On Group Reads

[kelber at mindspring.com]

We did have a group read of a non-Pynchon book (JM Coetzee's "The Master of Petersburg")and it fizzled just as surely as any Pynchon group read.  Personally, I don't mind if a group read has dead spots or fizzles to a stop if it's a book I'm enjoying. 

I'm currently (very slowly) reading Augie March (I like it, but the writing's dense)but have nothing specific lined up afterwards.

For a Pynchon group read, I vote along with Henry for V.

For a non-Pynchon read, I vote along with Henry again for Ulysses.  On the other hand, how about Moby Dick - why not meet Alice on his/her own ground?

I couldn't finish The Savage Detectives (it got old quickly) and have no interest in 2666.

Other suggestions:  I still haven't read Infinite Jest ...  

Ada by Nabokov?

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing?

Sci-fi, anyone?:  Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem, The Man in the High Castle or anything else by PK Dick?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: May 11, 2010 12:55 PM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: On Group Reads
>
>Seems like a discussion of what to read next has generated more posts from more people
>than we have been seeing.       I think that's good. (I like lots of posts....I use this email address
>for Pynchon and just a few other things.....I think it is very easy to skim, skip or delete threads
>that are of little interest to me---or when I am too busy) 
>
>I like the suggestion of a non-Pynchon book such as Augie March or others. But...
>
>But, getting no younger and set in my ways, I sorta always want a Pynchon book to be being read
>on this list. Sorta its essence. 
>
>If we want to read different ones, I hope posting can be more often than once a week which makes me fear
>a too general level of remarking............I prefer close reading, as I've said too often
> and the back-and-forth of findings and interpretative resonances.
>
>I have also kept up an irregular--and very miscellaneous----reading of books, writers, etc. who we know or think influenced TRP.
>The better to 'get' him; the better to 'feel' his work, imho. For me. 
>
>I wonder if anyone else wants to do that?  Along with reading a Pynchon work?
>
>Another thought: Have we ever considered reading the miscellaneous non-fiction pieces?........and commenting on their resonances,
>allusions, what we think we know about TRP from them. Where he said his mind was..at very times and about various things?  (Bits do come up A LOT in any discussion of a fiction....often a good dispute-settler)
>
>That said: I am also rereading--and writing stuff on---Against the Day and, yes, it is THE BOOK we have so much more to learn how to read, I think. Tim Ware said at the first Pynchon conference which had papers about it, that it will take, maybe, ten years to learn how to read. At least [and the wiki and this
>list have shortened however long it will take......I once read a terrif essay on Hamlet in which the scholar argued that it took @200 years for we English language readers to learn how to read---start to 'get' Hamlet. Modern communication technology will compress that-----(and, no, he's not him anyway)---
>but it is SO RICH.........
>
>I will say once ogain that there is lotsa circumstantial evidence that TRP began writing ATD when he finished GR. He put everything in it---including GR---
>which contains everything itself, in Tore Rye Anderson's great aphorism about both of them. 
>
>So, THAT's my first vote......the others are second thru last. 
>
>By the way: that  readers like self-described Robin and/or Alice have their particular foci........................is another wonderful thing about this
>list...............I look forward to another connection from Robin or Alice (and everyone who posts from a certain perspective. Ane we all have a perspective.) Pynchon is larger than, if not life,of course,  then most commentators on................
>
>
>