Maybe you’ve been reading the discussion about Stoner, which is now widely regarded as a forgotten masterpiece of novelhood. The term “masterpiece” seems to have undergone hyperinflation; perhaps austerity measures are needed. It did serve as stimulus for some LOL moments.
There’s not much of a ‘tradition’ of it in the UK, but this was one of the few films I attended where heckling, whooping and answering characters took place among the audience.
Raimi does know how to provide an old-fashioned entertainment-fest. Less pompous than Cameron, less kitschy than Burton, and less offensive than Spielberg – Raimi’s probably the best for that kind of thing. Darkman and Spider-Man (especially the 2nd one) are very satisfying too – and I say that as someone thoroughly sick of superhero movies.
I also got a kick out of the recent Drag Me to Hell. Won’t give the Gypsy an extension on her mortgage? Sucks for you. Raimi quit school to work on Evil Dead 1, which I haven’t seen. That one probably features some MSU gear as well.
Evil Dead is mainly interesting for Raimi’s application of animation stylistics (exaggeration, metamorphosis) on live action image. This results in a fairly unique black satire. While Evil Dead was satirizing the conventions of horror in the then-actual postmodern key, Drag Me To Hell shows that he’s graduated in the meantime to full-on social satirist. At least it’s the only socialist horror I saw in the last coupla years.
“Late in the day I walked with Anand Dass in the streets near my hotel. He looked heavier, moving through the soft air in a Michigan State t-shirt and faded jeans.”
Did you decide to finish it? I thought I’d read all the 80s novels, but obviously I haven’t. I put a hold on ‘Great Jones Street’, from the 70s, since those I really have not read, and their system seems shitty and it’s disappeared. I’m going to try it again, though. There’s a famous bar I’ve never been to, but was supposed to once, called The Great Jones Bar. Down just above Chinatown.
I should finish by tonight or tomorrow at the latest. This was another book that demanded more concentrated attention than I had been giving it, and it finally grabbed me. In reading DeLillo’s books I’m struck by the singular importance of mood. One could fault The Names because the characters, mostly expatriate operatives extending the American global reach, are nearly interchangeable in voice and attitude. But they all carry slightly different aspects of the mood that seeps up from the world, clinging to them individually and collectively as they skim across the surface from continent to continent. The story is even less central to The Names than it is to Point Omega; both share the intelligence and the lurking paranoia. I’m sure DeLillo has been deemed prescient from this book, though his Middle Eastern terrorists have nothing really in common with Al Qaeda. There is frequent reference though to US financial and political activities in the region — even the term “austerity” is used in the context of IMF loans to Turkey and Greece.
Yesterday I found my copy of Gravity’s Rainbow on the shelf. In flipping through it I realized that in something I wrote I had either reinvented or unconsciously stolen a central conceit from it, namely the “secret power” by which Slothrop forecasts the striking of disastrous events. Maybe I’ll slip into that little section of text an offhand tip of the hat to Pynchon.
The guy wearing the Michigan State t-shirt in DeLillo’s book is an art history professor at MSU, but he, like many of the other characters, seems to have some sort of covert intelligence function. MSU was notorious for its involvement with the CIA in setting up the South Vietnamese regime. They also helped keep the Shah of Iran in power, which is more directly related to the setting and events of The Names.
Yes, you’d better. I imagine I’ll finish it when it comes back, but like being nonchalant about it. Thoroughly enjoying Pynchon’s ‘dirty old man’ book from 2009, ‘Inherent Vice’, which is fantastically skillfully crude. I didn’t know it would be this good–it’s trash in a sense, but incredibly entertaining and wicked beyond all belief.
Yes, DeLillo may well be prescient, though, I’m quite sure such psychic things do exist but they neeedn’t be debated. Someone already told him that he had been from what he wrote about WTC in ‘Mao II’. I think I’m going to read ‘The Names’, though. From your descriptiion, it sounds like another gorgeous DeLillo work once you’ve found the momentum. isn’t it interesting that Pynchon doesn’t stay serious as he gets older (a year or two younger tha deLillo), but DeLillo writes books that he is himself taking very seriously. ‘Inherent Vice’ very often and without giving the slightest flying fuck thoroughly just indulges in shtick. It’s so funny it may even free me from feeling I have to finish ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. In that case, I won’t, because it will be Pynchon who gave the permission. Have you read it? I remember everybody was talking about that huge tome Against the Day, but don’t even remember when Inherent vice came out. Never read a funnier book.
Ktismatics 
This is a forgotten masterpiece of animation.
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Maybe you’ve been reading the discussion about Stoner, which is now widely regarded as a forgotten masterpiece of novelhood. The term “masterpiece” seems to have undergone hyperinflation; perhaps austerity measures are needed. It did serve as stimulus for some LOL moments.
LikeLike
There’s not much of a ‘tradition’ of it in the UK, but this was one of the few films I attended where heckling, whooping and answering characters took place among the audience.
Raimi does know how to provide an old-fashioned entertainment-fest. Less pompous than Cameron, less kitschy than Burton, and less offensive than Spielberg – Raimi’s probably the best for that kind of thing. Darkman and Spider-Man (especially the 2nd one) are very satisfying too – and I say that as someone thoroughly sick of superhero movies.
LikeLike
I also got a kick out of the recent Drag Me to Hell. Won’t give the Gypsy an extension on her mortgage? Sucks for you. Raimi quit school to work on Evil Dead 1, which I haven’t seen. That one probably features some MSU gear as well.
LikeLike
Evil Dead is mainly interesting for Raimi’s application of animation stylistics (exaggeration, metamorphosis) on live action image. This results in a fairly unique black satire. While Evil Dead was satirizing the conventions of horror in the then-actual postmodern key, Drag Me To Hell shows that he’s graduated in the meantime to full-on social satirist. At least it’s the only socialist horror I saw in the last coupla years.
LikeLike
“Late in the day I walked with Anand Dass in the streets near my hotel. He looked heavier, moving through the soft air in a Michigan State t-shirt and faded jeans.”
– Don DeLillo, The Names, 1989
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Did you decide to finish it? I thought I’d read all the 80s novels, but obviously I haven’t. I put a hold on ‘Great Jones Street’, from the 70s, since those I really have not read, and their system seems shitty and it’s disappeared. I’m going to try it again, though. There’s a famous bar I’ve never been to, but was supposed to once, called The Great Jones Bar. Down just above Chinatown.
LikeLike
I should finish by tonight or tomorrow at the latest. This was another book that demanded more concentrated attention than I had been giving it, and it finally grabbed me. In reading DeLillo’s books I’m struck by the singular importance of mood. One could fault The Names because the characters, mostly expatriate operatives extending the American global reach, are nearly interchangeable in voice and attitude. But they all carry slightly different aspects of the mood that seeps up from the world, clinging to them individually and collectively as they skim across the surface from continent to continent. The story is even less central to The Names than it is to Point Omega; both share the intelligence and the lurking paranoia. I’m sure DeLillo has been deemed prescient from this book, though his Middle Eastern terrorists have nothing really in common with Al Qaeda. There is frequent reference though to US financial and political activities in the region — even the term “austerity” is used in the context of IMF loans to Turkey and Greece.
Yesterday I found my copy of Gravity’s Rainbow on the shelf. In flipping through it I realized that in something I wrote I had either reinvented or unconsciously stolen a central conceit from it, namely the “secret power” by which Slothrop forecasts the striking of disastrous events. Maybe I’ll slip into that little section of text an offhand tip of the hat to Pynchon.
LikeLike
The guy wearing the Michigan State t-shirt in DeLillo’s book is an art history professor at MSU, but he, like many of the other characters, seems to have some sort of covert intelligence function. MSU was notorious for its involvement with the CIA in setting up the South Vietnamese regime. They also helped keep the Shah of Iran in power, which is more directly related to the setting and events of The Names.
LikeLike
Yes, you’d better. I imagine I’ll finish it when it comes back, but like being nonchalant about it. Thoroughly enjoying Pynchon’s ‘dirty old man’ book from 2009, ‘Inherent Vice’, which is fantastically skillfully crude. I didn’t know it would be this good–it’s trash in a sense, but incredibly entertaining and wicked beyond all belief.
Yes, DeLillo may well be prescient, though, I’m quite sure such psychic things do exist but they neeedn’t be debated. Someone already told him that he had been from what he wrote about WTC in ‘Mao II’. I think I’m going to read ‘The Names’, though. From your descriptiion, it sounds like another gorgeous DeLillo work once you’ve found the momentum. isn’t it interesting that Pynchon doesn’t stay serious as he gets older (a year or two younger tha deLillo), but DeLillo writes books that he is himself taking very seriously. ‘Inherent Vice’ very often and without giving the slightest flying fuck thoroughly just indulges in shtick. It’s so funny it may even free me from feeling I have to finish ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. In that case, I won’t, because it will be Pynchon who gave the permission. Have you read it? I remember everybody was talking about that huge tome Against the Day, but don’t even remember when Inherent vice came out. Never read a funnier book.
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No I’ve not read Inherent Vice. DeLillo doesn’t joke around much, does he?
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