Major Pynchon comparison novel.

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I have never heard of Paimon. Interesting, thanks.

The author of the review calls the name of the character "Pierre 
Melville" a "knowing gesture". It certainly is, but he does not seem to 
have heard about Jean-Pierre Melville, née Grumbach, who adopted the 
pseudonym Melville as a tribute to Herman while with the Resistance 
during World War II.




Am 07.08.2021 um 19:56 schrieb Mark Thibodeau:

> It does indeed look interesting, but would somebody for the love of
> Godzilla please explain to me what the deal is with the goetic demon lord
> PAIMON making appearances in so many pop culture contexts in recent years?!
>
> I mean, before the release of the film Hereditary, you'd pretty much have
> to be dipping pretty darn deep into the well of Western esoterica even just
> to have seen or heard the name! But now, starting with Ari Aster's
> aforementioned foundations-shattering horror masterpiece, that sock-puppet
> camel jockey's* Punchinello puss is popping up all over the place.
>
> Cases in point? There's HEREDITARY, of course, where he plays a massively
> important, one could almost say starring role.
>
> He also turns out to be the main baddie in the underseen 'female cop alone
> overnight in a soon-to-be decommissioned precinct building' movie, LAST
> SHIFT.  Which I recommend as a Halloween watch. It's not sophisticated in
> the way Aster's films are... but heck, that's okay sometimes, right? The
> interesting thing about this is the fact that Last Shift came out in
> 2014... a full four years before Hereditary. So his recent flurry of
> appearances can't solely be laid at the feet of the popularity of
> Hereditary.
>
> Paimon is also mentioned as a potential possessor of a main character in
> the 4th episode of the excellent HULU horror anthology series MONSTERLAND
> (2020). It's not much, but considering the character's former cultural
> obscurity... it's actually a lot!
>
> There's at least one more mention that I recall taking place, in either a
> recent Brazilian or Spanish horror film (there have been quite a few decent
> ones to come out lately), and that I'm trying to remember the title. I
> should have taken a note at the time, because I remember being struck by
> yet another Paimon mention in a horror flick (Was it TERRIFIED? or THE
> NIGHTSHIFTER?) and I thought the topic had the potential to be a decent
> little blog article for a horror website, and I'd like to maybe have
> written that article.
>
> And now we've got Keenan's novel, wherein "we encounter Rehberg, 'a
> theologian and a soldier of fortune' in Africa, where he meets with Pierre
> Melville. Together they create the joint identity of Paimon to publish
> strange science fiction." The text even contains "a whole novella by Paimon
> about climate change" for Pete's sake! Is this not enough to set your
> Pynchonian Spidey Sense a-tingle (not necessarily the novel stuff, but
> everything else mentioned above)? Like... are we witnessing in real time an
> example of conscious cultural creation? Is Paimon/Paymon destined to become
> some kind of archetype, belief paradigm, or short-hand for something else?
> Something we're not quite sure about yet?
>
> Anyhoo, forgive my NP ramblings. The book actually sounds worth picking up,
> by I'll wait for the trade paperback.
>
> Cheers!
> yer old pal Jerky
>
> *Not racist as he is literally riding on a camel in most images of him,
> plus I don't think the denizens of the Netherworld have a "race" per se.
>
> On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 11:38 AM Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Looks fun.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 6:52 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/07/monument-maker-by-david-keenan-review-an-experimental-compendium?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1628339122
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