gang's all here

[Doug Millison]

Too many familiar names to remain a lurker longer.

Great to see Hollander's work getting some long-overdue attention. The  
Dude's work is interesting, worth reading and pondering, and always  
has been, except in the opinion of a couple of specific individuals  
here on Pynchon-L. Whatever anybody has to say about Hollander's  
attitude or larger claims, serious Pynchon readers invariably find his  
articles helpful and thought-provoking.  Hollander has read Pynchon  
closely and has done an enormous amount of research on references and  
allusions in Pynchon's books.  Plus he's a great guy that any of you  
regular p-listers would love to have a drink and talk Pynchon with.

I didn't know he'd had actual correspondence with Thomas Pynchon.  
Funny to read the remarks of some readers who would protest loud and  
long if you offered an interpretation of a Pynchon text as specific as  
they have done for Pynchon's Reply to Hollander which I find more  
enigmatic than anything else. I remain impressed that Hollander got a  
direct answer back in the first place.  I know 2 people who have heard  
back from Melanie Jackson speaking on behalf of Thomas Pynchon, but  
Hollander is the first person I've known to receive a letter  
handwritten by Pynchon.  My sense is that not many Pynchon scholars  
have had that pleasure.

I'm taking another run at Against the Day, I read the first 400 pages  
or so when it first came out, then set it aside when I got involved in  
the project I'm just now finishing up. I plan to read it before  
Inherent Vice comes out this summer.

I've also been re-reading McLuhan's Understanding Media: The  
Extensions of Man, as backround prep for another project.  Any serious  
Pynchon reader would enjoy reading that and The Gutenberg Galaxy,  
which I also recently re-read. I found myself copying out many  
passages that had something to say about things that I like in  
Pynchon's books - many echoes and reverberations in what McLuhan was  
writing back in that day.  Here's a passage I noted the other day:

"…the mathematical Leibniz saw in the mystical elegance of the binary  
system of zero and 1 the image of Creation. The unity of the Supreme  
Being operating in the void by binary function would, he felt, suffice  
to make all beings from the void."
--Understanding Media, p. 111, 1966 Signet paperback