Surely there’s something between Sex and the City and Gravity’s Rainbow to feed our souls?

In today’s NYTimes Week in Review, I read with great interest about the expectations that are foisted upon the US by different regions and governments around the globe. Of course, what Europe appears to want is hardly what the US is willing to hand over. But I am fascinated by the comment of Michael Naumann, editor of the German Die Zeit. The NYT says this about him:

For Mr. Naumann, who once worked as a book publisher in New York, America’s most lasting contribution would be to reclaim its status as a wellspring of the arts.Too many Europeans, he said, view American culture as synonymous with raunchy television like the “Sex and the City” series. “What I wish most from the United States is the next novel from Tom Pynchon,” he said.

He has got to be kidding! How many readers were actually able to finish (let alone fully comprehend) “Gravity’s Rainbow?” Maybe it reads better when translated into a language* that doesn’t acknowledge the need for shorter words or sentences.

*In selecting the “words of the year,” the German Language Society also gave a nod to Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgaben- übertragungsgesetz – winner of a special award as the longest German word of the year. I'm told that “the monster word consisted of 63 letters, 20 syllables, and ten individual words—all to express a law having to do with British beef (Rindfleisch) and the so-called mad cow disease" (read about it here).