ATDTDA (5.0) - �Cuidado Cabr�n!

[Carvill John]

Hi folks

Just some brief preliminary remarks before starting the hosting of ATDTDA 
Part 5 - pages 126-155.

When I say remarks, perhaps I'd be better to come clean and say apologies, 
excuses, pleas for leniency. I've been monstrously busy these past several 
months, and have watched the pile-up of ATDTDA posts with a sort of wistful 
dismay. I haven't had a chance to read even a quarter of what's been posted 
and I've literally had no spare time to contribute to the Group Read of this 
fantastic book. So in a sense I've no real business hosting my segment at 
all, since I have to admit right off the bat that I have no real knowledge 
of what's been said up to this point. Therefore I apologise in retrospect 
for that, and in advance for the fact that I'm not going to have time to 
minutely annotate every page as we go along. Instead I intend to just plough 
my own furrow and focus on the passages and points which strike me 
personally as particularly significant, important or entertaining.

When I first joined the p-list and started browsing through the archives, 
naturally enough I felt a pang of jealousy when looking through all the old 
Group Reads. I wished I could have been in on one of those! I suppose I felt 
a little like Tony Soprano - "Lately I've been getting the feeling that I 
came in at the end, the best is over..."

So now that I have the opportunity, I'd like to try, in my own small way, 
emulating some aspects of those great Olde Pynchone Group Reades of Yore, at 
least in the sense of trying to throw out a few questions or points for 
debate which I hope will stir up some discussion.

The other thing I need to note here is that we all know the centrality of 
interconnections in Pynchon's work, and ATD is perhaps his most densely 
interconnected work to date. At least I think so, feel free to tell me 
otherwise. And what a dense and difficult section I got! I wanted a segment, 
and for my sins, they gave me one...

Anyway this makes it difficult to 'host' a section in any meaningful way if 
you have to stick strictly to the scope and order of your alloted pages. So 
while I'll try to do this in a reasonably linear manner, y'all will 
understand if I have to jump around a wee bit, and make occasional reference 
to passages from other segments.

Cheers
JC

_________________________________________________________________
5.5%* 30 year fixed mortgage rate. Good credit refinance. Up to 5 free 
quotes - *Terms 
https://www2.nextag.com/goto.jsp?product=100000035&url=%2fst.jsp&tm=y&search=mortgage_text_links_88_h2a5d&s=4056&p=5117&disc=y&vers=910