Whom Did DeLillo Name Benno Levin After?

Benny Levy

Paul Giamatti: Benno Levin Is Benny Levy?

3

Mean in name of the character  - do it intentionally

4

Name Benno Levin is the pen name of a character in the book. This character I used the name of a revolutionary of the early 20^th century  (vague) - DeLillo says,"and that's all I'm going to say on it"

DeLillo Interview with Krasny for Cosmopolis Publication

DeLillo said:

... details, ideas, themes: the idea of a kind of confluence of technology and money... cybercapital, which seemed to be dominant in a very recent period in our history. Essentially the 1990's. ...

My idea was to end this era not over a period of weeks and months as happened, but in one day.

This Interview is in 7 Parts

Bernard-Henri Levy in a letter to Michel Houellebecq in their back and forth letter book entitled Public Enemies:

I am as fascinated now as I was when I was twenty by those great, inflexible figures who provided a sort of background music through the history of my generation and who as a joke I call our "hidden Imams"! Benny Levy, after his political season and his ascent to Jerusalem; Robert Linhart, who preceded him as the head of the Gauche proletarienne, and whose daughter has just described in a novel how one fine day he simply decided to stop talking;...

From wiki on Benny Levy whose pen name was Pierre Victor - nice inversion here of real and pen names.

Benny Lévy (aka Pierre Victor) was a philosopher, political activist and author. A political figure ofMay 1968 in France, he was the disciple and last personal secretary of Jean-Paul Sartre from 1974 to 1980. Along with him, he helped founding the French newspaper Libération in 1972.

Benny Lévy is known for his unusual itinerary from Maoism to Judaism, or "from Mao to Moses", which was also followed by a few other philosophers of his generation.

Lévy worked with Sartre, and the two men produced four books until Sartre's death. While working with Sartre, Lévy began to discover Judaism, initially through his research into the Kabbalah, which he conducted with his mentor. Their work together created a stir among the circle that surrounded Sartre, because Sartre had begun introducing new ideas and terms that evoked religious and, more specifically, Jewish concepts, such as Redemption and Messianism. ...

 Two months before his death, Sartre responded to these critics, claiming that he had indeed abandoned some of his earlier ideas.^{[citation needed]} In 1978, Lévy encountered Levinas, and started learning Hebrew and beginning Talmudic studies....

Born in Egypt, Benny Lévy grew up without experiencing Judaism as a faith. He left Egypt after the 1956 war and immigrated to Belgium then France with his family. His elder half-brother, Eddy Lévy, stayed in Egypt, converted to Islam in 1956 and changed his name to Adil Rifaat.^[1]...

Benny Lévy soon proved to be a brilliant student and completed his studies at the École Normale Supérieure, learning under such key intellectual figures as Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser and Jacques Derrida, founder of deconstruction. He entered the Union des étudiants communistes(UEC), a student communist group, and then at his foundation in 1966 the Maoist Union des jeunesses communistes marxistes-léninistes (UJC - ml). He became one of the main leader of this latter organization after Robert Linhart. Benny Lévy was an important figure during the May 68 Student Revolt. After these events, the direction of the UJC-ml was put in minority, and founded the Maoist Gauche prolétarienne (GP, Proletarian Left). Taking the pseudonym of Pierre Victor, Benny Lévy was one of its main leaders, along with Alain Geismar.

Richard Sheets (Rich Shits) aka Benno Levin: I am working on a journal while a man lies dead ten feet away. I wonder about this. 

I thought I would spend whatever number of years it takes to write ten thousand pages and then you would have the record, the literature of a life awake and asleep, because dreams too, and little stabs of memory, and all the pitiful habits and concealments, and all the things around me would be included, noises in the street, but I understand for the first time, now, this minute, that all the thinking and writing in the world will not describe what I felt in the awful moment when I fired the gun and saw him fall. So what is left that's worth the telling.

Benny Levy versus Emmanuel Levinas on “Being Jewish”

mj.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/1/15.full

by A Herzog - 2006 - Cited by 2 - Related articles
The late Benny Levy's last book, Etre juif, is a study of Emmanuel Levinas's ..... be correct one should say: from Moses to Mao, and from Mao to Moses, namely, ...

And now here is the Mao reference, DeLillo's Mao II novel.

“They called me Benno after Benito Juarez,” said Archimboldi, “I suppose you know who Benito Juarez was.” - Bolano 2666

DeLillo - Krasny Cosmopolis Publication Interview

DeLillo Krasny Cosmopolis Publication Interview

Following are Abstracts of the 7 Parts of the Interview

One

DeLillo discusses the conjunction of technology and capital that has happened. Eric Packer is not a usual Wall Street Financier as he knows several language, reads poetry. Ulysses is brought up and DeLillo says that the comparison would be made, but he wanted the novel to take place in one day. Because of tech and capital everything is speeded up, so everything that happens in this one day is speeded up. He mentions implosion. Packer notices the obsoleteness of technology, the ATM machine, a mechanism. He says Packer lives in the future, the screen he follows himself on. 

No mention of the obsoleteness of Didi, her arms. Age, body, Death

Me: Packer noticing obsoleteness in people, technology, machines, etc is because he is noticing DEATH all day.

Two

Hasn’t seen his driver. Three/fourths of the way begins to notice people. Haircut at a particular place in Hell’s Kitchen W 47^th St. Journey into Eric’s life and his father’s life. First truly human encounter. Valpariso odyssey also, theme of writers. Concentrate on a different kind of sentence, write shorter sentences, avoid analogies, harden sense of discipline. Underworld wanted to open up the sentence, absorb more. A suitable style for Packer, hard edged, decisive, this style worked for this book. Studied money, tech (?) outset ignorant then studied. Concerned to be precise and accurate.

Three

White noise deja vue cause: nature of time 2 halves of brain.  Time is a mystery explore)body artist – may well be that time exists simultaneously, a question of the sake of our self protection to reformulate nature of time (tuttle BA moves forward and backward in time)deja vue connected with idea time exists in one continuum, able to access this. Way in which we construct our own universe, universe itself totally different from our perception of it, seems a fact that it exists in a way that is totally alien for humans to survive in it. World will end –a linkage from the future to us in his discussion of time. We create the universe.

Global capitalism protest Vija discusses it as protestors are pissing on it; nature of the future. People re protesting against the wave of the future, tech genius will leave people behind. We pretend not to see the suffering our tech advnces are causing.

Mean in name of the character  - do it intentionally. 

Four

Name Benno Levin is the pen name of character in the book. This character would use name of European anarchist,revolutionary of early 20^th century  is who he is named after. (beginning of 4)

Paranoia, post modern

Paranoia comes out of the culture rather than my consciouness Libra makes the prevalence of paranoia around me. A conspiracy to assassinate the president, conspiracy in the novel is small not massive. Do not sense it around me now, moved into internet, not as noticeable as it used to be.

Paranoia misused, the institution itself began to be weakened, moved to darker corners of the culture and out. Nostalgia. JFK assassination. Oswald has disappeared from the discourse.DeLillo and Oswald lived close 13 and 16 yrs old.  

Five
Connection to a place.Imp of your writing Underworld, the world of New York, connected to a place – wants to know where people are when they are doing what they are doing

Oswald played hooky and went to the Bronx zoo. Odd to know they both did it. Odd that he was in this half Jesish and half Italisn neighborhood. What was he doing there.

Repeated the Immigrant experience of my parents – touching close living then touching became untouchable – form of protection, avoid hostility. Touching became touchy.

Six

Touching opinion connect between money and libido, occurs happenstance in novel, men with more money, position to have more sex. Not sure there’s a drive. Sex, no touch – body force/counterforce. Eric powerful. Sense of accelerated time moving us towards sense of immortality. Asymmetrical prostate, popped in his head but not saying more.Think he is truly interesting and changes forcefully towards the end of the book.

Try not to think in terms of sympathy, partial redemption but don’t like to think that way. Eric changes. Tech an enormous force in our lives, what kind of force in our consciousness? Does it drive us in ways we are not quite aware of – tech exists to be applied, tech has a kind of will, drive towards being realized in 3 D. If tech feasible, it will be realized or is it the other way around

Why should it not be part of our fiction? Spiritual? Transcendence? Question is what kind of transcendence? American. What force there is in tech, is it force dragging us towards Bagdad? (Bethlehem?) Is this force driving us not to just increase. Is tech driving us.(Object pulling us?)

This administration a cold war administration. Can identify an enemy. Wear uniforms, an identifiable enemy, we have tech to reduce its potent danger.

Seven

9-11 sense is to build a shield around us. fear – disparity between administration. Itself heading to increase isolationism.

Don’t need the world the way we used to, but in NY don’t feel it.

America itself trying to keep world out.

9-11 fact that the 2 towers came down

Great work of art retracted.

Reading Eric Packer Through Rudolf Steiner and Kolisko

He watched a hundred gulls trail a wobbling scow downriver. They had large strong hearts. He knew this, disproportionate to body size. He'd been interested once and had mastered the teeming details of bird anatomy. Birds have hollow bones. ....He didn't know what he wanted. Then he knew. He wanted to get a haircut.


He stood a while longer, watching a single gull lift and ripple in a furl of air, admiring the bird, thinking into it, trying to know the bird, feeling the sturdy earnest beat of its scavenger's ravenous heart. (C p.7)

In the above quote DeLillo's language soars with the bird. As Baudrillard has said, Your writing must mirror what you are writing about. If it is a soaring bird, then, your writing must soar even more than the bird. It does.

Eugen Kolisko

Lili Kolisko

http://sueyounghistories.com/archives/2009/04/18/eugen-and-lili-kolisko-and-homeopathy/

Zoology for Everybody: Birds Bk. 2 Eugen Kolisko [Paperback]

Rudolf Steiner

As the story goes, when Hitler was asked who his greatest enemy was, he said, "Rudolf Steiner".

Steiner, Eugen Kolisko and Lili Kolisko were colleagues in Anthroposophy.

If you study a bird's skeleton you will notice that it is extremely light, and all the bones, especially those of the skull seem penetrated by air.  (p.9)

The bones of birds are whiter and contain more calcium. They are more brittle and more dense than those of other animals. Very early they lose their content of blood and marrow ....The marrow shrinks and its place is taken by a space filled with air. ...The better a bird flies                                                                                                ,the  more its bones are permeated with air. Life in the air makes the bones dry, brittle and filled with air instead of blood....Studying a bird's bone, we come to the conclusion that it has the qualities that other bones acquire in old age. ...A phenomenon which appears only in old age in all the other animals and in man, appears immediately in the bird. It has a senile skeleton. (p.10-11)

In the eye of a bird is a much greater limb-activity. Because it is so well provided with muscles and a ring of bones, it acts more like a limb than an eye. It is not only a physical apparatus to receive light, but also as an organ coordinated with the limb-system. A bird of prey (or scavenger?) looks and strikes; the activity of its eyes is followed immediately by a reaction of the wings and beak.

The birds are thus very sensitive to conditions in the atmosphere through which they fly; they are attuned to the activity of the winds and air currents. They have an extremely well developed muscular sense, a sense of motion, a sense for their own movements and at the same time a sense of touch.

And here I remember David Foster Wallace's essay on his own tournament tennis playing. How he won because he played with the air currents.

The third remarkable feature in birds is the development of the breathing system. Birds have huge lungs, reaching as far below as the belly. The diaphragm  is missing. From the lungs branch off air-sacs, entering the bones and the wings....Some of those branches enter even into the feathers, so that the bird is everywhere surrounded and embedded in air. (20)

The strange phenomenon of migration can be understood if we know that they only fly according to routes having certain ether configurations. They follow the way of rivers.  Much has been written concerning the study of migrating birds, but it shows the great mistake of looking for the explanation in the intellectual capacities of the birds, attributing much to their small brains. Their intelligence is spread out all over the atmosphere. We do not realize the various changes in the atmosphere, for we are not sufficiently sensitive, but the birds are. They migrate on those air currents where they sense certain ether configurations. They are in unison with the air.

Now we turn to the soul-life  of the bird. Everyone who observes birds, remarks that they are more alert than any other animals. They need very little sleep. ...Although birds are very much awake, they are very easily distracted.  They certainly lack the capacity for concentration....Creatures endowed with feathers cannot really concentrate. (23)

Conte in Duvall,  In Cosmopolis Packer possesses an almost preternatural ability to recognize the patterns in currency values that shift in nanoseconds and cyber-capital that is traded instantaneously on the Nikkei and Nasdaq markets. He assumes the hieratic role of the prophet.


He understood how much it meant to him, the roll and flip of data on a screen. He

studied the figural diagrams that brought organic patterns into play, birdwing and

chambered shell. It was shallow thinking to maintain that numbers and charts

were the cold compression of unruly human energies, every sort of yearning and ...




....midnight sweat reduced to liquid units in the financial markets. In fact data itself

was soulful and glowing, a dynamic aspect of the life process. This was the

eloquence of alphabets and numeric systems, now fully realized in electronic

form, in the zero-oneness of the world, the digital imperative that defined every

breath of the planet's living billions. Here was the heave of the biosphere. Our

bodies and oceans were here, knowable and whole. (C 24)

"There's an order at some deep level," he said. "A pattern that wants to be seen."

"Then see it."

...I always have. But it's elusive in this instance. My experts have struggled and just about given up. I've been sleeping on it. There's a common surface, an affinity between market movements and the natural world."

"An aesthetics of interaction."
"Yes. But in this case I'm beginning to doubt I'll ever find it."

Amazon

"Doubt. What is doubt? You don't believe in doubt. You've told me this. Computer power eliminates doubt. All doubt rises from past experience. But the past is disappearing. We used to know the past but not the future. This is changing," she said. We need a new theory of time."

Speed and Politics -  Virilio. The new theory of time. Speed is the last World War. (C 86)

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 In 1896, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche asked Steiner to help organize the Nietzsche archive in Naumburg. Her brother by that time was non compos mentis. Förster-Nietzsche introduced Steiner into the presence of the catatonic philosopher; Steiner, deeply moved, subsequently wrote the book Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom. Steiner later related, "Nietzsche's ideas of the 'eternal recurrence' and of 'Übermensch' remained long in my mind. For in these was reflected that which a personality must feel concerning the evolution and essential being of humanity when this personality is kept back from grasping the spiritual world by the restricted thought in the philosophy of nature characterizing the end of the 19th century....What attracted me particularly was that one could read Nietzsche without coming upon anything which strove to make the reader a 'dependent' of Nietzsche's."^[18]

In 1897, Steiner left the Weimar archives and moved to Berlin. He became part owner, chief editor, and an active contributor to the literary journal Magazin für Literatur, where he hoped to find a readership sympathetic to his philosophy. Many subscribers were alienated by Steiner's unpopular support of Émile Zola in the Dreyfus Affair^[22] and the journal lost more subscribers when Steiner published extracts from his correspondence with anarchist John Henry Mackay.^[22] Dissatisfaction with his editorial style eventually led to his departure from the magazine.

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Rudolf Steiner's theory is spiritual, connecting all knowledge with the cosmos. Agriculture, education, music, plants, animals, an incredible array of knowledge about the world. His theories and observations were originated to provide exercises for spiritual development.

Eric Packer is using his spiritual practices to give him knowledge about cyber numbers "floating currency" for huge financial gains. Steiner never intended that.

DeLillo is making a statement against theory making that can always be turned against itself to strengthen the opposite for what it was intended. For example, Virilio was dismayed to find his work and theories on speed were being taught in military institutions around the world. For the very institutions it was intended to expose.! Deleuze and Guattari 's book A Thousand Plateaus was studied careful by an Israeli general to use against the Palestinians.

So when developing and explaining theory one must be careful Baudrillard warns.