Stop The Madness! (was pynchon-l-digest V2 #4549)

[Carvill John]

Wow. Go out Friday night and wake up with a p-list hangover!

This is DEFINITELY not what I envisaged when I suggested a GR group read. 
Imagine my embarrassment at having recommended the p-ilst to a few friends, 
and even a couple of guys I don't actually know but knew to be Pynchon fans.

There does seem to be a lot of bitching, bickering, and grinding of axes. 
Some people do have very firm ideas about this or that and brook no 
reasonable argument in defending them.

What I had in mind was not a lot of people stating their position then 
attacking anyone who disagrees. I also didn't want to read a lot of 
name-calling and so on. If I want unpleasantness I can watch the news on tv 
or whatever.

I wanted to read through GR one more time, and have some sort of DISCUSSION 
about it, well no not some sort of discussion, specifically I wanted a 
reasonably mature, but in any case POLITE discussion.

I also think we have made a mistake in running off so chaotically. We should 
draw up a schedule and appoint hosts. A host for a given section oughtn't 
feel obliged to come up with any stunning new insights or anyting like that, 
he/she can just get the ball rolling, throw up a few points for discussion, 
whatever. And of course the rest of us can still talk about anything we 
want, but it'd be nice if we did cohere at least to some extent, around the 
points/questions set out by the host for that section.

Either way, I suggest we all determine to drop all the virtiol, draw a line 
under the bickering, and proceed in a manner more befitting a literary 
group. Would people behave in this way at a real-life book club discussion? 
I don't think so.

I think it would be a great pity to miss this opportunity to do the GR read. 
I always look forward to the p-list digests arriving in my inbox, and it's 
great to have this renewed incidence of Pynchon related posts. If we could 
just change the tone a wee bit, and get some sort of structure into it, we 
can make it a worthwhile and entertaining experience for us all. Something 
to keep us all going until the next Pynchon book comes out.

Cheers

JC