Starting the Group Read

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown wrote:

>  The archives, as interesting
> as they are on AtD, are thin and often uninspired.

that was AtDTDA, first pass...

with Gravity's Rainbow you've got the bomb and Slothrop
but what in fact is ATD organized around?
my first take is 2 pair, :
tunguska and the ice monster,
and Vibe and Webb...
destruction and death by different means

drag in everything they signify and interact with,
and everyone they're related to, and comment on it
and let them be the x axis,

then Lew and Cyprian, they can be the y axis,

and you've still got Merle and, the Balloon Boys  for your z axis

>
> Rhis new strength, his feminist touch and the, what Nabokov praised in
> Jane A's spider webs, is refreshing, but he doesn't do nothing for the
> boyz. His males remain types: Vibes moving to Traverse or Traverse
> moving to Vibes with a cold Daddy in the middle adjusting his assets
> or losing them.
>

I think I was the only one who expressed any fondness for Vibe during the read.
Pretty sure the text made me feel it, though I can't tell you why or where...
Probably his words?

You're right, he doesn't do much of the square-jaw, glinting eye stuff to
make pictures of the men...I think there's one reference each to the
Traverse brothers' blue eyes in the whole book...a beer gut on Reef...

there's a fair amount of clothing references, though, for women and men...
between that, the dialogue, the scenery, social status, activities, soliloquies,
if a person is looking
for characters that inspire emotions they are there, male and female

if a person would rather think about industrialization, electrification,
theories of mapping, or labor relations, or colonialism,
or methods of narration, or prose styles,
why, as Mark Kohut mentioned,
it's all there!

> Sometimes it's because they have not done the
> reading. ... I mean, people don't really read
> poetry

that Patterson NJ piece was nice, though...thanks for that!
The way it ends though...what is that supposed to mean?
That is, I like the image of the city as a guy, but what is all
that more and more women stuff at the end signifying?  I don't get it.

ok, wikipedia said that Paterson turned into a big long 5+ book epic
that even features an introduction with an alternate history in a separate
volume entitled "In the American grain"
I'll read that and then compare/contrast AtD





-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Hapworth Glass