SLPAD - 95 - "Low-Lands" - 8

[Mark Kohut]

My contra opinion is seldom has there been more world literature from
everywhere and America that
I wish I had time to read....

Historical turmoil...from before the pandemic and thru and since is
usually great for literature...seems
true to me again....

On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 3:59 PM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> I won't claim literature is dead, but it sure seems to take alot more time
> to find new work I really like. I was just thinking the other day to try to
> name 5 current writers (not including Pynchon, DeLillo, etc.) I look
> forward to seeing new work. I can't.
>
> rich
>
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2023 at 1:23 AM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > (Re: New World Writing -  "& so forth" doesn't mean trailing off in a
> long
> > tail, either: Algren, Margaret Mead f'r Pete's sake, Ionesco, Gide,
> > Ellison, Donald Barthelme, Wendell Berry, Dylan Thomas - it's almost as
> > exciting as looking at the authors in old issues of, in a different
> genre,
> > Ramparts Magazine eg.
> >
> > (Mea culpa - there's lots of great writers now & I can hardly name any.
> > Just read a Hernan Diaz book, _In the Distance_ though - beautiful,
> > depressing in a bearable way, because thought-provoking  - hypothetical
> > movie pitch: "ya know Cormac McCarthy's _The Road_? It was ever thus,
> even
> > if you were a big Swede." Probably will follow up with reading his new
> one,
> > _Trust_. Also kind of stoked about Zadie Smith's new one.)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The Flange abode perched on a cliff overlooking the Sound. It had been
> > built vaguely to resemble an English cottage back in the ’20’s by an
> > Episcopal minister who ran bootleg stuff in from Canada on the side. It
> > seemed everyone living on the north shore of Long Island at the time was
> > engaged in some kind of smuggling, because there are all kinds of little
> > spits and bays, necks and inlets which the Feds still have no idea exist.
> > The minister must have taken a romantic attitude toward the whole
> business:
> > the house rose in a big mossy tumulus out of the earth, its color that of
> > one of the shaggier prehistoric beasts. Inside were priest-holes and
> > concealed passageways and oddly angled rooms; and in the cellar, leading
> > from the rumpus room, innumerable tunnels, which writhed away radically
> > like the tentacles of a spastic octopus into dead ends, storm drains,
> > abandoned sewers and occasionally a secret wine cellar.
> >
> >
> > What does this say about Flange?
> > I don't see him as an inheritor of wealth, but he had to have had some
> > familial help - maybe he is an inheritor after all: he put in his time in
> > the Navy and segued (afaict from the text) right into bringing Cindy to
> > this house which, I mean yes there were some great deals in those days,
> but
> > on savings from Navy wages? & I don't imagine him as a fixer-upper
> person.
> >
> > Maybe he finished law school & went into the Navy as a (communications)
> > officer, coming out into a prearranged job?
> >
> > Anyway, not to overwork Bartleby (he would prefer not to comply anyway)
> but
> > I'm convinced Flange is an attorney, and has become  disgusted with what
> > he's been doing in that capacity to the extent that he's developed a
> > malaise so familiar to readers of all the excellent tales & explications
> in
> > New World Writing et al  that the only text required to summon a full
> > picture of the loathsomeness of his work is what he tells somebody's
> > secretary at Wasp and Winsome: "Flange. No."
> >
> > Though, at some point, he did put in the immense work of passing the bar
> > etc and made enough sense in interactions with less-disaffected
> attorneys,
> > clients, and superiors to sojourn at Wasp and Winsome for seven years,
> > reaping rewards commensurate with that position. So on the one hand, I
> > respect his intellect for success on those terms *and* his discernment in
> > rejection of a career many times depicted convincingly as
> soul-destroying.
> > But on the other hand, what he's going to do instead, even in its
> inception
> > in the rumpus room, is quite unattractive IMHO. At least at first blush.
> >
> > But that's getting ahead of the wave, as it were.
> >
> > This house description is a generous, if not downright lavish, detailed
> > description, foreshadowing Slothrop's desk, or the desk at the beginning
> of
> > M&D.
> >
> > And we'd best unpack it a little.
> >
> > But right now, all I can think about is what it says about Flange: if
> he's
> > not a one-percenter, he's got to have something going for him, whether it
> > be familial largesse (though we get nothing about his roots) or amazing
> > competence at the practice of some very lucrative and miserable branch of
> > law, or oh! maybe it's Cindy's family money (nothing in the text to
> suggest
> > that, tho': he supposedly "dragged" Cindy from her mother's flat in
> Jackson
> > Heights, which is nice but not posh, right? Or maybe her mother's
> divorced
> > from a posh father who dotes on Cindy manifesting in a house as a wedding
> > gift?) - whichever way he got there, Dennis Flange is perched on a
> catbird
> > seat, we already see enough to surmise he will be letting things slide -
> is
> > this to be a cautionary tale or something else?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>