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Sam Lipsyte and Lucinda Rosenfeld

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An Admirable Hateful Verve

By Sam Lipsyte
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2000, at 1:37 PM ET

Lucinda,

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Can't beat that plan. Guess you win. The yoga people always seem to win these days. Eastern technique and Western consumption are the keys to invincibility in the newish economy, I guess. Or maybe I'm just jealous I'm not that limber.

I'm not going to follow much election news today. Everybody's spinning their wheels and to even contemplate what's going on, you can't help doing the same. It all looks exceptionally ugly, but on the other hand, I think this so-called wrangling is only natural for people raised to rule. Here's a quote I came upon last night: "Seen from the outside, harmony reigns in every sect, clan and party; seen from the inside, discord. Conflicts in a monastery are as frequent and as envenomed as in any society. Even when they desert hell, men do so only to reconstruct it elsewhere." That's E.M. Cioran, Rumanian philosopher, member of the fascist Iron Guard during World War II, wonderful writer. Always a problem, the problematic stylist. Speaking of which, I tried to bring myself to buy the Michel Houellebecq novel some critics are trashing because all the assaults seem so moralistic, and also I thought his earlier novel (with the horrible English title of Whatever) had a lot of merit, but standing there in Barnes and Noble I had that "Oh shit, am I really going to lay down $27 for a hardcover when I can find a reviewer's copy in a used-book store in a week?" feeling. So I bought a soft-cover Saramago novel instead. (Have you seen your book in a used bookstore yet? I did, recently, and felt that sudden surge of shame and rejection I haven't experienced since they were picking kickball teams--hypocritical, as most emotions are, of course.) But I will get to the Houellebecq. He's a cold, prickly nihilist, as opposed to a warm fuzzy one, but there's a sort of hateful verve in his first book I admire. I will forgive anyone anything if he or she is funny because ultimately, I don't think you can be truly heartless and legitimately funny at the same time. I have yet to see any video offers for Hitler's Greatest Gags. There was a fairly nasty piece about Houellebecq in the New York Times Magazine a few months ago, as though someone decided to clear the sidewalk of pedestrians before the threat even arrived. It reminded me of being in the airport in Paris a few years ago during a terrorist scare. Somebody left a briefcase in the middle of the terminal, and they called in the bomb squad. Dozens of policemen cordoned off the area but inexplicably let us stay in the terminal, so we all watched as a man in clunky black armor tiptoed up to the briefcase. He got down on his hands and knees and inspected it from every angle, then fastened some device to the top of it and tiptoed away. A few minutes later there was a head-rattling boom. Charred scraps of paper floated down on us. I picked one up and saw it was some kind of corporate report. The numbers had been crunched, and now they'd been obliterated.

End Transmission,
Sam