From a Dead Beat to an Old Greaser

[rich]

Hi Kai

possibly. I used to read more for sure and like music there's so much out
there. I think one factor to consider is the loss of physical stores to
wade in and browse. even here in NYC.
I found much out of the way stuff that way. impossible to do that online.
Another factor is the plain fact of growing older, changing concerns and
the like. so solely a personal judgement, a self-reflection if you will.
and finally, I would say, and I'm sure I'm going to get disagreement on
this, is in today's heightened and anxious time, with the dangerous
buffoonery politically front and center, I find alot of what I come across
in various artistic endeavors
so weighted with politics that the aesthetic, the art itself is reduced in
some way. kinda takes the mystery out of things.

I've tried reading Joshua Cohen (Witz) and I dig what he does but I'm just
not that well-versed in the subject matter. it felt like work. i'm too old
for that (I know that sounds like a cop out)

I did enjoy Imperium. I've yet to read The Dead. think those are the only
english translations available

I should also point out when I say 'personal pedestal' I dont really mean
hero worship (I find alot to argue with in Pynchon). I mean someone i look
forward expectantly to new work. it's most definitely not anyone in the
group of Pynchon's so-called literary children.

and I'm not sure I'm looking for some like Pynchon.

I just seem to being looking back more than forward. maybe it's just
inevitable.

thx for listening

rich

On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 6:52 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
wrote:

>
> But isn't that sadness more about you own declining energy as a reader?
>
> There ARE brilliant new books & authors ...
>
> Like, to name an American example, Joshua Cohen ("Four New Messages",
> "Book of Numbers", "Moving Kings"), who writes, in my humble opinion,
> better than Philip Roth, an author he often has been compared to.
>
> Cohen, just by the way, helped Edward Snowden by teaching him how to
> write, as Snowden reveals in the acknowledgements of "Permanent Record".
> When I read this I had to think of Pynchon who would perhaps, and not only
> because of his writing skills, also have been a good candidate for that job.
>
> Since you mention your "personal pedestal": If I should name just one
> novel from the 21st century which was written in the German tongue &
> reminded me, in terms of artistic audacity, of "Gravity's Rainbow", it
> would be "Die Stunde zwischen Frau und Gitarre" (The Hour Between Woman and
> Guitar; this may sound like the title of a Borges story, but the novel has
> 1020 pages), which was published by the Austrian author Clemens J. Setz in
> 2015 (by now a paperback edition is available).  Setz - there's an explicit
> reference to the dodo episode from "Gravity's Rainbow" in his former novel
> "Indigo" (which got translated into English) - is a Pynchon reader and he
> studied, along with German literature, mathematics which becomes manifest
> in his metaphors. The style of Setz is sometimes called "synaesthetic" and,
> indeed, reading this novel is a highly psychoactive experience.
>
> Setz was born in 1982, Cohen in 1980: Both brilliant writers, still young
> (in terms of literary art). And then my "literary hero" Christian Kracht (*
> 1966) will be "gracing us" with a new novel in 2020!
>
> + In a residential home for people with physical and mental disabilities,
> a young woman – Natalie Reinegger – is employed as a caregiver to Alexander
> Dorm. The man is confined to a wheelchair, has an unpredictable temper and
> is regarded as »difficult«. Nevertheless, he has a visitor every week. That
> visitor, of all people, is Christoph Hollberg – the man whose life Dorm
> allegedly ruined years ago when he stalked him so relentlessly that he
> drove Hollberg’s wife to suicide.
>
> The »arrangement« was based on mutual benefit, Natalie is being assured,
> and they liked one another very much. But soon the blatant aversion that
> Hollberg shows towards his supposed friend unsettles Natalie. She tries to
> uncover the enigmatic visitor’s secret and to understand the motives for
> his actions. She quickly realises that her new environment is shaped by
> nearly inscrutable relationships: the way the other carers behave among
> themselves is unfathomable, opaque are their relationships with the
> patients. Natalie is slowly drawn into a subtle, double-edged power play,
> the rules of which she only begins to understand gradually.
>
> The novel spans over 1.000 pages – a book like »a lively micropolis«, as
> the author describes it – and is filled with peculiar niches and asides,
> full of outrageous and shocking moments, but also full of tenderness and
> moving scenes.
>
> *The Hour Between Woman and Guitar* is a rollercoaster ride into the
> world of Clemens J. Setz. He reveals its inner order, its secrets and
> principles: power and the lack thereof, the search for meaning and loss of
> orientation, submission and love in all forms and shapes: nurturing,
> respectful, obsessed love, love as delusion and as a tool of manipulation.
> And of revenge. So subtle and painful that the question of who is the
> victim and who the perpetrator leads into a nameless abyss. +
>
>
>
> https://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/the_hour_between_woman_and_guitar-clemens_j_setz_42495.html?d_view=english
>
> Am 11.12.19 um 15:32 schrieb rich:
>
> Soon the curtain of one's literary heroes gracing us with new work will
> close. The current obsessions of new and upcoming fiction writers I have
> found are not mine, worthy as they are. I wont be one of those grumps
> bemoaning the ascendance of a new generation of writers. But it does sadden
> me a bit that soon there won't be anyone left for me to put on my personal
> pedestal. Part of me realizes this is just natural. But I will miss the
> excitement  I once had.
> musing on a snowy winter's day
>
> rich
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> .
>
>
>
>