Kai, Do you know this girl?

[Paul Mackin]

Yes, intertextuality is my entire point. Do not think its importance is
appreciated enough. In my view it is not the thing but the only thing.
(well, I better not go overboard)
            P.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
To: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>; <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2001 2:57 AM
Subject: Re: Kai, Do you know this girl?


> 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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