Chabon on BE

[Fiona Shnapple]

Chabon Is interviewed. The war, and how the Jewish artists responded to it.
Then, of course, there is the exploitation of blacks
In the un-equal "alliance" of Blacks and Jews, so on, so, liberal is
another word for old lefty now neo-con, democrat establishment.

http://www.pbs.org/superheroes



On Saturday, October 19, 2013, Fiona Shnapple wrote:

>
> I love Chabon and think he is spot on in his comments on the sauce. Notice
> that he says, old Left liberal. That Jewish for uws resident.
> On Saturday, October 19, 2013, Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Charles.s
>>
>> Unfortunately I have not yet come around to read a novel by Chabon but I
>> am very fond of the movie version of "Wonder Boys". I also very much
>> enjoyed his take on Power Pop/Big Star (to be found here:
>> http://michaelchabon.com/**uncollected/musical/tragic-**magic/<http://michaelchabon.com/uncollected/musical/tragic-magic/>
>> ).
>>
>> I also found his review of BE perceptive in many ways (his take on
>> Pynchon's so-called flat characters, as Monte Davis said, is particularly
>> good) Nevetheless, I think this --
>>
>> 'His scorn for all this weak sauce is most sharply evident when it
>> dribbles from the lips of an otherwise affectionately rendered old-lefty
>> liberal New Yorker who sententiously repeats a baseless canard:
>>
>> You know where it all comes from, this online paradise of yours? It
>> started back during the Cold War, when the think tanks were full of
>> geniuses plotting nuclear scenarios. Attaché cases and horn-rims, every
>> appearance of scholarly sanity, going in to work every day to imagine all
>> the ways the world was going to end. Your Internet, back then the Defense
>> Department called it DARPAnet, the real original purpose was to assure
>> survival of US command and control after a nuclear exchange with the
>> Soviets.'
>>
>> -- is hopelessly wrong. DARPAnet and Continuity of Government are not
>> 'baseless canards', and I do not believe the author (or the implied author,
>> if you are, as I am, a nitpicking narratologist) views them that way.
>>
>> In fact, I believe that Marge (like Maxine's father later on) articulates
>> one of the basic themes of the novel: The continuity of, let us say,
>> unlawful actions (e.g. black ops in Central and South America, Iran-Contra,
>> MK-Ultra, the in itself as well as for the novel highly important
>> Inslaw/PROMIS scandal, which all are at least alluded to in BE) of the US
>> government from the cold war until today.
>>
>> Referring to Chabon's Marge quote above: In the deep political background
>> here, as in "Vineland", the spectre of "Continuity of Government" raises
>> its ugly head. Peter Dale Scott has something to say about this with regard
>> to September 11: http://www.japanfocus.org/-**Peter_Dale-Scott/3362<http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3362>
>>
>> At the very least this provides some context for Marge's "weak sauce."
>> And Chabon did not -- could not, I assume -- provide any passage where the
>> narrator is making fun of crazy old Marge.
>>
>> Thomas
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?**list=pynchon-l<http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l>
>>
>
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