MDMD2: The Learned English Dog

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Hey Dave:

Re: MDMD2: The Learned English Dog is one of yr. best cross-postings. 
Those The Evergreen Review references from your post written back in 2002:

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72460 . . . .

http://www.evergreenreview.com/ . . . .

Point right back at the continuation of the Cynic tradition in America 
from Dogs like W.S. Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg and Baby Dodds. 
Very, very beat. And this all extends into and reverberates in the 
Golden Age of Black Humor [which happens to overlap with the very
publick presence of the Diggers in San Francisco, obvious spiritual 
children of the first cynics], an aspect of Pynchon one ignores at 
one's peril. Is he not the High Priest of Black Humor, the inevitable 
offspring of Dante on a screaming bender, Ben Jonson seeking hot 
action at the Faire, Robert Burton searching high & low for anti-
depressants and Lenny Bruce screaming WE'RE ALL GONNA 
DIE!!!!!!!!! at the top of his lungs, like the sick and very public theater 
of the first satirists, the cynics? Is this not the very reason we still 
fight for the freedom of the commons?

One thing's pretty clear---our boy Tom sure knows his dogs. . . .