NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance? CORRECTED

[Bekah]

American Pastoral was Roth's best ever book, imo - but I've only read a smattering of his work.   That one was good stuff. 

Bekah

On Apr 22, 2013, at 12:52 PM, Lemuel Underwing <luunderwing at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm coming in a bit late here but I often think of Philip Roth's American Pastoral when it comes to "homegrown" terrorists, one helluva haunting book that 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Oh aha!  Yes!    Big huge theme in DeLillo is viewer response to the media - especially but not limited to television and movies -  and its effect on individuals as well as on mass audiences,  especially of tragedies or "events" such as the Boston Marathon but not only that,  our fixation on these things.
> 
> These are the books I've read:
> 
> Running Dog  - footage of Hitler -  a man (men?)  obsessed with it.
> The Names -  I think I remember that the protagonist dealt with a filmmaker  - theme is more about the power of language.
> White Noise - effects of media coverage on individual fears
> Underworld -  TV and the Texas Highway Killer and other situations
> Libra  - Zapruder footage
> Mao II - relationship between mass events,  in person or filmed,  and identity - who controls the masses?
> Body Artist - does that woman hear things on the radio?
> Cosmopolis -  limo filled with television - mass events can interfere with progress for anyone -
> Falling Man -  9/11 - fixation of television coverage -  effects on individuals
> Point Omega - that Psycho thriller - museum footage  frame by frame in 24 hour cycles -
> The Agent Esmeralda - several stories,  especially Baader-Meinhof (museum photos) and one story about the obsession with movies.
> 
> His literary peer Thomas Pynchon has applauded DeLillo for “a voice as eloquent and morally focused as any in American writing.”
> http://www.salon.com/2001/10/23/delillo_4/
> 
> THE writer to whom Mr. DeLillo has most often been likened and for whom he has great respect is Thomas Pynchon. ''Somebody quoted Norman Mailer as saying that he wasn't a better writer because his contemporaries weren't better,'' he says. ''I don't know whether he really said that or not, but the point I want to make is that no one in Pynchon's generation can make that statement. If we're not as good as we should be it's not because there isn't a standard. And I think Pynchon, more than any other writer, has set the standard. He's raised the stakes.''
> http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/16/lifetimes/del-v-talk1982.html
> 
> http://english.uchicago.edu/content/pynchondelillo-and-problem-america
> 
> Bekah
> 
> 
> On Apr 22, 2013, at 9:19 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > Wow....a book by Karen Armstron only available in Pakistan????
> >
> > There is some story there.....
> >
> > Guy wrote DeLillo's Running Dogs theme was, among others, that we watch such things
> > as the Boston manhunt because we love motion on TV.....
> >
> > And just started a DeLillo I had not read, End Zone, and speed (of a running back) is a theme...
> >
> > Motion on TV and speed and I cannot help leaping to modernity tropes......
> >
> >
> > thanks for other DeLillo tips....
> > From: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> > To: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> > Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 12:00 PM
> > Subject: Re: NP? modernity, terrorism, truth and relevance? CORRECTED
> >
> > The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions -  Karen Armstrong - 2006 /
> >
> > Good book - I read it awhile back and only remember the highlights.  Yes,  Amstrong discusses the term "axial age" problems associated with it.
> >
> > I'd be interested to read her newest book,  "A Letter to Pakistan,"  but it's only available in Pakistan.  I wonder what language it's written in and I wonder if it's really available there.  Oxford publishing.
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
> > On Apr 21, 2013, at 5:04 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Of course Armstrong is correct. The excerpt could be misread, so one might think she fails to  attribute the term to Jaspers, but she does. Moreover, she is quite familiar, as she notes in her works, with the uses and controversial uses of the term.
> > >
> > > On Sunday, April 21, 2013, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
> > >
> > > Armstrong:
> > >
> > > "There was a similar transitional period in the ancient world, lasting roughly from 700 to 200 BCE, which historians have called the Axial Age because it was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity."
> > >
> > > Not correct. It weren't historians yet the philosopher Karl Jaspers (see Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte) who minted the term Achsenzeit in 1949. And in later years the concept attracted rather social scientists (like Eisenstadt) than historians to whom the concept must appear highly speculative.
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_Age
> > >
> > > An actual historian who thought a lot about this kind of concept in order to shed new light on modernity was Reinhart Koselleck who developed the term 'saddle time' (Sattelzeit) for the period between 1750 and 1850. Sounds M&Dish, right?
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhart_Koselleck
> > > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sattelzeit
> > >
> > > On 20.04.2013 22:23, alice wellintown wrote:
> > >>
> > >> http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/armstrong-battle.html
> > >> On Saturday, April 20, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:
> > >> " 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."
> > >>
> > >> 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?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> 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.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> 
>