Atdtda22: [42.2ii] The empty suburban lamplight, 614 / binding issue / RNS

[Mr Haney]

robinlandseadel
> Mark Kohut:> Once again, I'll risk reductionism by suggesting:
I logicked my way to realizing that when I was seemingly objecting to these "good/bad
to Pynchon" characterizations by claiming to be looking for "uniquely-P" qualities, I was
in fact agreeing, since the core of anyone's unique statements about something is
whether or not they like it/think it's good...isn't it?
> Natural light is almost always a positive in AtD.> Electric light is almost always not. 
I remember somebody way back in (the ATDTDA read of the) Colorado or Utah
(sections) posting a thought that carried that even further: Pynchon more or less
approves of outdoor action, disapproves of indoor action (where all the plotting takes place)
-- recently this was refuted or counterpointed by passages about the pampas...
 
broadly speaking, 
there does seem to be a narrative motion toward the outdoors, though, doesn't there?
"tengo que get el fuck out of here..." 
(as Crowley wrote in The Book of Lies, "Get out")(Though as Robin says, perhaps
EFT is more including occultism as a character of sorts than evangelizing for it? Or 
including it among the preterite things that rational line-drawing colonialization costs us -
"the feeling you get when you're hypnotized" as Fleetwood Mack put it?)
 
> Local Electrical/Gas companies were an important part of the Pynchco > portfolio along with Edison. George Mallory Pynchon invested in high-tech > developments and had been a keen enthusiast of the ongoing 'ray-race'> 
Robin, the gas transmission seems to tickle your funnybone even more than the
pearl message did mine...that one hit me just right...the more I thought about it
the funnier it got.  
 
W/r/t the gas transmissions: starting to think about them... 
there is this: plain old hearing is vibrations transmitted through gas, isn't it?
then, the "slow and the stupid" (besides parodying soap opera title)
are those who aren't telepathic but have to communicate using words?
or, those who are hooked on the mass media in general?
or, is this a commentary on the fact that readers/soap opera watchers/"fiction consumers" like to
   be able to feel superiour to the characters they are watching?
 
(I'm probably running this somewhere unintended, or groundward...)
 
a most vivid part of the section was the baking advice (the exploded pie
due to failure to make vents in the crust)
 
**binding issue: my copy of AtD has given up staying together, but still readable***
 
RNS - revised new syllabus for my "Great American Novel" class
1) read Roth's book & discuss the concept - great way to start; then make everybody reread Huck Finn
2) some Hemingway
3) some Faulkner
4) some Bellow including the Hitchens intro to Augie March wherein he claims that to be the GAN
5) some Mailer
6) some Dos Passos
7) scherzo last 3 weeks, "Down So Long" / a shorter Barth novel / and Crying of Lot 49 
 
 
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