New Member/Question

[malignd at aol.com]

<<I also started with GR just like Tore, and without any 
"Companion" text either. My thinking is that it's better to just read 
through, letting what you don't understand just pass by the first time 
in order to allow the reading to have its own rhythm. 
 
 But GR's the best, and that's where I'd start. >>

I read GR straight through with no reader's guide (there wasn't one, 
yet) and then spent a week in the New York public library digging out 
everything I could find on the book.  It was a great pleasure, with a 
lot of "ah, that's what that was about."  I remember a terrific article 
by (I think) Bernard Lippman called "The Reader of the Movies," in (I 
thnk) the Denver Quarterly that really got met going.  So that was fun.

On the other hand, I read Ulysses with a couple of supplemental books 
and having the references to hand didn't hurt the experience of reading 
it a bit.

As to what to read first -- I think I read COL49 first, but I don't 
think it matters much, since it's not really going to prepare you for 
GR, which is where you want to get.  I would not start with V.  For all 
it's occasional brilliance, I don't think it holds together.  It's GR 
small with no reverberations.
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