NP: DeLillo on Trump's America

Wed Nov 7 07:13:09 CST 2018

It does seem hard to believe that Delillo would be particularly troubled by a bad review from George Will, that super american fan of baseball and death squads.

> On Nov 7, 2018, at 1:15 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> So he's disguised as a Ho Ho but he's really a Ding Dong? Clever fellow.
> 
> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 7:06 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> His disguise is as the Wise Conservative pundit.  He (and David Brooks,
>> but less so) are treated almost like emeritus professors of serious
>> political insight.  Of course it's all media crap.
>> 
>> David Morris
>> 
>> On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 8:55 PM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> 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
>>>> 
>>> 
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