Death of reading

[David L. Pelovitz]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Aviragus at aol.com

>As a child I was an avid reader and was advised to start a book and always
>finish it completely before starting another book.  I took this as 
>gospel and in an oddly undiscriminating way never put down a book
>without finishing it.
>this took me through about my 19th year when I had finished V and GR.  

Funny, after finishing GR you stopped taking the idea of approaching
texts in the most linear way possible a little less important.

>(I am 39 to answer tevans)it was  around the age of 20 that I  began to 
>break my rule of finishing every bookbefore starting another and 
>have trained myself perhaps too effectively to engage in pastiche reading.  
>Our experience with the media  (TV etal) is based on fragments of info 
>being delivered in bursts  (look at mailing lists) so that reading a 
>demanding book from beginning to end becomes antithetical to our notion 
>of experience itself.  Being that the ruptured delivery has become so 
>powerful in manipulating conciousnees thru ads etc., isn't TRP effective 
>because he engages in fragmentation but demands(or insinuates) that we 
>engage in total immersion  in order for the the pot of gold ( unifying
>knowledge,real or imagined) to be attained? Has TRP like so many 
>charismatic leaders before him engaged in effective manipulation 
>without delivering the pot?? 

GR depends on ruptured delivery, but total immersion?  What does it
gain you?  Like reality, you can't "know it," it does not have
a plot, and even if it did, it would be constantly interrupted
by interpolated texts.  

Seems like you gave up on the idea of monogamous devotion
to narratives after reading V and GR.  TRP may not have
given you a pot of gold, but some message may have been
transmitted anyway.

David Pelovitz - dqp5805 at is.nyu.edu