A substantial group reading of V.

[Dave Monroe]

... well, if it's close readin' you want, then maybe it's close readin' ye
should post.  Being new to this list, I of course wouldn't know if "the good
old days" were as "good" as they're being made out to be here, but, again
(again ...), it does seem as if no small amount of time and/or energy is
being expended trading insults, time and/or energy that could be spent
setting an example instead.

By the way, just for the record, I'm neither anonymous nor a college kid,
and any "lit-crit lingo" I might em- and/or deploy here is of vintage
acquistion.  No, I know you don't mean me, Doug, but I guess I just don't
see anything wrong with anonymity, collegiality, or taking a new vocabulary
out for a spin, is all.  And I've nothing against the rightfully proud
people of Australia, either ...

Doug Millison wrote:

> ...is in the Pynchon-L archives, I believe. I don't know the current
> status of the archives, but if they're available, you should find the
> group read of V. there, instigated and organized by our own
> inimitable Chris K, and carried out back when Pynchon-L was still a
> forum for substantial discussion of Pynchon's works. (As opposed to,
> say, a place for anonymous college kids to show off their
> newly-acquired lit-crit lingo and the cuss words their parents won't
> allow, or where a newly-minted antipodean PhD can make a rep by
> attacking an established Pynchon scholar and accuse some of us of
> remote-control hacking into his PC and broadcasting radio waves into
> his brain, or where an antipodean troll and his North American and
> European  sidekicks can just get up and *piss on that table* and thus
> enact what *Pynchon would want us to do*; while the P-list seems to
> have had its share of these elements virtually from the start;
> they've come to dominate the conversation only in the past year or
> so.)  The archives also contain the '97-98 group reading of M&D
> (MDMD) and the group reading of Vineland that followed a few months
> later (VLVL).  There's a great start at a GRGR, too, which,
> unfortunately, fizzled when the Grand Master Troll of them all
> instigated the flame war that provided him material for the weak
> Playboy-article retread that appeared under the Lineland name. Before
> the list undertakes any new group reading, I strongly suggest you
> take a look at what a group reading can be; the current GRGR pales in
> comparison to the P-list's past group readings.  Yes, I know that one
> of you trolls finds the sort of annotations that were offered during
> MDMD and VLVL pedantic or pedestrian or otherwise (I forget the
> precise wording of that particular piece of flame bait) not worth
> your time -- Malign was vocal in that regard but then we know from
> when he first started posting to Pynchon-L under that other name that
> he hated M&D, and I also recall that Malign was the only one to offer
> such a criticism at the time; everybody else who participated
> generally seemed to be having a good time; the MDMD archives contain
> much that could form the basis for a Reader's Companion to M&D in the
> manner of Weisenburger's Companion to GR; good insights into
> Vineland, too, in VLVL. But don't take my word for it, check out the
> archives; your mileage may vary.
> --
>
> d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>