TPPM Barthelme: "Barthelme's Politics"

[Dave Monroe]

   "Trying to describe Barthelme's politics is as
dodgy as trying to label his work, but Watergate sure
did get him revved up. Nixon by then had already
mutated into a desperate and impersonal force, no
longer your traditionally human-type President, but
now some faceless subgod of folly. Barthelme, perhaps
as a species of anarchist curse, just calls him 'the
President.' The rage behind it, provoked by the
ongoing spectacle of national politics in the U.S. as
presided over by anybody, is natural enough if you
look at the regimes Barthelme happened to be working
under. Among many sad consequences of his passing is
that we won't know what he might have done with Bush
as a subject, although 'Kissing the President,' in its
consideration of Reagan, may give off premonitory
hints."

http://www.vheissu.org/bio/eng_barthelme.htm

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/barthelme.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_barthelme.html



Richard M. Nixon (1913-94)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/rn37.html

http://www.nixonfoundation.org/

http://www.archives.gov/nixon/

Gravity's Rainbow was released on February 28, 1973,
under the astrological sign of Pisces, the watery
house of dreams and dissolution. "Madness spews forth
in torrents, Pandora's evils incarnate!" wrote
Publishers Weekly. Richard M. Nixon, satirized in the
novel's final pages as Richard M. Zhlubb, was
referring to "the Watergate mess" as an obsessive
fabrication of newswriters, and much of the nation
still believed him.

http://de.geocities.com/geri150162/pyweis01.htm

Cf. ...

Zhlubb, Richard M.
755; aka the "Adenoid"; night manager of Orpheus
Theatre on Melrose Blvd. in LA; 37th President of the
United States

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/x-z.html


		
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