Word: paranoia
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Maybe so, but when you correct certain problems in the postmodern novel--its cartoonish characters, its repetitive paranoia and absorption in Big Patterns--you get a better book. The Corrections does not "solve" the mystery of family life, but it renders its mysteries with the fine filament and moral nuance they require. There are already an impressive 90,000 copies in print. While that's not quite John Grisham territory, Franzen has so far made more than a million dollars. This could be another reason why he's feeling optimistic about the literary novel these days. He may be right...
...Such an intuition arrives naturally in a shaky economy. There is more inclination now than, say, a year ago, to think that gaudy but irrelevant stories (Levy/Condit, e.g.) may mask the deeper and more important news. A shadow of paranoia impinges: Can it be that the corporate owners of the media (an ownership remote from the traditions of journalism) have an interest, beyond the charming profits that come from high ratings, in corrupting the investigative functions of journalism and diverting its resources to sensational but essentially insignificant stories? One hears this more and more. Dan Rather made a small gesture...
...hatred that has overflowed into paranoia. Last Tuesday, as a handful of Israeli tanks demolished a police station in the town of Jenin in the northern West Bank, which is under Arafat's control, some Palestinians at first said the Israelis made the dramatic stab in order to rescue 70 collaborators imprisoned there. In fact, there were no such prisoners. The Israelis wanted to punish Jenin, which has been the base for several recent suicide bombers. Yet Palestinians believe that Israel would risk its troops two miles inside enemy territory only to rescue its valuable operatives. Without collaborators, Palestinians...
...activists criticize the trials. A horrified European Union extracted a promise from Arafat in the spring not to execute any more collaborators after two were put to death by police firing squads. But even the critics say there would be no need for the trials or, perhaps, the mass paranoia if Israel would quit using informants. That would allow the Palestinians to rehabilitate the traitors with a public commission, like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Until then, the collaborators will remain emblematic of a fundamental division in Palestinian society...
Pynchon dips in and out of perspectives in a single paragraph without notice, fuses reality with fantasy without rousing disbelief and purposefully obscures to make the reader feel the same discomfort and paranoia that his characters experience. His intelligence shines on the thick mud of his prose to reveal its beauty...