M&D: Two questions. GR: 1 question. Pomo: 1.

[Dave Monroe]

1.  The Oxford English Dictionary, ie., the final word on words in English,
insofar as there can ever be finality on language.   Full of useful
information: etymologies, obscure to archaic usages, obscure to archaic
words, early-to-first recorded use, and so forth.  Readliy availbale if
you've got a grand or so to blow, rather less for the two-volume teeny-tiny
print version (w/ magnifying glass), but I imagine even yr better Belgian
(correct?) libraries might have one; certainly, a university library should
...

2.  Also a pretty damn creepy Dario Argento film.  But I'd have to get back
to you on that voice, it's been since publication for me, and I don't have
the book at hand.

3.  As Otto points out via that link, that's Steven Weisenberger's eminently
useful A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's
Novel (Athens [Georgia, that is]: U of Georgia Press, 1988).  Still in print
here, as far as I can tell, and going for ca. sixteen bills (American) in
paperback.  The U of Ga P website at http://www.uga.edu/ugapress/ is
apparently still under construction, but you can e-mail them at
books at ugapress.uga.edu.  Toll free phone number: 1-800-266-5842.  Don't know
about Europe, but Otto seems to have found a copy for you.  Any further
problems, feel free to e-mail and I'll see how I can help you.

4.  Well, Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition seems to have
been conveniently witten and first published in French.  A necessary
touchstone, but it probably won't address the issues immediately addressed
here, much less in re: literature.  A few suggestions, then ...

--Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity
--Christopher Butler, After the Wake
--Steven Connor, Postmodern Culture
--Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic (some seminal short papers)
--David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity
--Ihab Hassan, The Postmodern Turn
--Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism
--Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, of the Cultural Logic of Capitalism
--Charles Jencks, Postmodernism
--E. Ann Kaplan, ed., Postmodernism and Its Discontents
--Brian McHale, Constructing Postmodernism
--Brian Wallis, ed., Art after Modernism (an esp. comprehensive collection)
--Alan Wilde, Horizons of Assent

For starters, along with Lyotard, I'd go for the Foster, Hassan, Hutcheon,
Jameson and Wallis, myself, but ... but Harvey, Jencks and Connor might be
of interest as comprehensive overviews.  Butler, Hassan, Hutcheon, McHale
and Wilde will deal specifically with literary postmodernism.  And for
discussions of modernism dovetailing into those of postmodernism here, do
see Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air; Matei Calinescu, Five
Faces of Modernity; Astadur Eysteinsson, The Concept of Modernity; and
Andreas Huyseen, After the Great Divide.

Michel Ryckx wrote:

> 1. The May 1997 archive mentions 'OED' as being hulpful in reading M&D.
> What is that thing?  And can I get it?
>
> 2. 'Tenebrae' is one of the Latin words for 'Underworld'.  So: I've
> considered that voice from the beginning as the Voice of Death -a rather
> pretty girl. Am I wrong?
>
> 3. You have all copies of 'Weisenberger' as you call it. My bookstore
> cannot find it.  Where in Europe is it available?  Or can I buy
> someone's?
>
> 4. PoMo: you all made me curious about it.  Vacation is coming up. So
> what can I  read (in English or French).
>
> Getting dumber every day -and liking it,
> Michel.