BE/White Noise

[rich]

speaking of DD, re-read hs essay on 9/11 from that December which has some
bits which may resonate with BE. I'd be shocked if Pynchon didnt read it

rich

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/dec/22/fiction.dondelillo

'We are rich, privileged and strong, but they are willing to die. This is
the edge they have, the fire of aggrieved belief. '

'This is his edge, his strength. Plots reduce the world. He builds a plot
around his anger and our indifference. '

"This is his edge, that he does not see her. Years here, waiting, taking
flying lessons, making the routine gestures of community and home, the
credit card, the bank account, the post-office box. All tactical, linked,
layered. He knows who we are and what we mean in the world - an idea, a
righteous fever in the brain. But there is no defenceless human at the end
of his gaze."

'There are stories of heroism and encounters with dread. There are stories
that carry around their edges the luminous ring of coincidence, fate, or
premonition.'

"I looked at her in prayer and it was clearer to me than ever, the daily
sweeping taken-for-granted greatness of New York. The city will accommodate
every language, ritual, belief and opinion. In the rolls of the dead of
September 11, all these vital differences were surrendered to the impact
and flash. The bodies themselves are missing in large numbers. For the
survivors, more grief. But the dead are their own nation and race, one
identity, young or old, devout or unbelieving - a union of souls. During
the hadj , the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the faithful must eliminate
every sign of status, income and nationality, the men wearing identical
strips of seamless white cloth, the women with covered heads, all recalling
in prayer their fellowship with the dead.

Allahu akbar. God is great."


On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 10:13 AM, Robin Landseadel <
robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> Back when I was in the midst of the slog of reading Bleeding Edge, posted
> at the Hoffman Forum that I had a hard time keeping my eyes open. A forum
> member asked, "Does this mean you were disappointed?", this is my response:
>
> At First.
>
> This is very different from the author's other "Big Books" and make no
> doubt about it this is one of the Big ones. The way I'm reading it now,
> Maxi is very much in the mold of Elaine from "Seinfeld". As I take this on
> a second time I'll ask—"What would Elaine do?" Of course, they're not
> twins. But the local environment of Bleeding Edge appears to be in Larry
> David's zip code.
>
> At the same time, this novel is in a similar territory as DeLillo's "White
> Noise." We have a somewhat isolated, somewhat intellectual community, full
> of the language and world view of its little tribe, incapable of dealing
> with the "real" world using the paradigms they live by and brought to a
> crisis thanks to one of those abrupt incursions of another world into
> theirs.
>
> While "White Noise" has a center "I" that turns out to be crazy, Maxi
> balances on a very thin wedge of morality, always threatening to capsize in
> one direction or another—she did marry one of those Banker/Market
> Speculator types after all. In many ways she's what I'd call a "LINO", a
> "Leftist in name only" in that she mouths opposition to the system but
> analyzes it, works it, makes her money off it and in that way, keeps the
> Dynamo running. It's an impossible balancing act and Maxi falls too easily,
> though full of common sense as she is, she dusts herself off after these
> monstrous couplings with conscience-free Lotharios and gets on with her
> life.
>
> Kinda like Elaine, see?
>
> The real difference between Maxi and one of the "worst people in the
> world" being that Maxi is a mother, a classic example of what Donald
> Winnicott would call a "Good Enough Mother," this being Maxi's only real
> moral compass, but more than enough for her and her family to survive. But
> when bad stuff happens to bad people? She just shrugs it off.
>
>
> Wonderfully paradoxical stuff and at the same time the envoirns are
> recognizable for what passes for quoditian these days. The book is also
> like those kinds of downloadable files that have lossless encryption—takes
> a while for "Bleeding Edge" to open up. But the same was true of Gravity's
> Rainbow.
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?**listpynchon-l<http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l>
>
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