nohead

[Jeff Lawshe]

>  [D]oes it ever seem like maybe Pynchon, and Gaddis, and
>deLillo never seem to trickle down to "the masses" *shudder* at the 
> >shotgun spread of generalization- because those 'in the know' have a 
> >tendency to hold these books over their heads?
>   This is purely personal experience, as someone who didn't benefit >from 
>college (didn't attend), and was tarred and feathered out of high >school, 
>but whenever I've brought up Pynchon with the educated folks, >I feel 
>awfully
>patronized.  As if to say that since I never read these  books in a >class 
>with 20 other people, I didn't really get it.
>   Reading as recreation is becoming more and more infrequent (it >seems), 
>but the hyper literate folks don't seem to be very encouraging.
*************************
   I am pretty much a part of academia, though I would never, ever, not 
through any probability-enhancing extension of time or space call myself 
hyper-literate, or even sortof literate.

I would like to add, though, that esotericism is not only a function of 
higher education.  Someone mentioned earlier that a reader must be bonded to 
the demands of the material world in order truly to understand Pynchon (a 
paraphrase).  The claim is admirably heretical given the more or less tired 
debate over the reader's influence on text formation.  Perhaps I am too much 
of an old-fashioned post-modernist, but I balk at the idea that "Pynchon," 
(in whatever sense we mean that proper noun, since we know next to nothing 
about the man) or any author, really, is accessible only to a privileged--or 
underprivileged--few.

Jeff L.

[Disclaimers for the above comments include exhaustion, drunkenness, 
newbieness, and any other stereotypical states I might have overlooked]

By the way:  in the spirit of blatant ignorance that is the only innovation 
I have found I am capable of introducing to my chosen profession, I have 
never heard of Gaddis or deLillo, and wouldn't mind a private message 
informing me of their relevance to T. Pynchon.


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