Kathyrn Hume on Late Coover

[Prashant Kumar]

But there's scary-good and
scary-I-live-my-life-vicariously-through-his-words. From a continuing
discussion on the recent DT Max bio:

(Subject line: I hope this bio...)

...knocks DFW off his pedestal at least a little bit. I've invested so much
energy from 1996-2012 loving him and thinking he is a god. Especially
around 2002-2004. I mean I was rabid. I still do love him of course, I just
think it would be great to see something go kind of against the grain and
drive a stake into the heart of all the hero-worship. And possibly force
some people to grow a pair. I don't know. Maybe it will only intensify. And
maybe that's a good direction, I could go along with that. Maybe it'll just
morph into a new thing. It's possible that because I haven't really reread
anything of his for a year, I don't really have that voice with me in my
head. So maybe I've forgotten some of what's good about DFW. A heretic.

I find myself wanting to come out on the other side of this thing disliking
him. Maybe that's the poisonous environment that a biography can spread.
Can anybody relate? If not, for the sake of the public interest say a
little bit about what you hope this biography accomplishes, either in terms
of his literary stature or in terms of your feelings about him. Do you
think that in some sense we could have done without a biography that risks
portraying **"Our Man"** as a selfish, self-regarding asshole? Is that
insecure? I actually kind of want him to be an asshole, unsympathetic. (I
think we've been reassured against that actually. We're probably all going
to come out of this book really loving this guy regardless.) It could be a
fruitful conversation to have before the thing is published (unless you've
all already read advance copies of it...).

In a very real way I've been anticipating this book even more than The Pale
King, hate to say. I have a lot riding on it emotionally you might say.

Sorry about all the maybes in this message, I'm not the most decisive
chap...

Yours,
Seeking Disillusionment



P.

On 13 September 2012 01:32, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:

>  On 9/11/2012 7:24 PM, Prashant Kumar wrote:
>
> wallace-l, anyone? That place scares me sometimes.
>
>
> I hadn't look in on it since the death, or a long time before actually,
> but do love scary.
>
> Old timers here will remember that the w-list arguably was a spinoff of
> the p-list.  Several of us got really enthused over Infinite Jest and there
> was a lot of discussion on this list before a new one could be up and
> going. Our Will Layman might have helped start the w-list.  Don't
> remember.  But anyway, what was scary? Curious.
>
>
> P
>
>
> On 12 September 2012 00:38, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> On 9/11/2012 2:27 AM, jochen stremmel wrote:
>>
>>> Great, Michael!
>>>
>>> You demonstrated what the plist is for, in my humble opinion.
>>>
>>> More such larks, please.
>>>
>>
>>  Any discussion here  of TP's actual writing makes me shudder with
>> pleasure.
>>
>> I don't care a fig what he THINKS, or BELIEVES, or what books he likes.
>>
>>
>> P
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 2012/9/11 Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>>  how we do go on!  "such larks"
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> but i mean, the ripples from the skipping stone...
>>>>
>>>> plink
>>>> Brecht
>>>>
>>>> plonk
>>>> the Marseillaise
>>>>
>>>> plunk
>>>> the Marquis de Sod
>>>>
>>>> these are brought in lightly, painlessly, humorously but the literal
>>>> "grounding" of the social movement, like parents grounding a child, but
>>>> also
>>>> 'going to ground' like a fox on the run, which is sort of what zoyd is
>>>> doing, which again is a further development of what the marquis did in
>>>> leaving dramaturgy for lawn service - going to ground - looking for
>>>> cover,
>>>> for a liveable rhizome
>>>>
>>>> a-and the imposition of the sadistic domination on the grass, in his
>>>> ads (in
>>>> full costume, whipping the grass, and the grass saying "we love eet") -
>>>> parallels the apparent mass approbation depicted around the Reagan
>>>> Administration, eg
>>>>
>>>> and he pulls in even the marseillaise,  like the original California
>>>> landscape so heedlessly sodded over, in this celebration of dominion
>>>> over
>>>> nature
>>>>
>>>> but that isn't even half of what's in the passage!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> “It is difficult/to get the news from poems/yet men die miserably every
>>>> day/for lack/of what is found there” - William Carlos Williams
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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