Modern world and paranoia

[Antonin Scriabin]

I can show you eyewitness reports of anything you like.  The incriminating
video footage of the bombing hasn't been released (I assume it will be in
court, eventually), and we have an "unnamed law enforcement official"
saying Dzokhar confessed, without any evidence whatsoever that he or she is
telling the truth, or even in a position to know that a confession had
taken place.  Perhaps it is the same "unnamed law enforcement official" who
fed CNN embarrassingly inaccurate information as the manhunt unfolded, or
the guy / gal who decided to arrest Paul Kevin Curtis for the ricin
letters, then let him go, no questions asked, a few days later.  Wrong guy,
I guess.  The carjacked SUV owner refuses to give interviews or be
identified in any way, and the 7-11 robbery was apparently perpetrated by
someone else who was at the convenience store at the time the brothers
"bought some snacks" (there is no information given as to who this person
actually was).  There are plenty of grossly unanswered questions about this
whole thing, and given the FBI's history of deception and outright
maliciousness, I don't see any reason in particular to trust them.  I'm not
offering an alternative chain of events, but I also refuse to simply accept
what the powers that be are saying without question.

Also, I think Woods is wrong about paranoia and the novel.  Paranoia is a
way to create a miasma of dread in a story, a way to get the reader to
question whether the author is "telling the truth", and one of an endless
supply of literary device that authors employ.  I think that Woods has
stunted perception of what creative writing can do (and should be allowed
to do), and is far too eager to set down arbitrary rules on authors who can
do something he cannot ... namely, write good fiction.


On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 5:29 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

> 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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