NP: DeLillo on Trump's America

[rich]

Delillo went minimal after the brilliance of Libra Mao II and Underworld.
Zero K is probably the end of that run. it'll be interesting to see what he
comes up with.

as for depicting the lunacy of a particular American way of viewing the
world (and its violence) currently I can't help but think of the Uncle Sam
character in Coover's the Public Burning. It's too bad the novel is old.
Sean Hannity and other Fox notables surely would be among the revelers in
Times Square.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-coovers-70s-novel-the-public-burning-eerily-anticipates-trump

It’s in the “god” of *The Public Burning*, Uncle Sam, that Coover most
strikingly foresees Trump and his public. Based partly on Sam Slick, the
Yankee peddler, Uncle Sam pretends to be a populist strong man defending
American Christianity and protecting the little people from domestic and
foreign evil, but in fact Sam is an “incorrigible huckster, a sweet-talking
con artist,” a protean shape-shifter, the impure principle of performance
and entertainment, controlling characters and events to perpetuate his
power to control characters and events. It is Sam who moves the execution
from the prison at Sing Sing to Times Square where he assembles
entertainers, officials, and celebrities to create a ceremony that will
bind Americans together in a spasm of hate and vengeance, a festival that
takes to extremes the violent and vile emotions elicited in Trump’s
rallies. Like Trump, Sam is consistently vulgar in act and speech. He
strings together others’ phrases, slogans, clichés, and dog whistles from
centuries of American jingoism, racism, and misogyny. And also like Trump,
Sam has no respect for facts: History, he tells Nixon, “is more or less
bunk, as Henry Ford liked to say, as saintly and wise a pup as this
nation’s seen since the Gold Rush—the fatal slantindicular futility of
Fact! Appearances, my boy, appearances! Practical politics consists in
ignorin’ facts! *Opinion* ultimately rules the world!”

On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 3:31 PM Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
wrote:

> I am curious. What happened to DeLillo after he published "Libra"?
>
> Kubrick and Southern were, of course, right about everything.
>
> > I mean, for Pete's sake! Look at what happened when Delillo DARED to
> > write his JFK-conspiracy-adjacent novel, LIBRA! Is it any wonder he'd
> > be a little
> > gun-shy about wading into these reeking, Satanic fever swamps?!
> >
> > Maybe in two or three decades we'll be allowed to look back, like we
> > looked back on Strangelove not so long ago and realized "Holy shit...
> > Kubrick and Southern were more right than wrong about EVERYTHING." And
> > then maybe reputations will be rehabilitated (post mortem for most of
> > 'em)... and we can all go on being superior and snide again about
> > whatever fresh Hell we'll be enduring by then.
>
> --
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>