NP: DeLillo on Trump's America

[Ian Livingston]

He's disguised?

On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 1:40 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> George Will is just a disguised hack.
>
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 3:31 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > For some reason, my reply seems to have come out all choppy, with the
> > bottom paragraph missing.
> >
> > Not to repeat myself, but here is what I TRIED to write:
> >
> > I think the reason why so many of our best thinkers and artists and
> > other people who have previously proven to have useful and
> > enlightening opinions are having such a hard time getting their brains
> > around this historical moment's realpolitik is because their very
> > respectability and reputation precludes them from letting their minds
> > wander into the territories where today's most successful
> > sociopolitical and economic gamesplayers are operating.
> > The paranoia of the 70's (and of GR, the Senate Hearings on
> > Assassinations, Oglesby's Yankee Cowboy War theory, etc) is probably
> > the only paradigm equipped to provide an adequate diagnoses for our
> > present ills. Actual, literal sinister conspiracies, shaped by
> > fanatics of the occult and the Grand Design, with armies of
> > cult-of-violence Gammas as devoted foot-soldiers... start talking
> > about these things and you're relegated to the funny pages, mocked for
> > the rest of whatever you're allowed to retain of your career.
> > 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.
> >
> > Jerky
> >
> > PS - As for what happened to Delillo after publishing Libra, he was
> > savaged for months in various venues by such literary luminaries as
> > George Will, who called the novel "an act of bad citizenship", and
> > other right-tilting sources. I remember the clash and tumble, being a
> > fan and in university at the time.
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 4:07 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > 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.
> > >>
> > >> --
> > >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>