American Entropy

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Thomas Mann's one of my favorite writers, and Buddenbrooks is his best novel, IMO, though his story, Tonio Kroger is my alltime favorite.

Laura



-----Original Message-----
>From: bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>

>
>Reminds me of Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann.    It's actually called 
>the "Buddenbrooks Syndrome." 
><http://www.powells.com/review/2006_12_28>
>
>(good book, btw)
>
>Bekah
>
>At 9:52 PM +0000 3/30/07, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
>>Remarkably pertinent:
>>
>>               I'm in the third generation of a family fortune.              
>>               I was disinherited from this fortune, which means
>>               I am free from the obligations and the codes of
>>               inherited wealth. I have been kicked out of the
>>               club so am happy to teach you the secret hand-shake.
>>               It also means that I have been thrown back into the
>>               first generation -- forced to invent my world, to play
>>               jazz. For a man who has inherited wealth, even a
>>               man, like Trump, who inherited wealth then turned
>>               it into more wealth, it will always Grandpa's world.
>>               That's why Trump puts his name on everything.
>>               He's a kid saying to himself in the dark, "I am here,
>>               I am here, I am here. . . .
>>
>>               . . . .I have watched all this with a sense of strange
>>               detachment -- as if I was seeing not the story
>>               of my family, but the story of the nation personified
>>               in a life of a business. It is the story of how a legacy
>>               corrupts over time. It is what Thomas Pynchon calls
>>               entropy.
>>
>>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rich-cohen/american-entropy_b_44642.html