TMoP

[Mark Kohut]

But this is NOT "The Master of Petersburg", just a bit from within it that
is an allusion to Stavrogin's Confession (originally left out of "The Possessed")


--- On Fri, 9/5/08, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: TMoP
> To: "Lawrence Bryan" <lebryan at speakeasy.net>
> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Friday, September 5, 2008, 1:39 PM
> Sounds more like an HBO series.
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 2:26 PM, Lawrence Bryan
> <lebryan at speakeasy.net>wrote:
> 
> >
> > If Madison Avenue were running a campaign for readers
> of The Master of
> > Petersburg, my guess for an excerpt would be:
> >
> > "If he were more confident of his French he would
> channel this disturbing
> > excitement into a book of the kind one cannot publish
> in Russia - something
> > that could be finished off in a hurry, in two or three
> weeks, even without a
> > copyist - ten signatures, three hundred page. A book
> of the night, in which
> > every excess would be represented and no bounds
> respected ... With a chapter
> > in which the noble memoirist reads aloud to the young
> daughter of his
> > mistress a story of the seduction of a young girl in
> which he himself
> > emerges more and more clearly as having been the
> seducer. A story full of
> > intimate detail and innuendo which by no means seduces
> the daughter but on
> > the contrary frightens her and disturbs her sleep and
> makes her so doubtful
> > of her own purity that three days later she gives
> herself up to him in
> > despair, in the most shameful of ways, in a way of
> which no child could
> > conceive were the history of her own seduction and
> surrender and manner of
> > its doing not deeply impressed on her
> beforehand."
> >
> > However this is a serious group of readers and using
> such an excerpt to
> > gain readers is something I would never do.
> >
> > Lawrence
> >
> >
> >