I Have Seen The Devil In The Shape Of A Goat

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Pitch-black, killer curved horns. The medievalists were right. It stood watch over a gate which led from the human-ruled part of the island to the goat-ruled part, in which we fell to RUIN.

Seen: about 200 goats. Swam: often. Slept: much. Bitten by: lots of unidentifiables. Played: Pokemon (not v well). Read: all of GR, all of Underground. What a lot of threads!

Oh yeah a question - have you ever seen the devil and what form did it take?

― Tom, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A memeber of the alliance party.

― anthony, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

A disgusting, constipated old woman with a hygiene obsession.

― Johnathan, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

He had a badge which said "Nothing is perfect but being British comes close" or words to that effect. One of his cohorts shouted "Get down to the Labour Exchange and get yourself a job!". Another of his cohorts told me to clear off because I didn't have a job, and another threatened to have me arrested. You've probably got a good idea of who they might be ...

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I was outised a 300 dollar a plate dinner a block from the poorest neighborhoods in Edmonton. They were wearign 1000 dollar suits and i was protesting. This member said " I earned my money, is it my ault Natives cannot work"

― anthony, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Come come, chaps: these are not the Devil, these are just demons.

(First of all I typed "Come come, chaos" which = superkewl one-letter error.. )

― mark s, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The devil lives across the road (well, the freeway) in the televangelist complex. He gives his bride fake cleavage via silicone.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Mark knows, you see, because I'm certain that he IS a demon, hence a) being such a clever-clogs about everything due to extreme age, and b) Buffy obsession - he's watching to analyse the slayer's fighting technique, so he can beat her when she comes looking for him. It's all true.

― DG, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Straight-up I don't believe in God or the Devil. Nice fairy tales though. However, anecdotally speaking, many things are From Hell.

The Picnic In The Sky is not one of them. Coming?

― suzy, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Hey, wait -- 'all of GR, all of Underground'? Ned = clueless.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

GR = Gravitys Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. Josh will be delighted to know that loads of the setpiece bits reminded me of Dickens. I liked it - once you twigged that it wasn't going to (couldnt) resolve it stopped being nearly as difficult, and cleverly the hope that it might resolve got you through the earlier bits while you were getting used to the style. First 100 or so pages not nearly as difficult as the last 100 or so. Needs re-reading, obviously.

'Underground' = Murakami's witness-history account of the Tokyo Sarin Gas attack in 1995 - very good stuff.

― Tom, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Ah, dear ol' Pynchon. One of these days I'll reread that myself, but I admit I've never felt the overriding need. Almost as if I want to preserve my first experience back in 1987 or so as unchanged.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Tom, others interested, I threw together a paper I wrote on GR at over here which makes the case for a thematic resolution, then backs away coz I didn't feel like arguing it out. However, I think my take is both A) correct and B) fairly unique. The key question being Who Wrote Gravity's Rainbow?

― Sterling Clover, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

oh yes. oh yes. yes ye sye ye sye ys eys

i just finished re-reading Mingus biography. then i was sitting listening to AH -UM feeling liek i was inside his mind and that on a mountain when i smelt this terrible smell like death.

i thought i was imagening stuff but it grew stronger and stronger. i pulled my headphones off and looked round and there was this mountain goat with these terryfying brown blank eyes like death like a trapped soul staring down at me with with this godawful smell of rotting carrion and the deadliest looking horns like sabres. twas of the devil dont thee know.

i got up sharpish and left.

the reason i say this is because it was brown and vicious like blood and chocolate.

all my love and congratulations on impeccable taste.

thom

Something Thom wrote to me once.
I don't get this whole goat-devil thing. Someone explain? First Thom, and now...Tom...

― Melissa W, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think Momus is the devil.

― Mike Hanley, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The goat is a traditional representation of satan.

― Josh, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think momus is a demon representing ridicule.
A goat is the symbol of Pan, one who fucks, drinks and acts on base instinct. Christanity was supposed to be rational, constrained, not priapic in the least.

― anthony, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Goats eat funny things. Like cans.

― Sterling Clover, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The 1st time I ever woke up with ahangover I went out in the backyard of the house i woke up in & there was this totally evil goat looking at me over the fence. It had one ear bit off by a dog or something & a long tapered erect penis which it was licking.

― duane, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The goat is a traditional representation of satan.

I feel like I should have known that. And indeed, I probably should have.

― Melissa W, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

George W is the mutant offspring of satan and a goat.

― Geoff, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

> George W is the mutant offspring of satan and a goat.

Would Barbara Bush be Satan or the goat? Enquiring minds want to know!

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Barbra is niether . She is asexual.

― anthony, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The goat is a traditional representation of satan.

It is no fucking coincidence that the island where I saw The Goat is so close to the island where St John the Divine had his Revelation of the Apocalypse.

― Tom, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I envy you Tom. I like goats.

― anthony, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The vision of Tom being chased from his island to Patmos by a priapic goat is indeed a pleasing one. Or had too much sun combined with too much Pokemon combined to start the VISIONS again.

Oh, the devil. Never seen the devil, but I have heard him calling me.

― alex thomson, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I will write an epic poem called Tom and the Priapic goat.
Or maybe a childrens book, with illustrations .

― anthony, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I understand the Devil went down to Georgia, but I'm not sure if he has come back yet. Or if the Georgia in question is the Russian or US one.

― Pete, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

They do not play the fiddle in the former russian state.

― anthony, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Joaldunak

The best book about the devil is the Master and Margehrita by Mikhail Bulgakov. No goats though.

― Ed, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I like goats. They are ornery and stubborn and they will eat just about anthing and bash their heads against you as a sign of affection, hence I feel a great affinity with them.

Goats are only the sign of the devil because pre-Christian religions often worshipped a horned man as a counterpart of the earth goddess. In order to ban a religion, you either have to demonise their deities (as they did with the horned man) or else assimilate them (as they did with the earth goddess into several notable saints.)

As to the devil, well, I don't know. I believe in evil, but I think that The Devil is a rather silly personification of something which is all too well personified already by evil people. If that makes any sens, and it probably doesn't...

Welcome home, Tom.

― masonic boom, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I like it when people dress up as the devil as that red face paint is really shiney and difficult to get off. Esepcially if they have just run a marathon in it.

― Pete, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Bulgakov is GRATE. Though devil is slightly overshadowed by bonkers sidekicks in M+M.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

If the devil is a goat does that make the chupacabras some kind of God entity?

― Jonnie, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Any bat that can eat a goat is blimmin' scary to me. Of course you have to remember that as well as goat features traditional portraits of the devil also often had bat wings. Which is odd because criminals - who should be in the pay of the devil - are a cowardly and superstitious folk who are afraid of bats. And redbreasted birds.

― Pete, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

CHUPACABRAS = my utter lord and master = poss.T-shirt-styled chestwear for saturday for to defeat DG (if has not mystreriously shrunk)

― mark s, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have been to Bulgakov's House, 302A Sadovaya, Moscow. I didn't actually get into flat 50, closed for repairs but the walls on the staircase care covered with the most amazing grafitti ever. Some of it intricate oil paintings and sketches of characters from the book. I was stunned by it.

Also I've drunk warm apricot juice by the patriach's ponds just to see if the devil would indeed show up but he didn't.

The Joaldunak are a Basque Pagan thing. every year at carnival in the villages of the basque country people dress up as joaldunak basically 'devils' in goat skins with huge bells on there back and dance between the villages with the sound of their bells echoing off the mountains.

― Ed, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I a m pleased the word Priapic has been used. You know, I have been reading the old testament lately and it makes me thnk the devil is kin d of a victim. I mean he was only sent to hell becasue he was starting to be cooler than God. INdeed, GOd is quite chilish all throughout the old testament. Especially in JOB. What if GOd is really just like a very powerful Alien, not The Creator?

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Great book, by Elaine Pagels, abt the gospels (inc.gnostic) how Satan was gradually demoted from God's top banana to top foe. THE DEMONISATION OF SATAN? No: I forget the title, sadly. Will maybe post all when I get home.

PS I always write Stan: but then we are buddies for a long time

― mark s, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

My dad shot a goat once. It was my mom's, he told her, "Fine, whatever, buy whatever the hell you want, as long as it isn't a goat" because she was going on and on about how she wanted to spend money on something when I was a little kid. So she got mad at his attitude and hunted for HOURS for a goat, I guess, and came home with this goat. It tried to attack my dad, and the dog bit it at some point. I'm sketchy on all the details, but the end result is my dad blew it away. I hate goats, they have eyes shaped like keyholes and that worries me greatly, but they aren't as scary as cows.

My dad is possibly the devil, that wouldn't surprise me at all.

― Ally, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

That would make you Damian:The Trollop

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Mark S, please post the title of that "demonisation of Satan" book when you get home, it sounds fascinating, and I need more books for the Nothern Line (as if the Biography of London and this book on education that Chris is lending me isn't enough...)

― masonic boom, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Now you're really just pushing the limits, Mike.

― Ally, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Limits, like Orange Wafers, were meant to be pushed. Can't take the pressure? Retreat to I Love Toys!

― Mike Hanle y, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have a friend with a goat called Fallow cos he looks like a deer (the goat not Flow). He's lovely and very docile but thats probably because he's had hi balls chopped off.

― Ed, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

This is all getting to be very disturbing. So based on Alex's reference, go here:

http://www.e-sheep.com/apocamo n/

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Tom - have you caught a Teddiursa? I want one! And which was your starting pokémon? Obviously the devil is the evil HOUNDOOR. ARRRG! I've seen a dog with RED EYES before too.

― sarah, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

As great as chupacabras are, Mark, I fail to see how a T-shirt will prevent your defeat.

― DG, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Never seen the basement dweller, but did see a large rabbit waving to me from the top of the stairs once. Keep meaning to ask, which musicians would be in Lucifers band?

― james e l, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

No I have not caught a Teddiursa. I've caught hardly fuck all to be honest (blame that Pynchon). Totodile was my starting pokemon but the game boy is at Isabel's so no hope of a trade. Yet.

― Tom, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Oh, if anyones playing Pokemon: Gold or Silver, how do you defeat Team Rocket in the Radio Station?

― james e l, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

THE ORIGIN OF SATAN, Elaine Pagels, Vintage/Random House 1996 pb. $12

As pointed out elsewhere, THE FORTEAN TIMES this month includes two fine items on poké-lunacy, the dottier one being the Jihad declared by certain Islamic groups on the Poketto Monsuta, for being Jewish demons promoting Darwinism, or something equally insane.

― mark s, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Thanks Mark, I must remember to look for the Fortean Times in Smiths, they always put it in odd places like with the Muscle and Fitness magazines or something.

― james e l, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Ewing. I can't forgive you for finishing that book. I have been bashing away at it since Easter, esp. in the last 2 weeks. And where am I? Page 181. Page one hundred and eighty-bloody-one.

There are tons of clever people who love Pynchon and understand it on this forum etc, and I have to admire them. But I am going to go mental if I don't take this opportunity, in a controlled environment, among friends, to say: I CAN'T STAND THIS FUCKING AWFUL BOOK!! It is going nowhere very very slowly and is going to take the rest of my life to read, and when I've finished it I will have got FUCK ALL OUT OF IT!!!!!

― the pinefox, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

pinefox, it will no doubt be scant consolation, but that is exactly my experience of GR. what is worse, is that when you finish it, scratch yr head, and go 'wtf?' everyone will tell you have to read it again. and even worse, you know they're probably right.

i will put myself through this book again, but not just yet

― gareth, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

You guys need to cheer yrselves up and take a spin thru THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis.

― mark s, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Ahahaha. Ha. Fred sent me the Gaddis a while back and it is still sitting ominously on my shelf. Christmas break, I think.

Pinefox - you are right near the beginning of a much faster-paced section of the book; 2 and 3 are a lot easier than 1 IMO. Small comfort, maybe, but...

― Josh, Monday, 16 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

pinefox - my experience of that bk was exactly the same. except i only read the 1st 3 pages of course.

― duane, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The Recognitions was the Gaddis I didn't read. The others I found a breeze. Now, McElroy...

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Josh: I know, people keep saying this kind of thing. But I reached p.206 last night, and now I don't just find the book difficult and pointless. I hate it. I hate the way it seems to be a vehicle for Mr. Pynchon to set up a nonending series of nubile young dollybirds in elaborately-described underwear and frocks, who proceed to pleasure his rancid, characterless men in every improbable fashion he can think of without a second glance in the mirror. In other words, roughly: I hate Gravity's Rainbow for the same reason I hate James Bond. I hate it so much that I'm going to have to stop reading it, put the book back on the shelf, and move on to something that isn't a sticky middle-aged geezer's vast wet-dream.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

If you're still willing to give Pynchon a go, may I recommend Mason & Dixon. Very few dollybirds in it, lots about surveying, pre- revolutionary American history and male friendship.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I read 'V' once, having heard that it was lots of people's favourite book. I did actually finish it, but had absolutely no idea what was going on. All I could remember five minutes after finishing it was that there were some alligators. I'm not even going to try to read Gravity's Rainbow

― Nick, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Probably a blessing the pinefox did not reach Brigadier Pudding's encounter with Katje!!!! GR is of course totally *abt* fantasy: and abt who controls our fantasies and abt how this controls us (or sometimes doesn't control us). GR = JAMES BOND MALEVOLENTLY ASSIGNED TO HELL NOR ARE WE OUT OF IT...

(Middle-aged as put-down = not likely to convince, over here in Hackney...)

― mark s, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Mark S: middle-aged not a put-down, OF COURSE. I'm no Spring chicken myself. That comment of mine may have given the wrong impression. My objection to TP is not (naturally) that was middle-aged (?) when he wrote GR (or that he's 'Old' now), but that GR seems to me a dirty- old-man book. I think, or hope, that you know what I mean, though I don't for a moment expect you to change your view of GR.

'About fantasy' (etc) doesn't win me over, I'm afraid (how could it?) - I suppose because the particular kind of fantasies (if fantasies they are) in which this book seems to specialize are a massive turn-off for me (= I find them distasteful and deeply annoying, to the point of no longer being able to open the book).

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I don't share Pinefox's opinion of GR, but that is pretty much my reaction to 'White Noise', another sacrosanct text in the modern American canon, or so it seems to me, and to my attempt to batter my way through Roth's 'The Human Stain', also recommended to me by PEOPLE WHO KNOW THESE THINGS.

I only came across the Bulgakov a couple of months ago, but it is a delight.

― alex thomson, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Alex T warned me of the filth-factor of GR but I found it the least 'dirty' dirty book I've read in a while, as in the sex content had not much effect on me either way - probably this is because the fantasies only become more focussed the more transgressive they are (eg Katje/Pudding, also Slothrop/Bianca, the two sex episodes that seemed much more straightforwardly described than other bits and which are also - coprophilia and paedophilia respectively - the most taboo) - this is good and clever I think, a dramatisation of the effects of living in our old friend a hypersexualised society ("is there a bus"?) i.e. only with the most extreme of fantasies can signal conquer noise.

Incidentally having essentially speed-read GR (though it felt more like a rapid brain-download) it strikes me this - not paying attention to cross-refs and convolutions - was quite a serendipitous way to go about tackling a book partially about paranoia and interconnectedness. Not quite as cool as Stevie T just starting at part 2 though.

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Tom now = Keanu Reeves in [forget movie: v.boring, directed robert longo; from quite-good story by william gibson]

ie after speedread download his brane will first leak, then EXPLODE!!

― mark s, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

johnny mnemonic

― james e l, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Tom: sorry, I don't buy it.

About that bus, though. Which one do you have in mind? When I was looking to join you in Brixton the other week, I rang a geezer who told me it would take 2 or 3 buses. So I'm not sure that one bus will do it. It could all get a bit convoluted.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Sorry, 'Fox - not trying to convince: actually there were points in GR when I thought dammit this is the rambling of a sad doper and I should be playing Pokemon. But not many.

Bus was an x-ref to this long forgotten thread (which to my delight I see has been reanimated recently). Incidentally have you mastered the blue text yet PF? After Sarah and I spent so long trying to explain it I hope so!

― Tom, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Actually, yes. I've learned that 'code' thing that you saucy characters keep banging on about.

Look, I'll show you:

.....>>>///blue_android//blue//word:::ala/nickdastoor@yahoo.com/??/tex tfunction//makewordsblue5%%%%%from a[where'a'=dastoorprinciple@net] to be[let 'b'=ewing.net]<<<.....

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

yesterday someone told me when it rains during sun the devil is beating his wife...what the hell doe s that mean? PLus, anyone seen Petey Wheatstraw?

― Mike Hanle y, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

My wife said that thing about the devil beating his wife the other day. I was curios as to why the devil went up into the sky to beat his wife.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I didn't even know that the devil had a wife to beat.

― Ally, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Yeah, what the hell? How did they meet, anyway?

"I'm in marketing, what about you?"

"Me? I'm Satan."

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Yes on sunday it was sunny and I was going to trader joes but then it was raining! I was like , "Dud! WHat!?"

― Mike Hanle y, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

no i haven't mike, but i do have the soundtrack album

― gareth, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Pinefox: hating GR for the same reasons you hate Bond is probably fairly apt I think. If it weren't for the puerile adolescent in me I might be bothered by it too.

Alex T: White Noise sux0r. Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but I really didn't see what the big deal was. I thought Underworld was amazing but was totally unimpressed by White Noise. (A friend of mine had the exact opposite effect. Hmmm.)

― Josh, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

It features Rudy Ray Moore having to marry the devil's wife, hence my mention of it.

― Mike Hanle y, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The whole "Who would be dumb enough to marry the devil?" thing came up, as well. We were imagining fictitious interventions:

"I... I can't take it anymore! He's so evil! And he BEATS ME!"
"Um, HE'S THE DEVIL. What did you expect?"

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Unless its some sort of Badass Masochist thing .

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

The "devil beating his wife" thing is such perfect Mike Hanle y that I refuse to believe he didn't come up with it himself, Dan's wife or no Dan's wife.

― Patrick, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I swear a coworker told me this! please belive me

― Mike Hanley, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Agree with Tom that the sex in GR is fairly nondirty. Furthermore, some of those scenes are goddamn funny. Speed reading might be a good first pass, but the thematic depth is what makes the book work for me -- how everything takes on 2-8 different symbolic resonances, and how the very symbolic landscape that Pynchon constructs is constantly shifting throughout the book. Also, GR was a relatively young man's novel, at least in the world of American letters. Also, White Noise does indeed seem flaccid, but Underworld even moreso. Also, I remember reading V as a freshman in high school, and each day I'd try to explain to my father what it was "about" and each day I'd come up with something completely different. Also, this girl once tried to explain to me how she loved V because it was against the mechanization of man, and I A) hated that reductive reading and B) thus decided her taste was rotten as a whole.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have read Lot 49 and i liked the ambiguty of the symbols. The i am being paranoid , no it is a giant conspiracy energy struck me as realavant and funny at the same time. I need to read GR but am intimadated by the Maths .

― anthony, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

1) we get the fortean times six months late over here. it sucks.

2) stuff about the devil reminds me of stuff about bizarro. like, if god is perfect, then the devil is imperfect, and all that. so the devil must BEAT his wife, whereas...wha? that said, i'm sure there are over one thousand women on this earth who would marry the devil.

― ethan, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I wouldn't worry about the math/science stuff. By his own admission Pynchon doesn't have (or didn't have) all that great a handle on that stuff anyway. I don't think you'd miss anything deep (cuz, like, I don't think I got anything deep out of it).

― Josh, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

that said, i'm sure there are over one thousand women on this earth who would marry the devil.

And probably each of us knows a thousand women who would think that he can change.

― Patrick, Tuesday, 17 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Ack, that sounded spectacularly bitter.

― Patrick, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I bet SATAN's COCK is red as santas' costume.

― Mike Hanley, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think that DeLillo has been dragged into this debate misleadingly. I think White Noise is magnificently written - not a sentence out of place - and I can't remember much tedious-sauce-content in it. For that matter, I like Lot 49 as well. It's GR I can't pick up any more.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Libra is my favorite DeLillo because JFK only needed a transcriber to make his myth complete. It really reminded me of Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates.

― anthony, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Oddly, Lot 49 has the real maths with all that dribble about entropy. GR, aside from the odd multiple integral tossed in there (and the odd pun on integration) is fairly math-lite. Oh yes, the poisson distribution. But he explains that just fine in the text...

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

i think i got about as much out of lot49 as i did out of GR. are mason&dixon and v as infuriating. actually lot 49 was nowhere near as flummoxing as GR, but i liked it less than GR. with GR i had the feeling there was something in there, but i just didn't get it. lot 49 i just didn't really click with

― gareth, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I actually really enjoyed Lot49, which is why V was such a disappointement to me. How could such a dense and paranoid writing style seem to hide a beautifully crafted conspiracy in one book, and just seem deliberately obstruse in the other?

― masonic boom, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I have never ever been able to re-reread V (even tho it have sexy robot!); GR is GR, no book like it, I've read it probably 12 times in 20 years [cue FACT abt its entropic collapse in my hands, to bug Josh] (the pinefox is quite wrong I think abt the characterlessness of its males — tho I wd concede Tyrone S is probably not someone I would enjoy spending Real Time with); Lot 49 I have liked and hated — his cartooning is very deft, and his picture of California at a certain moment (cf also Vineland: diff moment) is affecting, but its topic is pretty slight, I think (not as slight as De Lillo's take on same in White Noise: I too prefer Libra, by some way). But — as Elizabeth in BB would perhaps say — the one with "heart" is Mason&Dixon, and there (alongside endless silliness) the subject is really loss, personal loss, cultural loss, and the things you never get round to doing in an accidental friendship (or indeed life).

― mark s, Wednesday, 18 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Hahah, the FACT not accompanied by joke analogy to book content this time. :P

May be hard to judge the characters' substantiality sometimes because of the often unreal situations they're placed in: slapstick, surreal episodes, made to speak like in old movie dialogue, etc. There is this, though: there are lots of different possibly-not-very-realized characters. (Tom said he thought of Dickens. Oh, fuck you, Tom.)

I have been avoiding rereading V in part because of the (subjectively) enormously long and boring Herero section in the middle which was the most boring thing I had ever read in a novel. I would think differently now, but still. I just read it at a bad time is all.

― Josh, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I thought the long Herero section was in GR...

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

I think i admired Mason and Dixon more then i liked it.

― anthony, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

There are Herero in GR, Ned, but I'm referring to chapter 9 of V (Kurt Mondaugen's story - he shows up in GR too).

― Josh, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

V almost approaches a Pynchon meta-text, a laying out of his themes that will haunt him in works to come and have haunted him before. Much moreso than Col49, whose entropy theme he did before and poorly then too, and which serves less as a "key" to GR than a reduction of it to the least exciting elements (altho. with fab comedic interludes along the way). Back to V, the spies, the stuff lifted from Under The Rose (an earlier short story), the sex set pieces, the SHOCK/SHROUD fantasy as dream of living machines, et cet. Also, to mark: Vineland for me is P's most emotionally affecting work (along with The Secret Integration) -- he captures a certain vibe of age and wisdom, of possibility lost. M&D starts out so mournful from the begining of its chronology that it has nowhere to go (no that it's not mag. but...) while Vineland still mourns that cosmic instant.

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Leaving aside those characterless males, I think that Mark S's emphasis re. Lot 49 is unhelpful. ?? Well, unhelpful to me, or not the emphasis that I find most interesting. Maybe at one level it's Californian-bourgeoisie-satire - this is the readon why Stevie T always puts it down. Certainly I agree White Noise does that kind of thing better (though I don't think WN is like Pynchon, so a bit of a red herring really).

BUT what IS interesting re. Lot 49 is the POSTAL stuff. W.A.S.T.E. / Tristero / Thurn und Taxis / alternative stamps - that really *did* do something for, or to, me.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

Yeah. I also got really into the postal service stuff in col49. It dragged me in in the same way the templar plot in Foucault's Pendulum did. Why? Well, for myself, I suspect it's nothing deeper than being a sucker for a decent historical/intellectual mystery storyline.

― Richard Tunnicliffe, Thursday, 19 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link

two years pass...

http://www.pioneernet.net/johnb/images/BunnyFace.JPG

― Dada, Monday, 5 April 2004 18:24 (twenty years ago) link

four years pass...

LAGOS Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

― negotiable, Saturday, 24 January 2009 20:56 (sixteen years ago) link

http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20090124&t=2&i=7981249&w=450&r=2009-01-24T030151Z_01_BTRE50N08F800_RTROPTP_0_MONACO http://www.reuters.com/resources/r/?m=02&d=20090124&t=2&i=7981249&w=450&r=2009-01-24T030151Z_01_BTRE50N08F800_RTROPTP_0_MONACO

― negotiable, Saturday, 24 January 2009 20:58 (sixteen years ago) link

thing is these cats aren't deluded. magic is real.

― bats in a kayak! (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 January 2009 21:08 (sixteen years ago) link

i'm typing as a cloud of "ffuck yu"

― bats in a kayak! (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 January 2009 21:08 (sixteen years ago) link

because misty vapors have trouble typing you see

― bats in a kayak! (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 January 2009 21:10 (sixteen years ago) link

being not very solid

― bats in a kayak! (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 January 2009 21:10 (sixteen years ago) link

ugh wtf ruined a perfectly good weregoat thread

― bats in a kayak! (latebloomer), Saturday, 24 January 2009 21:25 (sixteen years ago) link

http://www.olssons.com/pics/u/tony_fainting_goat.jpg

― negotiable, Saturday, 24 January 2009 21:36 (sixteen years ago) link

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