VLVL "the Movement"

[MalignD at aol.com]

> <<E.laborate, please.  Thanks ...>>
> 
I assume you're asking after "timidity" and "in many ways."   

I mean in part his Japanese interview saying he's afraid to ride the subway 
(I think that's where he said it).   I'd call that a somewhat bizarre 
overreaction, as would the millions who continue to ride the NY subway, myself 
included.

I also mean timidity to speak out.   The Japan interview (if it is real) is 
his only public response to September 11.   This from someone who is 
short-listed yearly for the Nobel; who many feel is America's greatest novelist; who can 
have any number of public venues, e.g., the NY Times OpEd page, for the 
asking, but who does and says nothing, unless one buys into the Orwell intro as his 
statement; but even that ...   Does he have a responsibility to do so?   I 
think that's debatable.   Is it disappointing that he hasn't done so?   
Certainly.

I think also that he's become timid aesthetically.   GR scorched the ground.  
 GR is why we're here talking, no?   VL is a triviality and M&D might have 
seemed clever thirty years ago, around the time that the Sotweed Factor was 
clever and new, but a faux-historical, self-consciously quaint novel from the 
author of GR at the time it was published is a very timid, disappointing effort.

You may not agree, but that's what I meant.


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