Wissmann statue, Hamburg

Mon Nov 12 16:09:11 CST 2012

hallo mc,
you mean the Hermann von Wissman statue in Hamburg, which used to stand in
front of the university and was re-erected some years ago near the harbour
entrance, in the course of an arts/cultural project? it seems to have been
removed again after 2 years, and I could not find out where it has ended
up, perhaps Kai might know :)
it has been controversially discussed for glorifying colonial myths and
racist/chauvinist points of view.
http://www.afrika-hamburg.de/english.html
cheers,
R

On 12 November 2012 22:41, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

>
>
> Dear Kai,
>
> One of the great things about the P-list is that users can post their
> reader experience and their reflections upon it, this provides a corpus of
> material for qualitative research.
>
> Thanks for giving your take on things, Kai, it is concise and deep. I
> think I would also take VL over IV (perhaps just because it's longer), but
> I do like the music in IV.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
> ps Have you ever posted a picture of that Herrero statue there in Hamburg
> (in front of a building though I forget where)? I bet a lot of folks here
> know nothing about it.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> To: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Cc:
> Sent: Monday, November 12, 2012 1:37 PM
> Subject: Re: No novels from Roth anymore
>
>
> What Pynchon means to me? The triptych CoL49---GR---VL is my literary
> window into American culture of the 20th century. And his finest prose is
> as beautiful a Musik as the poems of Emily Dickinson. So I guess he means a
> lot to me, although I do not buy the t-shirts or the coffee brand. My
> attitudes towards AtD do constantly change, but it's definitely a daring
> novel of some significance. Yet IV? Not that I could have written it or
> that I didn't like the first read with you people during that hazy summer
> 2009. And to say that it brings new readers is certainly not completely
> wrong, though I know at least of one reader who was so turned off by IV
> that he'll probably never pick up a Pynchon novel again. But when we
> compare IV to VL (and that's the only fair comparison, imo), we cannot help
> but have to recognize the former one's flatness. VL takes place in 1984 and
> looks back to the 1960s, its characters build a three generational pattern:
> Through this the
> novel is able to unfold some complexity. In contrast to this, IV is
> one-dimensional: The immediate action is situated in 1969/70 (by this
> returning to the final pages of GR) and there are occasional flashbacks to
> the mid '60s. Not enough to open up a temporal contrast zone that would
> help to recognize the decade as such. Nor are the different generational
> perspectives worked out the way it is done in VL. And while Lew Basnight
> from AtD is to me one of Pynchon's  most excellent characters, Sportello -
> obviously a variation of Basnight - is basically a joke.  Unlike in the
> other books named (one may add M&D) here, I also do not find many sentences
> in IV that would make good poems when cut into lines. So perhaps it's
> better than the average crime novel, but as a work of Thomas Pynchon IV is
> imo a big disappointment. Some do disagree and that's OK. What puzzles me,
> however, is that these are in some cases the same people who - following
> their master's
> voice (see SL-intro)? - express the view that CoL49 is not a good book.
> How one can prefer IV to CoL49 remains an enigma to me. Well, we don't know
> what Pynchon thinks about it these days, but personally I doubt that he -
> like Roth obviously is in the case of Nemesis - would be content with IV as
> his final book. So let's just hope for more to come!
>
>
> On 11.11.2012 15:10, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> >   Let me clarify my response to Kai's post. When I asked "why" it was
> rather clear that Kai's aestetic evaluation was not positive, so telling me
> that "it sucks" is hardly helpful, Rich. I'm not interested in arguing
> aesthetics.
> >
> > When Kai wrote "Wouldn't it be a pity if Inherent Vice turned out to be
> his last book?", perhaps instead of "why" I should have asked 'a pity for
> whom'. Would it be a pity for TP? Why? Because it would not be fitting for
> the master builder to offer us a shack instead of the temple we long for?
> Does it lessen his former works or his own stature and worth? Is it a pity
> that Thomas Mann gave us The Black Swan shortly before his death instead of
> some great novel like The Magic Mountain?
> > Or is it a pity for US in which case I must also ask why. Do we have so
> much invested in TP's status that any percieved shortcoming on TP's part
> affects us as well?
> >
> > It reminds of a professor who argued for Yeats as THE great poet of the
> 20th c. because his production was fantastic right to the last line,
> according to that professor. This seems to be what makes the mark of the
> Master Writer, consistently great writing to the end without turning soft
> or commercial or whatever. But doesn't this discourse have it's own history?
> >
> > The origin of my inquiry lies in the fact that I'm interested in looking
> at what Pynchon means to us, how we consume his texts and produce readings
> that then compete with other people's readings in order to gain some
> currency. Here on the list we see examples of people providing contending
> readings and how they gain traction. Consider the story of the little
> squares in GR that someone thought were film reel squares thus implying a
> cinemagraphic reading of the novel; the idea gained some ground but was
> eventually eroded by the truth of the editing history - a reading advances
> and then recedes.
> >
> > In the end I don't care if Kai dislikes IV or if he thinks Arno Schmidt
> better or worse than writers from Gruppe 47; his statement simply makes me
> wonder about the value of TP's work in our lives.
> >
> > Respectfully,
> > MC otis
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: jochen stremmel<jstremmel at gmail.com>
> > To: Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>  Cc:"
> pynchon-l at waste.org"  <pynchon-l at waste.org>  Sent: Friday, November 9,
> 2012 6:06 PM
> > Subject: Re: No novels from Roth anymore
> >
> > It may suck for you. It drips for me.
> >
> >
> > 2012/11/9 Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>:
> >> As the saying goes: Die Retourkutsche fährt nur von zwölf bis mittags.
> >>
> >> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1208&msg=167246&sort=date
> >>
> >> And yes, IV sucks.
> >>
> >>
> >> On 09.11.2012 16:39, jochen stremmel wrote:
> >>> Why does that (of all places: here) endlessly repeated reproach remind
> >>> me of Lichtenberg's aphorism about the book and the head that bang
> >>> together?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2012/11/9 rich<richard.romeo at gmail.com>:
> >>>> cause it sucked?
> >>>>
> >>>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 9:23 AM, Matthew Cissell<macissell at yahoo.es>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>> Why?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ________________________________
> >>>>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen<lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> >>>>> To: pynchon -l<pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >>>>> Sent: Friday, November 9, 2012 1:19 PM
> >>>>> Subject: No novels from Roth anymore
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> http://www.lesinrocks.com/2012/10/07/livres/philip-roth-nemesis-sera-mon-dernier-livre-11310126/
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Philip Roth, now collaborating with his biographer, does not create
> >>>>> literary
> >>>>> art anymore. This makes me think whether Pynchon is still writing.
> >>>>> Wouldn't
> >>>>> it be a pity if Inherent Vice turned out to be his last book?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
>
>
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