Fw: NP Satan in Lit

[Mark Kohut]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathy_for_the_Devil


----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>
To: monte.davis at verizon.net
Cc: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>; Pynchlist <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 11:53:59 AM
Subject: Re: NP Satan in Lit

...and supposedly the inspiration for "Sympathy for the Devil".


On Nov 22, 2007 12:52 PM, Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>  Kai sez:
>
> > Bulgakow's "Master i Margarita" (in the German translation of Thomas
> Reschke)
> > is the best book I've read this year so far.
>
> It's a favorite of mine, too. If somehow it could have been published (and
> widely translated) in 1937 or 1940, instead of creeping into world literary
> consciousness as it did in the 1960s and 1970s -- in variously truncated and
> restored versions, and inevitably with some flavor of a "historical
> curiosity" -- I think we'd have a different notion of the origins of "black
> humor," "magic realism," and allied tendencies (or at least labels) that
> turn up in the grab-bag of Pynchonian satire. Fictional stances that our
> usual discourse traces to post-WWII Western consumer culture are a
> surprisingly good fit for Stalin's Moscow.
>
> For those who haven't read it: imagine a mash-up of Faust, the "Grand
> Inquisitor" section of Karamazov, and Darkness at Noon. Now make it very
> funny, in the sense that the Mittelwerk chase in GR or the LA apocalypse in
> The Day of the Locust are funny... y'know, with the stench of death wafting
> in from the wings.


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