Modern world and paranoia

[Matthew Cissell]

Nowadays it doesn't take anytime at all to form a conspiracy theory. Go ask Gene Rosen who helped some kids on his driveway the day of the Newtown masacre, poor man.
And now we have Boston. Several witnesses have identified the supect as the perp, video footage, and now an admission of guilt - and people claim it is a conspiracy; check out the movement to protect poor little Dzokhar from THEM.
So given all this we must address James Wood's claim (in his essay on DeLillo from the Broken Estate): "Indeed, Underworld proves, once and for all, or so I must hope, the incompatability of the political paranoid vision with great fiction." Further along he says that paranoia is bad for the novel. Hmm.

I readily admit my admiration for Wood's erudition and critical prose, however, my admiration ends there. In trying to advance his mission (reshaping the view of literature through his choice of lens) he goes too far out on a limb that will not support the weight of his ego or inflated ideas.

Now I suppose Alice might bring me up on all that but I can handle it. Waddayathink AL? Is Jimmy Wood right about paranoia and the novel?

ciao
mc otis
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