"Doesn't suck," Zig agrees.

[malignd at aol.com]

I used to own two collections of Red Smith's columns.  He was a great writer, certainly the best sports writer ever.  Hemingway was a big fan.



-----Original Message-----
From: bandwraith <bandwraith at aol.com>
To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Mon, Apr 29, 2013 9:04 pm
Subject: "Doesn't suck," Zig agrees.


The Shot Heard 'round the World was a momentous occassion on October 3, 1951, in the Polo Grounds, NYC. The Wikipedia article is pretty cool-
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_Heard_'Round_the_World_(baseball)
 
Especially interesting is the article's detailing of the sportswriter Red Smith's lead in for his New York Herald Tribune recap the day after:
 
    Now it is done. Now the story ends. And there is no way to tell it. The art of fiction is dead.
    Reality has strangled invention. Only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can
    ever be plausible again.
 
Which is footnoted to sports blog- Deadspin's 8/17/10 entry, entitled:
 
"Stories That Don't Suck: The Shot Heard 'Round The World And The Greatest Lede Ever Written"
 
http://deadspin.com/5615284/stories-that-dont-suck-the-shot-heard-round-the-world-and-the-greatest-lede-ever-written
 
Smith's words make me think that DeLillo did his homework. It strengthens the connection between the famous walk-off home run and the first Soviet thermonuclear test, two months earlier- as good as any demarcation for the beginning of The Postmodern World.

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