Request that you "play alon

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	5/9/96
Subject	Request that you "play alon
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Request that you "play along"
Dear Pynchon-l:

Like a few others on our list, I am a high school teacher.  Among my classes (at
a private HS in DC) is a once per week "honors" seminar that is now coming to a
close.  As a final project in this "pass/fail" class, I would like to ask my six
12th grade students to compose a "post" for this list.  I would then ask that
you consider responding to the students.

The class is loosely organized around the topic "Living Writers Who Matter" but
we have wound up reading mostly contemporary American writers in the Pynchon
vein. We started the year by reading COL49 and then moved on to:

Auster, "Leviathan"
Rushdie, "East, West"
Michael Chabon, "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh"
And stories by David Foster Wallace, Robert Coover, Mark Leyner and some
others.

I will ask them to compose a post that makes some observation and asks some
questions about what we've read Ñ hopefully something that will interest some of
you.

I hope that some will write responses to the kids.  I invite you to challenge
them, question them, disagree with them, but also to be aware that they're high
school kids.  (Really smart ones, though.  Their six September 1996 destinations
are: Yale, Yale, Williams, U. Michigan, Oberlin and, I dunno, some other really
fancy-pants school.)

If for some reason this is an inappropriate use of the list and I am breaching
etiquette, definitely let me know and I'll change my plans.  I think, however,
that it could be amusing and will certainly give my students an interesting new
angle on (and valuable summation of) all the wild stuff they read this year.

Thanks in advance for your consideration,

Will Layman