Rise from the ashes

[Erik T. Burns]

post about this at Metafilter. Freeman is not trending well.

http://www.metafilter.com/107308/Imperial-Blind-Spots


On Sun, Sep 11, 2011 at 7:11 PM, Tom Beshear <tbeshear at insightbb.com> wrote:
> Three recent novels that might fall under the Systems category:
> Witz by Joshua Cohen
> Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
> Europe Central by William T. Vollmann (with the caveat that it isn't about
> America, but about Germany and Soviet Union in World War II, but
> it's "System"-like in its encompassing ambition.)
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Kohut
> To: Dave Monroe ; pynchon -l
> Cc: braden.andrews at gmail.com
> Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:52 PM
> Subject: Re: Rise from the ashes
> I do not understand this one iota, smart and famous as Freman is. Which is
> to say, I think this is
> just wrong....bad conceptualizing to say nothing true....
>
> 1) Why does he not mention Against the Day?...a book which tears into
> "whiteness"....which tries to show
> the whole Modern World-System, perhaps, to allude to Wallerstein...people
> everywhere, a world everywhere...
> As well as America...
>
> 2) And does "the Systems" novel mean anything but a (usually) large
> ambitious novel trying to encompass
> America in its images and meanings. aren't there others (most of which i
> have not taken the time to read but...)
> Moment in the Sun
> The Instructions
> The Children's Hospital
> R. Powers' NBA winner in the aughts?
>
> And other ones too?
> And shorter ones too, I'm sure.....
>
> And, haven't there been some Latin American writers of ambitious Systems
> novels who wrote about dictators
> much sooner---contemporaneously with?---than 30 years after their rule?
>
> argjue with me......
>
> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 10, 2011 2:14 AM
> Subject: Rise from the ashes
>
> Rise from the ashes
> John Freeman
> September 10, 2011 .
>
>
> The September 11 attacks spelt the end of the 'systems novel' and the
> rise of a more diverse and meaningful literary landscape.
>
> EUROPE may be the birthplace of the all-encompassing philosophers, the
> men - and they were largely men - who attempted to stuff the whole
> world into a theoretical system, but the US is where this urge found
> root in storytelling. Or at least it was.
>
> In every decade from the 1950s to the year 2000, the US produced a
> novel that took a great deep breath and attempted to capture all the
> systems of modern life at work: William Gaddis's The Recognitions
> (1955), Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow
> (1966 and 1973), Don DeLillo's White Noise (1985) and David Foster
> Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996).
>
> [...]
>
> http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/rise-from-the-ashes-20110909-1k1df.html
>
>
>