one of the

Wed Apr 15 21:12:15 UTC 2020

He's no Tolstoy but who is?

I don't know what you mean with Russian (?) bear-baiting (??).

Perhaps it would be a good thing if you go looking for the reason why you
didn't like it. What you name as such cannot be it, I think.

In fact I believe that the Trump presidency is a humiliation for (the US
of) America – one that is not felt by nearly 45% of your fellow citizens
but by nearly 100% of your fellow P-listers, perhaps even some Canadians.
Thus some (otherwise not understandable) over-reactions by one or the other
of you. How dare we non-Americans speak about things that concern the land
of the free? I tried to tell you that anybody who read Mak's (another
European) book after Steinbeck's Travels With Charley could see Trump
coming. To no avail, it seems.

And I'm not playing dumb when I say I don't see what's wrong about what he
writes about groups in Zoom or a virtual elsewhere.

But I love Vineland and try to chip in from time to time. ("The illegal we
do immediately": that was a German asshole. Tried to be funny perhaps.)

Am Mi., 15. Apr. 2020 um 21:25 Uhr schrieb Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com
>:

> Jochen,
>
> Sorry I didn't like it. Sorry I do not read to the end of pieces I do not
> like. That's been used against before as if wading thru the rest will
> eliminate his mistakes. Your ad hominem jab and
> Russian [my ancestry; Ukranian actually] bear-baiting is beneath you.
>
> He's wrong on Cuomo; he is wrong or else too solipsistic for me when he
> writes what he does about groups in ZOOM,
> and others here can judge him as they will.
>
> If Orwell is one touchstone of lucid prose, one reason is he got it down
> right.
>
> Harlequin romances and many bad books are nothing but lucid prose. Some
> lucid windowpane writers' windows
> are not worth looking out of---or, in his case if it is lucidly about his
> experience of quarantine, looking further into.
>
> All Best, but I'd rather be reading Tolstoy,
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 1:52 PM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> So you judge something bad without reading it to the end? Perhaps you
>> have missed the best part. And Logic 101 tells you that to say
>> "You can still find ‘crowds’, but they’re made up of people you already
>> know but can’t risk seeing ‘in real life’, brought to you by Zoom or
>> FaceTime"
>> doesn't exclude to be on Zoom videos with someone you don't know. What is
>> the matter, Mark? I know you know that but you had to take the cheap shot
>> anyway? And that Cuomo doesn't frown on walks is that an universally
>> acknowledged truth? What did Shatz do to you without hitting a nerve?
>>
>>
>>
>> Am Mi., 15. Apr. 2020 um 17:44 Uhr schrieb Mark Kohut <
>> mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> OK. Lucid it is. Like a powerful lens tinted in the wrong shade, Through
>>> a lucid glass darkly, as that famous line goes.
>>>
>>> Finding four things I judge wrong--one or two factually--others in
>>> emphasis made me stop reading it.
>>>
>>> Too much lucid and true writing around for me. This piece won't last
>>> because it is bad, imho.
>>>
>>> Others' milage may vary.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 11:38 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Mark, I said lucid, not that he's right in everything – that I could
>>>> not say without checking a whole lot for which I have no time. But perhaps
>>>> he put his finger on something that you are not fond of, in context of the
>>>> humiliation he speaks of.
>>>>
>>>> And to quote M&E
>>>>
>>>> ‘Man lives from nature,’ he wrote, ‘and he must maintain a continuing
>>>> dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental
>>>> life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for
>>>> man is a part of nature.’ ‘Let us not flatter ourselves overmuch on account
>>>> of our human conquest of nature,’ E warned in *Dialectics of Nature*.
>>>> ‘For each such conquest takes its revenge on us.’
>>>>
>>>> after giving us Withers about toilets and garbage and baseball – that's
>>>> what I call good journalism.
>>>>
>>>> Am Mi., 15. Apr. 2020 um 13:57 Uhr schrieb Mark Kohut <
>>>> mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> And, the better, less tendentious, more true quote from Camus is the
>>>>> feeling of
>>>>> being an internal exile, imao. Since almost everyone we encounter in *The
>>>>> Plague*
>>>>> does more than mark time. That applies to the people we readers are
>>>>> not like; those
>>>>> who are 'simply' marking time.
>>>>>
>>>>> And I personally push back on everyone who says they can not tell what
>>>>> day of the week it is.
>>>>> Only writers marking time in general. An Ivory-pure, if they are
>>>>> honest, percentage---(98.x%) knows
>>>>> what fucking day of the week it is.
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, Jochen, I am not fond.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Apr 15, 2020 at 5:24 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> most lucid texts I read about Corona and the US of A:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n08/adam-shatz/shipwrecked?utm_campaign=20200414%20blog&utm_content=ukrw_nonsubs_blog&utm_medium=email&utm_source=LRB%20blog%20email
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>