NP: DeLillo on Trump's America

Wed Nov 7 07:27:30 CST 2018

Snippet, all that is obtainable, of an interview with him about *Libra* and
after.

https://books.google.com/books?id=nIOdBrl1keUC&pg=PA162&dq=DElillo+after+Libra&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo2MfBsMLeAhUqrlkKHWjgCFsQ6AEIXzAJ#v=onepage&q=DElillo%20after%20Libra&f=false

On Wed, Nov 7, 2018 at 8:13 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> 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
> >>>>
> >>>
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>