The Public Burning

[Mark Kohut]

Back when deep diving into Pynchon I learned a little, what should not have
been surprising, of how Nixon was hated by writers and artists and how many
rose to decent literary heights in their satiric fictions.

In the issue of EPOCH wherein PYNCHON had his ‘in Venice’ story there were
at least three scoring on NIXON. This is 1959.

There is part of a whole book on Nixon’s cultural appearances.
 ,….virtually Forgotten writers like Vance Bourjaily.

Roth’s later scorcher with the Swiftian moment of
Nixon unable to handle the question that since he was pro-life why did he
not condemn the MIA-Lai massacre in which a pregnant woman and her fetus
were killed?

Everyone who mattered hated Nixon rightly and
He was an a cultural obsession.


On Sun, May 11, 2025 at 11:09 AM rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Glad you like it Joseph. I think you'll like the ending. But I think what
> the makes the book soar is that Nixon is a full-fledged, full-bodied
> character, not just what we would expect if it was just a dull retread of
> Nixon the man in real life.
>
> rich
>
> On Fri, May 9, 2025 at 11:11 PM J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> > I’m about 200 pages into it, having read Huck Out West and some short
> > stories some years ago, I thought I'd check it out.
> > It is an intense read. The character of Uncle Sam is the most  credible
> > and terrifying attempt to give voice to an essential part of the american
> > spirit I have found; or maybe not exactly the American spirit but the
> > spirit energy of the US government. This Uncle Sam is odiously self
> > righteous aggressive, propagating hate as freedom, but comically
> poetically
> > macho country boy  .   It is fucking mesmerizing and impossible to
> > describe.    I’m now at the place where Nixon has been mentally reviewing
> > the trial of the Rosenbergs as though he were the defense attorney and
> > seeing the high probability that it was staged by the FBI and surrounded
> by
> > the   influences on Judge  and Prosecutor  of the high pitch of McCarthy
> > anticommunism.  The details with which this case is being reviewed is
> > stunning and as impressive as journalism as it is as fiction. Coover's
> > point not being as far as I can tell to argue innocence, but a very
> > disturbing fever pitch of manipulation of very little evidence and  a
> very
> > incompetent defense.
> >    I agree that it resonates with recent events in provocative ways.
> >
> > Coover may be the greatest iconoclast of recent US literature.
> >
> >
> >
> > On May 1, 2025, at 11:50 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all
> >
> > If you want something to tickle your whiskers re: the rogue nature of the
> > current administration, read the Public Burning, Coover's masterpiece.
> Much
> > of it resonates even more today though it was great before the King in
> > Yellow showed up.
> >
> > having a re-re-reread with new recognitions
> >
> > rich
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> >
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>