Modern world and paranoia

Markekohut markekohut at yahoo.com
Wed Apr 24 08:59:27 CDT 2013


Y'all mighta heard about all the major media misreporting lately and, maybe even AP's (hacked?) tweet that the WH had been bombed (causing the market to plunge as all the " smart money"
Rushed out, greedy bastards).....

Which led to some more AP " reporting" jokes today including THOMAS PYNCHON
DOING SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE! 

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 24, 2013, at 9:45 AM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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