A substantial group reading of V.

[Doug Millison]

...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>