Don DeLillo (2 Viewers)

[Mormon Nailer]

So narrow a focus?
How about a moratorium that includes Magical Realism and the campus novel?

I liked Charotte Simmons

 

[cephalopod]

hyper reality is something to do with the german band scooter

 

[Mitchum]

what's hyperreality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
A brief definition.

 

[jane]

So narrow a focus?
How about a moratorium that includes Magical Realism and the campus novel?

Nah, those aren't so universally annoying as post-9/11 stuff. Although it might not be a 100% awful thing if someone wrote a novel about all the bad fucking art that was created after 9/11 and how you weren't supposed to be too critical of it because it was such a 'difficult time'. Fuck that, there's no excuse for bad art.

9/11 gave everyone a story to tell, but 'having a story to tell' was quickly conflated with 'having a story that needs to be told through artistic means'. Not so cool.

 

[Mitchum]

Well I think it's almost churlish not to expect a great American writer to comment on such a significant event in modern American history. A writer's job is to make sense of the world imo.

 

[jane]

Well I think it's almost churlish not to expect a great American writer to comment on such a significant event in modern American history. A writer's job is to make sense of the world imo.

No, I wouldn't disagree that it's significant or worth discussion, I just think that, of all people, a great American writer should be able to offer something new and interesting. And six years on, it doesn't offer anything new, not even with half a decade of hindsight and consequences.

I do think it's significant, but it's like a literary crutch.

 

[cephalopod]

Remember the old editions of Underworld? With the twin towers looming out of the fog?

 

[cephalopod]

Actually come to think of it, in Underworld, the point he makes about people impulsively watching Kennedy getting shot again and again and again..as well as the Texas killer (think a fictional creation in the book) shooting randomly into a passing car...I actually remember thinking about those episodes on 9/11 while impulsively watching the twin towers fall again and again...

 

[Mormon Nailer]

No, I wouldn't disagree that it's significant or worth discussion, I just think that, of all people, a great American writer should be able to offer something new and interesting. And six years on, it doesn't offer anything new, not even with half a decade of hindsight and consequences.

I do think it's significant, but it's like a literary crutch.

When people stopped flying after 911 there was a consequent increase in the number of caar deaths. 1500 people died.

 

[cephalopod]

No, I wouldn't disagree that it's significant or worth discussion, I just think that, of all people, a great American writer should be able to offer something new and interesting. And six years on, it doesn't offer anything new, not even with half a decade of hindsight and consequences.

I do think it's significant, but it's like a literary crutch.

If I were an American writer I would cower from approaching it...career wrecking buzz.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Remember the old editions of Underworld? With the twin towers looming out of the fog?

I think that was the real "genius" of 911. Personally if I was a terrorist I would never have thought of WTC as a target.

I would have though Pentagon, White House, House of Congresss etc., and I was was always bemused by Al Queda's preoccupation with the WTC - I thought is indicated a kind of niaveity about western culture.

Looks like I was wrong.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

If I were an American writer I would cower from approaching it...career wrecking buzz.

I think the stories of the handful of people who used it as an opportunity to just walk away from thier current life would be intersting and worth exploring, but the kind of "I remember where I was on that day - nothing was ever the same" type stuff, YAWN.

 

[jane]

If I were an American writer I would cower from approaching it...career wrecking buzz.

I think there is a need to acknowledge that the world did change on that day, but like Mormon points out, it might be more interesting to tell a story that uses an increase in road deaths, at least as a backdrop, or some other tangential thing that happened as a result of people's responses to it. I didn't know about the road deaths thing, but it doesn't surprise me.

I don't think the effects need be avoided as a topic because so much *has* changed, but if someone is going to tell a story about the day itself, it should be something that hasn't been told, or telling it in a new way, or at least an interesting way.

I remember feeling like I wasn't sure how to pass the time. Couldn't really go anywhere, and needed a break from the chaos, and I remember talking with people about how awful it was that so many people in the world live like this every single day, and that we hoped the government wouldn't respond by bombing anyone.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Also 911 was the beginning of something rotten whereas the previous big event in the US psyche the JFK assination was more the end of something good - especially if yoou were the novel writing type.

It's probbly much easier to write about the lost possabilities of that time than things like Patriot Act etc now.

 

[jane]

I think the stories of the handful of people who used it as an opportunity to just walk away from thier current life would be intersting and worth exploring, but the kind of "I remember where I was on that day - nothing was ever the same" type stuff, YAWN.

Yeah, this sort of thing is a bit more interesting. Although I do also think that people who were not in NY or Washington were as deeply affected as those who were -- those who weren't 'there' physically were very much there.

I think as a way of understanding why they felt so present despite not being anywhere near it, there was also an interesting phenomenon where people were quite desperate to connect themselves personally to it. A few months later, my dad was at some event back in Rhode Island, and the local fire chief went up to him and said, "I heard your daughter is a WTC survivor" and shook his hand and stuff. He thought it was odd because I was in Jersey City and was meant to go in at 9 to meet some mates for breakfast, but I was too hungover to do it, and anyway, the PATH train I would have been on was the one my friend's housemate was on, which was diverted and everyone was fine, so no 'survivor' at all. But in this dude's estimation, I'd gone from a hungover twentysomething sleeping off a gin haze on a Jersey City sofa, to some kind of 'survivor'. I do remember feeling a sense of having had a narrow escape, but it was probably more a factor of the shock of the whole thing than anything else.

There's also another angle, which is like this academic I heard at a conference who said that he was too liberal to have been affected by 9/11, suggesting that because he is so far to the left, he can transcend the effects of a world-changing event.

I do know someone (not well, only met her once or twice), who cashed in on the money available for 'survivors' because she happened to work within the zone of Manhattan where buildings were closed off. She got something like 5 grand for her troubles. Also, within 24 hours, you could buy souvenir t-shirts. Fucked up.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

There's also another angle, which is like this academic I heard at a conference who said that he was too liberal to have been affected by 9/11, suggesting that because he is so far to the left, he can transcend the effects of a world-changing event.

that sounds more like a proper delillo. in philip roths version the right wing government and university board of directors will drive him from his post and he'll wind up bitter and old, boring the ear off someone foolish enough to listen to him every night

 

[Mormon Nailer]

There's also another angle, which is like this academic I heard at a conference who said that he was too liberal to have been affected by 9/11, suggesting that because he is so far to the left, he can transcend the effects of a world-changing event.

It's easy to fall into a trap of comparing the 3000 killed to the number of Iraqis killed since and things like that to say the event ovarall is insignificant and what is everyone bawling aboout.

I wonder how Irish people would feell if we applied the same mathematics to the Stardust?

 

[jane]

It's easy to fall into a trap of comparing the 3000 killed to the number of Iraqis killed since and things like that to say the event ovarall is insignificant and what is everyone bawling aboout.

I wonder how Irish people would feell if we applied the same mathematics to the Stardust?

Exactly. I mean, the world did change, Americans and many other Westerners really did lose our innocence, so it's not the numbers.

However, I do think that the mathematics of it are in themselves interesting. Because 50,000 people worked in the buildings, they started with newsflashes of 'up to 50,000 dead', which was, of course, not a totally unreasonable assumption. But I remember watching the coverage of the Asian tsunami, where the first estimates were 3000 dead, although they were showing this MASSIVE geographical area, and I'm going, "What, was EVERYONE away?" I don't know how well I'm making this point, but I felt like there was a very significant difference in how those lives are valued in general (as in 1000 brown or yellow people=1 white people) and how they do body counts. Starting at the maximum in the WTC, and yet starting at the minumum for the tsunami.

It also crossed my mind that there were other factors. One: I was watching the tsunami coverage on Irish or UK television, not American media (who do shock first and ask questions later, if at all), two: perhaps a lesson had been learned from the WTC from instantly assuming everyone was dead. Still, I kind of wonder if the way stats like that are calculated has changed since the huge overestimation of 9/11's casualties, or if such an overestimation was an isolated event.

Oh, also, the academic was an American who was just trying to play 'leftier than thou'.

 

[c0De_n1NjA]

i like stories

 

[Super Dexta]

i can't believe this thread came along after I (i) ordered Falling Man in through work (ii) took ages to get around to reading it (iii) found it incredibly tedious and couldn't be arsed finishing it and (iv) made a hames of returning it.

totally have the hots for White Noise and Underworld though. like everyone.