Kai, Do you know this girl?

[Dave Monroe]

Well, obviously, my approach to pretty much anything
is to spiral outwards rather than inwards.  Online
avant la lettre, always clicking on the links.  I read
the bibliographies, the endnotes first.  And after
fifteen or so years of piling up books with no
particular reason to do so, I can see at least now
what might have provoked me.  So you'll pardon my
enthusiasm ...

But, of course, point is, I did read Pynchon first, as
blindly as I possibly could have (The Crying of Lot
49, for example, in 6th grade, 'cos it was mentioned
in one or another of the early books on Star Trek). 
Gravity's Rainbow is what provoked my literary turn
(from physics) in the first place.  But i've never
been on to simply stop there, so ...

--- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Dave--anything you'd recommend OMITTING when doing
> the research and legwork in preparation for reading
> Pynchon? Forgive me please I couldn't resist.
> Seriously, I think what you have been saying turns
> out to be that a Pynchon reader is better off with
> as much knowledge as possible of what was in the
> intellectual 60s air. On this I fully agree.

But, of course, now, with Mason & Dixon (not to
mention Vineland), not just the 60s.  Much that's
obviously of recent vintage in M&D, even if Pynchon
had been working on it since completing GR (at
latest).  I'd love to know how all these novels
developed, but, as that 1969 letter to Thomas Hirsch
(rept. in David Seed's The Fictional Labyrinths of
Thomas Pynchon) shows, major elements can often be
nigh-unto last minute thoughts ...

> I also believe that the best way to read Pynchon is
> not as a reference to ideas expressed and points
made
> in other books--at least in any greater sense than
> that all writing (and reading) is a reference to
> ideas expressed in other books.  

Glad to see I' might have provoked some sensitivity to
the intertextuality of all texts here ...

> Failure to honor the general expectation that for
> the average reader the words actually on the page
> tell enough  might be downright counterproductive if
> assumed-other-text is allowed to become distracting.

Again, obviously, you can start from anywhere, and
stop anywhere.  And, if only for the sake of getting
people to read the damn books, I find myself
constantly stressing to my evangilizees that, hey, YOU
don't need an armful, backpack, er, house full o'
books to read one little ol' 700+ page novel.  I'm
even giving M&D as an Xmas gift this year ...

Again, not a matter, perhaps of "better" or "worse"
understandings of any given texts being the result of
where these points eventually lie for any given
reader, but, certainly, of different ones.  Me, i'm
just trying to work out a range of possibilities, is
all ...

> Of course if we are careful  this will not need to
> happen. And some ideas are more related than others.
> But I really think Pynchon is as good a prepartion
> for Brown as Brown is for Pynchon.  Dick and Jane
> books were our preparation for both of them.

Of course, I read Pynchon first (as well?).  And it
will perhaps be unsurprising here to note that I
learned to read from Dr. Seuss, the World Book
encyclopedia (best thing you can give a kid, an
encyclopedia, you can simply pick one up, flip open
anywhere, stop anywhere, learn a little something
quickly ... I was the only kid on my block to know who
Stefan Zweig was, for example, though i've only
recently read him [see his Buchmendel, can't believe
it's taken me so long to get to it, cosidering I've
been living it for so long ...]), the National
Geographic and, not coincidentally, maps (I can
remember getting a globe for my second Christmas ...)
...

> Still I would like to insist again for emphasis on
> the point that it is inadvisable to associate p-text
> with other text with too much specificity (even when
> the author explicitly makes the connection).. I
would 
> see danger there of missing something really
> important. 

Of course, the possible comparisons can be revlatory
as well.  Think Paradise Lost vs. Genesis, Ulysses vs.
(among many, many other things) The Odyssey, and so
forth.  Though these texts, of course, call forth more
explicitly their intertexts ...

> Of course it is always a matter of balance and
> judgement. Your industriousness in pointing out
> references is commendable, I can agree on.

Thanks.  Somebody's gotta do it, and I'm trying to do
my fair share.  But, again, I'm hardly offering
wholesale redaings, just things that others may or may
not find useful along the way.  But if Weisenbrger and
Grant are reading, I well expect to find myself in the
2nd eds. of those Companions, an honor you, of course,
know well already ...

> I do have "Life Against Death" here beside me and
> there are at least five Marcuse books in the next
> room. Can't believe i actually used to read the
> latter in almost total awe.

I'm convinced that GR, vis a vis "the 60s," maybe even
"Western Civilization," shares something of Marcuse's
later reconsideration (see that "1966 Political
Preface" to Eros and Civilization) of his earlier
excesses.  But that's one of those many, many little
things I'm posting tentatively along the way.  I'll
never be one for the grand summing up, I'm afraid ...

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