about Stephen Dedalus's bad teeth, and one
     really gratifying post by the great Donald Theall on automobiles in
     Joyce in which he footnotes COL49.  (Cool!)

     Then, over on H-Film, we've got this:

     >For the past few years, the dominant Hollywood aesthetic seemed to be
     >the thrill ride. While Hollywood continues to make action films that
     >conform to the thrill ride model, the popular attraction of this
     >genre seems to have ebbed.  I asked George Marcus, the Rice
     >University anthropologist, what he thought might replace the thrill
     >ride.  His answer: conspiracy.  By this he didn't simply mean the
     >return to film noir (or the rather simplistic kinds of conspiracies
     >propounded in films like "JFK" or "Conspiracy Theory"), but rather a
     >shift to a new aesthetic best exemplified by the fiction of Don
     >DeLillo.  In works like Libra, DeLillo is interested in the process
     >by which individuals construct meaning out of a complex series of
     >ambiguous and seemingly random facts.
     [snippage]

     With all due respect to Mr. D., I think we should send a posse over to
     George Marcus to learn him a few things, don't you?  Invoke conspiracy
     and leave out TRP?!  Shocked and appalled I am, yessiree.

     Oh:  Thanks to David Casseres for clarifying the source of the
     Rushdie interview.  It's wonderful!  Picked it up yesterday.  About
     mtg Pynch for the first time, Rushdie says, "And I must say the thing
     that was deeply pleasurable and comfortable was that he was exactly
     like Thomas Pynchon.  You know what I mean?"  Yeaaaah.  (I had my
     first dream about Pynch recently, in which I ran into him after voting
     for Ruth Messinger for mayor.  Comfortably exasperated, he greeted me
     with, "Oh!  You!"  Don't remember much more, except that *he*
     recognized wide-eyed me.  Yes sir!)

     The Nobel for Literature will be announced tomorrow, 1PM, EST.  Their
     page can be found at

     www.nobel.se

     Chris, pushed up the sleeve of her fur coat and said, "Get me a beer."