NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance?

[Bekah]

In several stories of DeLillo's  "The Angel Esmeralda"  terrorism is a theme of sorts,  but it's all different kinds of terror(ism) and the idea is what happens to people later.  I'd say the main theme in most of the stories is "connections."   Also,  the stories  are from a point of randomness and anonymity.  "Baader-Meinhof"  is good but my favorite is the eponymous story - The Angel Esmeralda. 

Also by D. 
The Names is pretty good about random acts of terror in the Mid-East.   
The Texas Highway Killer thread in Underworld is essentially a terrorist act intensified by television coverage.  
In Players most of the  characters remain disconnected even if there is violence all around. 
Mao II is more about the responsibility of writers in terrorist situations. 

I don't see a direct connection to terrorism per se in any of the other books but I've never got to the early 3 or 4.  

For an interesting book from the pov of a possible terrorist see The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (2007) - 191 pages of intense. 

Bekah



On Apr 20, 2013, at 12:54 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> This is Adam Gopnick in The New Yorker today about the marathon bombers. Does this apply to any of P's characters in AtD?
> Does this apply to P's vision? Is Hume's condemning what she sees as P's moral failure in Against the Day, refuted, or attempted
> to be seen (refuted) by P's vision of the cohesion of life in the Olde Europe scenes---the communities of the villages?
>  
> " But all of our experience suggests that it is not “fundamentalism” alone but an aching tension between modernity and a false picture of a purer fundamentalist past that makes terrorists."
>  
> Or, a few have remarked that DeLillo best captured the meanings and understandings of the characters in our recent acts of local terror. True, where?
> You can answer this question instead.
>  
> Extra credit for both.