[Mark Thibodeau]

I remember fifteen years ago, the LAST time It Can't Happen Here went
through a cycle of current-events-spawned popularity. It even had the
Dubya Bush / Buzz Windrip synchronistical nomenclature to help sell
its ostensibly prophetic nature.

It's a pretty good novel, very "readable", but the lack of nuclear
weapons in the mix means it can only go so far as a satire that can be
shoehorned over the contemporary realpolitik.

Jerky
On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 6:03 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> Interesting as I’m just starting to read “It Can’t Happen Here” (“What Will Happen When America Has a Dictator?”)  by Sinclair Lewis - (1936).  A the time, the book was thought to be directed at Huey Long, a Mississippi populist, governor/senator who was assassinated as he was getting his campaign for president together.  Sinclair’s novel is a satire and really aimed at its own times,  but it resonates what with all the fictional Windrip does *after* he gains office.  (hush the critics, etc.)
>
> "Keith Perry argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he decks out U.S. politicians with sinister European touches, but that he finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional U.S. political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of society and a new kind of regime.”
>
> Also:
> "A number of writers have compared the demagogue Buzz Windrip to Donald Trump. Michael Paulsonwrote in The New York Times that the Berkeley Repertory Theatre's rendition of the play aimed to provoke discussion about Trump's presidential candidacy.[2]”
>
>
> And: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/books/review/classic-novel-that-predicted-trump-sinclar-lewis-it-cant-happen-here.html
>
> or:
> http://time.com/money/4573801/sinclair-lewis-it-cant-happen-here-amazon/
>
> very curious -
>
> Becky
> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>
> > On Oct 25, 2018, at 2:37 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Nice.
> >
> > And true.
> >
> > J.
> > On Wed, Oct 24, 2018 at 3:09 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> From Charles Pierce
> >> https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a24174810/cnn-obama-clintons-bomb-donald-trump/
> >>
> >> "The bomb has been as essential a part of American political history as
> >> were the knife, and the pistol, the high-powered rifle, and the rope."
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>