UMd Pynchon/DeLillo Class

[PETER A WATTS]

i'd like to speak a bit to the subject of the already-spoken quality of 
PYnchon's writing, GR in particular.
I have always been struck by the sense, when reading, that the words are 
those of a disembodied voice. I would take the stance that this is 
because of several factors: 1) Macho Pyncho is very conscious of not only 
the sound of the language he uses but the voice it is spoken in, 2) he 
tends (like so many great writers--Twain, Salinger, Joyce, Faulkner) to 
employ dialects and minor-languages which give the words a strong aspect 
of person-ality 3) Like almost no-one else Pynchon is faithful to speech 
rather than writing, that is, leaves writing sounding like actual thought 
or speech rather than making sound like literature, "good" or "beautiful" 
writing.
All of these factors are powerfully present in GR; they make it both 
perfect and absolutely prohibitive of reading aloud. perfect in the sense 
that it is completely amenable to translation into personal speech; 
prohibitive in the sense that anyone who could concieve, could picture 
the hundreds of diverse embodying voices in a single section of GR, would 
either be clinical (diagnosed with MPD), or as great an imaginative 
Genius as old Tom himself (perhaps as guilty of MPD too).
Attempts to do so, however, if they are sincere, can be fascinating and 
revealing of much that lies latent in the text. I've gathered friends and 
attempted re-enactments of the halloween tradition of reading large 
portions of GR aloud. The thing is, ten minds, reading in turns, get a 
much broader take on the minds in GR than one person reading, not paying 
as much attention to personifying all the voices. 
So, what about a dramatization of GR, with all the greatest actors taking 
the myriads of voices in the book, changing voices everytime pynchon 
does, slipping from 3rd omni, to stream-o-consc, to psychotic hallucination,
to...
Good idea? let's start organinzing; send check or money order to. . .

-uwattp00 at mcl.ucsb.edu
"if you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality;
 if you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact.
 now, what do you wish to call this?"
	 	-Zen proverb 
		 meme of the week
		 teachers and students, tell your friends