Modern world and paranoia

[Markekohut]

The paranoid vision is the modern Gothic? That secondary tradition in Woods' education in
The Great English Novel tradition......

Which, as Bekah points to, might be more " realistic" since the Unspeakable Gothic Horrors of the 20th Century.  

How important in Woods' judgment is his other word: " political" in " political paranoia". quite, I'd say....hampers the breadth of greatness of vision. 

Anyway, if GR is a politically paranoid fiction, which Wood might have nagging on him ( as he has now admitted) with his "once and for all" remark, then he is wrong ( partly even on his own terms because Pynchon does layer a non-political depth of Life and Life Only in it). 

It is also what he almost recognized in Against the Day but stepped back from. see my unpublished letter to him about it. 

Sent from my iPad

On Apr 24, 2013, at 10:08 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> Sounds to me like Wood gets confused between what he likes and what is good.   Just because a reader doesn't personally like a book doesn't mean it's not fine lit.   Paranoia could be a part of 21st century realism the way religion was often a part of Victorian lit.  I tend to appreciate Wood, too - but I think he's stuck in the early 20th century about some things. 
> 
> Bekah
> 
> 
> On Apr 24, 2013, at 2:29 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
>