gang's all here

[Kevin Dunn]

I paused my reading of AtD at page 470 or so to join the Lot 49 group  
read. Want to discuss the massive tome on the list?

Kevin

PS: anyone else?

Sent from my iPhone

On May 22, 2009, at 2:20 AM, Doug Millison <dougmillison at comcast.net>  
wrote:

> 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 binar 
> y system of zero and 1 the image of Creation. The unity of the Supre 
> me Being operating in the void by binary function would, he felt, su 
> ffice to make all beings from the void."
> --Understanding Media, p. 111, 1966 Signet paperback
>
>
>