post from the past

[Michael Bailey]

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9709&msg=20275
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 22:42:26 +0100
To: Pynchon-l@[omitted]
From: Eric Alan Weinstein <E.A.Weinstein@[omitted]>
Subject: The joy of where I have read MDMD (plus dog urine)

Well, I finished my second reading today on the park bench
in Cassiobury Park, Watford where I began my first reading
of "pt 2, America"  some four months ago.

 I have read M&D in London, New York, Edinburgh,
the Highlands, State College Pennslyvania, Oxford and
Princeton, NJ.
I have read it on trains, in airplanes, in bed, and while my car
was being valet-ed at Dick Tracey Car Wash, M1 entrance, Staple's
Corner.

Very often I have read it .at shopping malls esp.
the Staten Island Mall, the Harliquin Centre Watford and most of all
at Ponte's Lavazza in Brent Cross Mall (in a seat overhanging the bit
with Talbots, Laura Ashley and the Museum Store.) Also the Japanese
Mall at Yoohan Plaza, in the food court, often with steaming good Ramen
nearby, or maybe just a cup of miso.

 I've read M&D sitting in in Hyde Park (inside the backwards
tree), in  Central Park ( during a happy Dominican bar-b-q), and
in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia with an old friend from
that place, after going to Boarders.   I read it in the waiting-room
at Euro-Lille, traveling back from Paris, and thought of
my man Rem Koolhaus, his copy sitting in Rotterdam, full,
I'm sure, of notes and scribbles.

I have read M&D in my
old office at Senate House (surrounded by DEIC and BEIC papers),
and my new office in Sommerset House
(surrounded by several new computers and suffused with glorious light
and even air. It is  overlooks the river.  Nearby-- the soon to be infamous
floatin', rockin' ship o' Pynheads El Barco Latino, taco's £1, Beer £1.50.)

Mostly, as is becoming obvious to you all,
 I've read M&D at many resturants and cafe's, often after midnight
but sometimes over late  brunch, almost  always happily.
Mason Bertaux, Bar Italia, Cafe Lanterna, Cafe Reggio,
The Victory Diner and the Potter's Bar/Hatfeild M25 motorway
services--thank you all very much.

I have given away more than a dozen free copies. The American edition,
save one extra mistake on p 764, being both more expensive by about $.27/£.17,
and much better produced--better paper, nicer cover, plus dust jacket
and properly sewn binding. These gifts have been one of the great pleasures
of my life, giving to people who will read and enjoy. Thank you, Holt.
Cape, stop cutting corners with Britain's books.


I wish only to add that as I was about to finish this afternoon---
on p 769 to be exact, Mason's truly awful and terrifing vison of Beings
from "the new planet"---
 a dog who had been playing with two other doggie friends in the nearby
River Lea came up to me, and as I was deeply engrossed in the hideous
forms of Charles Mason's dying mind, lifted his leg and pissed all over me.

I washed and changed, returned to the bench, and finished the book fifteen
minutes later. Then I tossed the book in the air, a la Mary Tyler Moore,
as high as I could, and caught it, and went home.

Thank you, TRP, where ever you are tonight, well done, well done.
A whole chunk of my life spent engrossed in yours silks without limit,
your "savage flowers of the Indies,
demurer Blooms of the British garden, stripes and tartans, foreign
colours undreamed in Newton's prismatics, damasks with epic-length
Oriental tales woven into them, requireing hours of attentive gazing
whilst the light at the window went changing so as to reveal newer
and deeper labrinths of event, Velvets whose grasp of incident light
was so predatory and absolute that one moved closer to compensate
for what was not being reflected, till it felt like being drawn, oneself,
inside the unthinkable contours of an invisable surface."
Eric Alan Weinstein
University of London
E.A.Weinstein@[omitted]