Foreword, when is a homeland not a homeland?

[s~Z]

>>>That casual use of "zero speculation" indicates that you can read
without thinking. The Truth just leaps off the page with no effort on
your part required. I disagree<<<

Me, too. That is creating straw then disagreeing with it. I think probably
too much when I'm reading, and nothing jumps off the page with no effort.
None of that follows from what I said originally.

>>>if you adopt that approach all the time it must limit your reading matter
severely.<<<

I don't, so it doesn't. You are generalizing from my thoughts about one
passage.

>>> To read is to speculate. <<<

To varying degrees depending on what is being read at any given time.

>>>One definition of good writing is the degree to which the reader must
speculate to draw out a range of possible meanings. <<<

The broader the better as far as I'm concerned. That's why I find the 9/11
reading too narrow.

>>>In fact, you then go on to say you "prefer" to read the passage in a
particular way, which indicates that some thinking has taken place and
you have made a decision, consciously or otherwise, to reject one
reading in favour of another.<<<

yes. I reject the 9/11 reading and choose a more general interpretation. I
first read Gravity's Rainbow during the Gulf War in 1991. It blew me away
watching the news accounts of the war and reading GR. I couldn't put it
down. The connections were astonishing. TRP gets at the complexity of the
dynamics of things like few other writers. This makes his writings
applicable to many situations. Again, this 1984 essay could have been
written, as is, had 9/11 never happened. It's more universal than 9/11.