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OLIVER NEWSLETTER JANUARY 2014
OLIVER STIRS ONCE AGAIN WITH THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN NATION
BEHIND THE SCENES WITH DECLINE AND FALL
A COUPLE OF EXCERPTS. . .
IN THE MEANWHILE. . .

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 ERIC LARSEN, FOUNDER & PUBLISHER
ADAM ENGEL, ASSOCIATE EDITOR
"The Nation's Last Truly Independent Press" 
 FOR A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS  FROM
THE OLIVER ARTS & OPEN PRESS

ERIC LARSEN'S  

FOURTH NOVEL APPEARS:
THE DECLINE AND FALL
OF THE AMERICAN NATION

 

 

MORE THAN A CENTURY HAS PASSED SINCE THE COLLAPSE

and extinction of the American Nation, that massive and unprecedented catastrophe brought about equally by arsonists' flames and by massive, long-term, internal decay. As everyone knows, the full history of this once-great nation's doom was first gathered in the 2110 CE multi-volume work of scholarship, The Decline and Fall of the American Nation. Subsequently, under the auspices of the Universities of Asia Press, Beijing, there arrived a new and updated edition.

 

As it happens, volume sixteen of that great work, in both editions, consisted, and continues to consist, of the collected writings of Eric Larsen, a figure unknown to history except through these extraordinarily rare surviving papers that include, most importantly, the internationally famous "Diary." [1] 

 

Guided by abundant scholarly commentary, the reader of Volume Sixteen is offered "innumerable windows" through which to witness "a ghostly past"[2] and otherwise lost scenes of "a daily life that has become [by the time of the Late Ante-Penultimate], in almost equal degrees, villainous, pathetic, and risible."[3] 

 

A chronology of the collapse may prove useful to the reader:

 

Early Preliminary (1950-1964)

Middle Preliminary (1964-1971)

Late Preliminary (1971-1983)

Early Ante-Penultimate (1983-1996)

Middle Ante-Penultimate (1996-2000)

Late Ante-Penultimate (2000-2006)

Early Penultimate (2006-2012)

Middle Penultimate (2013-2019)

Late Penultimate (2020-2024)

Early Ultimate (2025-2031)

Middle Ultimate (2032-2037)

Late Ultimate (2037-2041)

The Collapse (2042-?)



[1] From the Diary,it is known that for several decades in the Late Preliminary and the Early, Middle, and Late Ante-Penultimate, Larsen served as Professor of English at The Actaeon College of Institutional Analysis and Social Control, University of New York (UNY), New York, New York, U.S.A.

[2] Ting, Yanmei, Darkness Visible: The Lost Novels of Eric Larsen (Taipei, 2110).

[3] Poindeft, Archer L., Notes on Emptiness: Implied Meanings in the Lost Larsen Volumes (Calcutta and Londinium, 2134).

 

BEHIND THE SCENES

WITH THE DECLINE AND FALL

OF THE AMERICAN NATION

Dancing Fools  

 

The first draft of The Decline and Fall of the American Nation was finished by August 2001, a month or so before 9/11, the catastrophic event that even now, a dozen years downstream, is said by organs like The New York Times to have been a "terrorist attack" planned and perpetrated by nineteen Saudis with box cutters and bad attitude.

 

What does this have to do with the publication of The Decline and Fall of the American Nation? Well, it has been clear for several years that the "official" explanation of 9/11 is absurdly childish, enough so as to justify calling it infantile. In order for grown-ups to adhere to this story--or, worse, in order for grown-ups to pretend to adhere to it--it's obviously necessary for them actually to think or at the very least behave in ways that are infantile and childish, with the dread result that they in turn become infantilized grown-ups.

 

I've been writing for the past nine or ten years about this intellectually destructive phenomenon. It's the subject constituting the main thrust of my 2006 book, A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit. And it recurs, also, throughout my 2011 book, The Skull of Yorick: The Emptiness of American Thinking at a Time of Grave Peril--Studies in the Cover-up of 9/11.

 

Parts of that latter book can be read online. Dated July 26, 2008, for example, is a chapter called Is Dwight Garner a Dissembler, Deceiver, and Malefactor to His Nation?" Another excerpt, taking a look at infantilism and related faults in an additional handful of journalists, intellectuals, and writers (Frank Rich, Thomas L. Friedman, Don DeLillo, Rebecca Solnit) there is "Can the Literary Life Exist in a Post-1984 Nation?" (November 16, 2009).

 

The period between September 11, 2001, and today has seen greater damage and more grievous harm done to America's literary, intellectual, and artistic life--not to mention its moral life--than has any other period in the nation's history. That's saying a lot. But look around yourself and think it through. See if it isn't true. If you'd like some help, pick up a copy of A Nation Gone Blind or The Skull of Yorick.

 

As for The Decline and Fall of the American Nation, it is, in a word, a novel taking up as its  subject a nation that is profoundly infantilized in almost all the most significant aspects of its life--cultural, moral political, certainly educational. It is a novel, further, that grieves mightily, eloquently, and passionately over what it sees.

 

With little doubt, it will face a touch search for readers. Only those who are willing to look clearly and steadily at what Decline itself looks at steadily and clearly will choose, or dare, or find themselves compelled, to become its readers.

 

I only hope that you might be one of those.

 

                                                                                                            EL

  

  TELEPHONE PLAIN 

 

CLICK ON THE BLUE WORDS TO SEE AND HEAR PRESIDENT PENGUIN-DUCK ON THE SUBJECT OF LIES.

 

 

TWO EXCERPTS
FROM THE DECLINE AND FALL OF 
THE AMERICAN NATION

 

 

BE SO GOOD AS TO CLICK HERE IN ORDER TO READ:

 

"A NOTE TO THE READER"

"EDITOR'S FOREWORD"

"A NOTE ON THE CONDITION OF THE PAPERS"

 

AND

 

THE FIRST SECTION OF THE INTERNATIONALLY FAMOUS "DIARY," WITH ITS WELL-KNOWN TITLE PAGE:

 

 

(Part Three)

iii

My Life in Education:

What I Learned from Thirty-Five Years

in the

University of New York (UNY):

by

Eric Larsen, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.,

Professor of English

The Actaeon College of Institutional Analysis and Social Control,

The University of New York (UNY)

New York, New York

U.S.A.

 

 

IN THE MEANWHILE. . .

 

OLIVER AND ITS GRACIOUS BENEFACTORS
  

Working without assets, endowment, or reserves, The Oliver Arts & Open Press aims to publish works of high merit and importance that are ignored or suppressed by mainstream publishing. If you care about this cause and are able or would like to help with it, we at Oliver would be exceedingly grateful, as would the authors whose work we seek to celebrate and make known. To donate, make a check or money order out to "Eric Larsen Press" and mail it to: 

The Oliver Arts & Open Press

2578 Broadway (Suite #102)

New York, New York 10025

 

Our deepest thanks to these kind, generous, and thoughtful benefactors

of The Oliver Arts & Open Press:

 

Michael Fahey

Roxanne Griffith

Michael J. Rivard

Helen Tzagoloff