Books Update: Nicholson Baker's Wild Talk

[Joel Katz]

the books sucks.  it should be a HOW-TO PRIMER on how to cap that mendacious 
cocksucker.

really love talking point #1, 'illiberal violence.'  it's because of 
well-meaning talk like that that i joined the The Party of the Black Night 
of Triumph.

and #3:  i'm sure 'categorical moral revulsion' was high up on that 
cocksucker's list as he swept away the pleas from the vatican and--holy 
fucking christ--pat robertson, himself, and fried that born-again woman in 
texas.


>From: "Himself" <himself at richardryan.com>
>To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>, "Pynchon Liste" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: RE: Books Update: Nicholson Baker's Wild Talk
>Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 15:12:49 -0400
>
>I for one would feel terrible if Bush were shot.  The reasons are over
>determined, but include:
>
>1.  The sense that political violence is almost always illiberal, and
>antithetical to the variety of pragamatic liberalism that I espouse;
>
>2.  The sense that it would represent a failure of American democracy, 
>which
>in its finest moments deserves being supported and embraced -- I fully
>expect Kerry-Edwards to trounce Bush-Cheney, and if Bush were murdered I
>would be deprived of an immense and very patriotic satisfaction;
>
>3.  The simple moral (categorical) revulsion we should always feel at the
>violent death of another human being.
>
>Those things said, it sounds as though Wieseltier is reviewing the opinions
>of characters in the book (a plebian falacy if there ever was one).  I'd
>like to look at the book itself and L.W's full review before I form a
>judgment of either.
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org]On
>Behalf Of Otto
>Sent: Friday, August 06, 2004 11:00 PM
>To: Pynchon Liste
>Subject: Fw: Books Update: Nicholson Baker's Wild Talk
>
>
> >
> > Books Update from NYTimes.com
> > Friday, August 6, 2004
> > -------------------------------
> >
> > Leon Wieseltier: Nicholson Baker's Wild Talk
> >
>  "Checkpoint" by Nicholson Baker
>
>"Yet the discussion of Bush-hatred, and of Baker's book, cannot be 
>concluded
>with a polite absolution. For the virulence that calls itself critical
>thinking, the merry diabolization of other opinions and the other people 
>who
>hold them, the confusion of rightness with righteousness, the preference 
>for
>aspersion to argument, the view that the strongest statement is the truest
>statement -- these deformations of political discourse now thrive in the
>houses of liberalism too. The radicalism of the right has hectored into
>being a radicalism of the left. The Bush-loving mob is being met with a
>Bush-hating mob. Liberals are forgetting why liberals are not radicals. 
>When
>Jay demands to know how Ben would feel if Bush were killed -- ''won't part
>of you think, He's got it coming to him? Huh?'' -- the most that 
>center-left
>Ben can muster in the way of principle is this: ''I don't -- I'm not -- I
>can't predict how I would react if the president were actually shot,''
>followed by some sensitive mutterings about ''the simple sight of any human
>being stilled.'' American liberalism, in sum, may be losing its head."
>
>Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of The New Republic
>
> > =====================
> >
>
>Half of the review isn't about the novel!
>
>Otto
>

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