Book Description

[Dave Monroe]

I thought I heard my name called ...

--- jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> 
> Reading the "historical record" through the lens of
> the actual novel is a better way to, well, read the
> novel, imho. WWI? Groucho Marx? What's to research?
> nd cribbing for it sounds a little like getting
> one's opinions ready beforehand, regardless of
> what's in the book.

Well, there are some who simply Know this stuff before
they go in (or pretend to have known it, at any rate).
 Me, I had a decent working knowledge, at least, of,
say, WWII, the V-2, calculus, chemisty, mechanics,
aerodynamics, et al. going into GR.  Of colonial North
America, 18th century Britain, surveying, and the
slave trade going into M&D.  Lot 49 I first read ca.
sixth grade, it having been mentioned in one of David
Gerrold's Star Trek books (seriously), but picking it
back up again I had some background in both
thermodynamics and the Elizabethan theater.  For V.,
colonialism in Africa, espionage literature, 19th
century atopias, for Vineland, pop culture, US labor
hsitory, the sixties and the Reagan Administration. 
And so on ...

But hell if I know anything about, say, Hungarian
cuisine.  And so forth ...

Here, I have some knowledge of the Columbian
Exposition and/or H.H. Holmes, having heard much about
it from my roommate and now reading a book which i'd
fortuitously picked up for him on the subject.  But,
given that it's one of the rare occasionas where I've
carried around anything that EVERYBODY else seems to
have read (and enjoyed) before me (though a guy at a
cookout commented favorably on the recent trans. of
Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet I've been trying to
get through amidst several recent distractions as
well), I'd say the general reading public might be
well-prepared for, ptentially interested, even, this
novel for once.  And then there's Hilbert ...

Me, I like to know stuff, is all.  Of course, tehre
are some here who present themselves as experts on
everything as the occasion arises, but ...

Well, you can't spell "passive agressive" without
"A-S-..." ...

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