A Note To P-Listers

[jill]

Young is 32. I found that reading GR made excellent background coincidences
all year long. I don't know if my brain is big enough to realize the
socalled mandala structure, or what the relevance of the S-Gerat was, or
the Kirghiz light. Have no idea what what TRP wants us to feel about those
things. I'm certain that Pynchon probably did want us to know what he meant
and feel certain things, but it seems like he doesn't want us to be TOO
sure. It's cool when the list trails off into a cut up like Kenosha Kid. I
couldn't tell half the time where the setting was in GR. Seemed that
whatever I read was referred to somehow in the day. Since I didn't pay much
attention in world history class, I like the way it's been a blanket of
references for me to look up. Rossini or Beethoven don't quite sound the
same any more. Once years ago, a German friend gave me a Gund toy
Boar--hmmmm a pig. Kids today... I tell you I think GR is an excellent way
to kick the butt and wake up the education that we may have slept through,
especially world history... GR was written after a Beat Revolution had
created a tradition that freed up expression. (did you see the US PBS TV
show Sources--about the Beats too?) When I meet people who find out I am
reading it, many times, the other person will spit out some invective about
Pynchon as if they hate him, just like the Beats were hated. Well, now,
that's weird, but it's like what I heard back when I was getting my English
degree and the faculty was all up in arms about Derrida and Post
structuralism... You could draw a line in the faculty and people would sift
to one side or the other. I wonder what people will think of GR years from
now. You have to probably read it a few times to understand or to get
passionate about it.

Paranoid wrote:
> 
> Cobwebby.  Well, I'm young(ish) 24.  I didn't read GR till I was about 20.
> I don't say much in this group because I am not always reading the book but
> I do read the messages (most of them) fairly regularily. I think what you
> guys are doing is fine.  I guess I should say we cause I'm contributing
> right now.  Though I often believe, being a writer myself, that people often
> go too far in analysis of novels. But then, at the same time, I love it when
> someone gets a new view of something I have written.  I have actually
> changed my mind about what exactly I was writing after someone has mentioned
> what they found in the story. Maybe I was thinking that?
> Who knows.
> Nevertheless, for scholarly work on Pynchon (which this certainly is) I have
> found nothing better. Sometimes we get petty, sometimes I can just see
> people at home or work checking their e-mail every three seconds to see what
> kind of rebuttal there has been, but in the end, as the internet should be,
> this is informative. And information is what we are here for.
> Right then.
> That's all for now.
> Does anyone ever speak of the Crying of Lot 49?  That book (though Pynchon
> says he hacked it out for cash) is extrodinary in its briefness and depth.
> Cheers