(np) Palast on Putin

[Mark Thibodeau]

Oh, damn. That description sounds amazing. I'll be picking it up as well.

A spike to the brain doesn't sound THAT much different from enduring the
likes of (insert the corporate news delivery vector that you find most
vexatious, here)!

Jerky

On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 3:11 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Knowing nothing about him, I look him up and find this:
>
> "In Sorokin, Russia found its Pynchon." —Vladislav Davidzon, Bookforum
>
> O boy O boy...I'm waiting too now...
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 10:44 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> waiting for this one. Sorokin's earlier book Day of the Oprichnik is
>> scarily prescient considering the present day
>>
>> rich
>>
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Telluria-Vladimir-Sorokin/dp/1681376334/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1648348947&sr=1-3
>>
>> *in the warring, neo-feudal society of this cross-genre novel for fans of
>> Cormac McCarthy and William Gibson, the greatest treasure is a dose of
>> tellurium—a magical drug administered by a spike through the brain.*
>>
>> *Telluria* is set in the future, when a devastating holy war between
>> Europe
>> and Islam has succeeded in returning the world to the torpor and
>> disorganization of the Middle Ages. Europe, China, and Russia have all
>> broken up. The people of the world now live in an array of little nations
>> that are like puzzle pieces, each cultivating its own ideology or
>> identity,
>> a neo-feudal world of fads and feuds, in which no one power dominates.
>> What
>> does, however, travel everywhere is the appetite for the special substance
>> tellurium. A spike of tellurium, driven into the brain by an expert hand,
>> offers a transforming experience of bliss; incorrectly administered, it
>> means death.
>>
>> The fifty chapters of *Telluria* map out this brave new world from fifty
>> different angles, as Vladimir Sorokin, always a virtuoso of the word,
>> introduces us to, among many other figures, partisans and princes,
>> peasants
>> and party leaders, a new Knights Templar, a harem of phalluses, and a
>> dog-headed poet and philosopher who feasts on carrion from the
>> battlefield.
>> The book is an immense and sumptuous tapestry of the word, carnivalesque
>> and cruel,
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 6:32 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Yes, it's true,  Solzhenitsyn WAS more than a bit of an asshole.
>> >
>> > And not that great a writer, either. Ever tried to slog your way through
>> > the Gulag Archipelago? Yikes.
>> >
>> > I recommend picking up Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. instead. A
>> far
>> > superior and more relevant work when it comes to the mysteries, both
>> macro
>> > and micro, of the human heart.
>> >
>> > Jerky
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 5:15 PM jody2.718 via Pynchon-l <
>> > pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > > Larry Summers- I'd half forgotten about that clown. What a disaster,
>> > along
>> > > with the rest of the geniuses at Harvard, like Andrei Schleifer, who
>> were
>> > > going to "fix" Russia with "Shock Therapy," and ended up creating a
>> > feeding
>> > > trough for the Oligarchs, and maybe themselves. But Pinochet was only
>> a
>> > > more recent model for Putin. From an historical perspective, Putin is
>> > more
>> > > of what Solzhenitsyn was hoping for- a Tsar-like figure in concert
>> with
>> > the
>> > > Orthodox Church that would restore morality and order, as opposed to
>> the
>> > > decadence of the West, which, in his mind, was destroying Russia at
>> that
>> > > time. In fact, Solzhenitsyn, who passed in 2008, welcomed Putin.
>> > > Solzhenitsyn also could not conceive of Ukraine being anything other
>> > than a
>> > > part of Russia. Autocratic?- no problem, deeply ingrained in the
>> Russian
>> > > psyche.
>> > >
>> > > Right wing fascism has deep historical roots in Russia. No way was it
>> > > going to be transformed into some Harvard version of western
>> capitalism
>> > by
>> > > "Shock Therapy". Palast is right on.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> >
>> _____________________________________________________________________________________________
>> > >
>> > > "Vladimir Putin did not arrive from outer space on an abalone
>> > > shell........."
>> > > --
>> > > 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
>>
>