Posts by Joe Wylie
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. . . it never crossed my mind to treat Jack Gladney with detached scorn.
Of course not - apart from being the only character with any real complexity, he's the one you're invited to identify with. It's his poor gormless wife, along with the semi-sentient denizens of the supermarkets and malls, that you're invited to despise. Because everyone looks a bit stupid when they're at McDonalds it doesn't follow that they're like that 100% of the time. White Noise panders to a certain smugness that wants to believe that they are.
From what you appear to have drawn from White Noise it would seem that you've not simply read it, you've deconstructed it. How else would you have made the mediaeval connection? It certainly isn't apparent for someone like me who lacks the wider scholarship. Good for you, I'm sure the experience was worthwhile.
My beef with White Noise is the way it panders to academic complacency by portraying a largely imaginary lumpenproletariat. Adults may attempt to lose themselves in consumerism, but generally they don't fear death in the way DeLillo's fumbling rubes do. Do we identify with poor Babette's fears? Of course not, thanks to the self-awareness gained from postmodern theory - or whatever - we like to think that we've come to terms with the concept of personal annihilation. What happens to her is what happens to lesser beings.
Put the word radio in the lyrics of your song - or better still, in the title - and they'll play it. Set your novel in a campus and they'll teach it. Everyone likes to see something of their lives reflected in art. The problem I have with teaching campuslit such as White Noise is that it tends to reinforce a rather smug academic isolation.
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@joe
The World War Two backstory of Zadie Smith's White Teeth takes place in a setting that's rather reminiscent of The Zone in Gravity's Rainbow. Nice imaginative bit of literary thievery.
you're assuming she read it.
Ffs che, I'm posting a fluffy opinion on someone's blog, not submitting a goddam term-paper.
LoTR - the smartest thing Peter Jackson ever did was get rid of 'Hey nonny nonny, Dingdongadildo, merry old Tom Bonkadoll'.
Ghod yes. Tom Bombadil, titan of twee.
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Commisar Trotter has a nice Animal Farm ring to it.
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i have a sneaking suspicion this took place in australia.
Yes.
BTW, considering the sheer wealth of Good Ideas in Pynchon's first three novels, I find it surprising how few authors have stolen from them. The World War Two backstory of Zadie Smith's White Teeth takes place in a setting that's rather reminiscent of The Zone in Gravity's Rainbow. Nice imaginative bit of literary thievery. -
i only got as far as the S&M nazis in gravity's rainbow before i was distracted by a shiny object that wasn't written in the longest most convoluted and mind-numbingly confusing sentences piled one atop each other in an attempt to create a style of prose i experimented with years ago and rejected because the other people who got into it were stoners that i happened to be living with at the time and were genuinely amused at the sorts of crazy ideas i was coming up with and regurgitating for them in these long crazy stories that would have driven any sane person round the fcking twist.
Laundromats. Took me around nine months of weekly washes to finish GR. It was the 70s, and it was fun. For some reason I assumed that it'd be a book that would remain beyond the reach of academia. Now the buggers think they own it.
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. . White Noise alone is enough to justify his reputation IMO.
Two-dimensional lesser-mortal characters who blunder about driven by a mumbling fear of death, in a way that DeLillo's intended gentle readership is encouraged to treat with detached scorn? Sorry, academics who praise White Noise's take on consumerism would gain more insight from a night spent stacking shelves at Pak 'n Save. That said, I'm quite prepared to concede that the book went right over my little head.
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. Back when I was a wanky pretentious teenager, I tried to read Les Miserables in french. What a tedious bunch of rubbish.
As I've never read it I'll take your word on that. However the French version that screened on Australia's SBS a few years back, with their trademark super-legible subtitles - Gerard Depardieu as Valjean, John Malkovich as Javert - was a bloody ripper.
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anything by philip k dick.
I'll bet then that you haven't read Confessions of a Crap Artist.
Maybe it's because it's - as far as I know - the only non-SF thing he ever wrote.
Also The Man in the High Castle isn't half bad.And just to get it off my chest, Don DeLillo sucks. His ponderous opinion pieces are all about sneaking through a few copies of Wired in order to appear (cough splutter) "relevant" to the fawning literary clique who dote on his pontifications. The sort of critical acclaim he has heaped on him is mostly about the blind leading the blind.
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I love Pynchon, but really struggled with Mason & Dixon__and to this day haven't finished it. Having lost my copy doesn't help.
You can have mine - I'm sure I won't re-read it. Agree that the first three - __V, The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow - are great reads. You can still enjoy GR in random chunks, but Vineland is a pale echo. Gave up on Against the Day earlier this year about 400 pages in. Once Pynchon did brilliant, now he seems only able to manage clever.
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. . . 'virtually' means 'actually'.
Bloody actually.
He was given a military haircut and was told that he was a New Englander from Boston and that he was on holiday from his job with the London office of the Guaranty Trust Company. He was reminded to ask for the 'check' rather the 'bill', to say 'cab' instead of 'taxi' and (this from Leiter) to avoid words of more than two syllables. ('You can get through any American conversation,' advised Leiter, 'with "Yeah", "Nope" and "Sure".') The English word to be avoided at all costs, added Leiter, was 'Ectually'. Bond had said that this word was not part of his vocabulary.
Ian Fleming, Live and Let Die.