SLSL Intro (A Couple-Three Bozos

[tyro tortoise]

--- s~Z <keithsz at concentric.net> wrote:
> >>>So the first question is, who are you
> talking/complaining/er,
> bitching to/about/at here?<<<
> 
> Me, you, anybody, everybody. Nice to see your dander
> up. When I read TRP I
> sense something I can't put into words. When I
> hosted MDMD(20) the whole
> experience of studying those texts closely put me
> into a very strange state
> of consciousness. Putting that experience into words
> trivializes the
> experience. Now, anyway. Several people who were
> around that week were drawn
> into the experience also. When I read Nabokov, and
> he talked about novelist
> as enchanter that made sense to me. Nabokov does the
> same thing to me
> Pynchon does. Tin Drum and Moby Dick did it. Beckett
> does it. It is
> powerful. It makes life worth living. Pynchon
> himself says no one is
> listening. I agree.

In the land of the deaf, the man with one ear is the
keeper of the mozart. 

I'm certainly not qualified to talk about this but
I've give it a shot. 
When I read a novel like GR or M&D, especially for the
first time, evocation is ephemeral. So I cannot nail
it down. I can't hold it in my mind or my hand or jot
it down on paper. Trying to fix it or keep it static
for later inspection, discussion, composition, would
be like trying to pin a caterpillar at
mid-metamorphoses to a wall. While reading, the
authors "poem" commingle with the stuff of my
imagination and memory. This experience, the
evocation, is unique for each reader and it cannot be
shared directly with anyone; someone else cannot
directly evaluate it. It is transitory. It has an
inward character. Nevertheless, when we talk about
"poems" we must have recourse to memory and that
inward imaginative stuff. Anathema though these may be
to those who seek to argue some objectivity, these are
what are really worth discussing. I don't think Dave
Monroe has ever tried to argue some objectivity. He
has never, as far as I remember, attempted to silence
even the most idiosyncratic response to a Pynchon
poem. On the contrary, he has encouraged all here to
share their unique experiences with poems. He's a very
good host. He wants people to mingle and talk, but
sometimes he loses patience with the bitching and the
butchering. And, he would prefer to see people relax a
bit and think before they press send. Being an
impetuous tyro, I tend not to think enough before I
type. "They also serve who only stand and wait." Had I
waited today, I would have found out soon enough what
Pynchon meant by "serve" in that unsettling sentence
in the SL Introduction. Thank you MalignD. 

When we have this transient experience with a poem
like GR it is like lightning up the arse. How can
anyone explain what lightning up the arse is like?
However, if we let the sparks fall and settle; the
shivering stop; the conflicts and questions to pass;
then suddenly without our conscious effort, we begin
to fit together something new. I like new stuff. I
like to read what people fit together. 

OK, that was lame. Gotta get to shore and dig a hole
in the sand now. 

TT


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