On Group Reads Or Swithering Into Against the Day.............

[Mark Kohut]

Swithering - 1 definition - When you cant decide between 2 options.
www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Swithering- Cached- Similar
 
I dunno.   Maybe we don't have the time and commitment......maybe we need 
a break w something else............
 
Fizzling out is real, as JC and LK and RL are always saying.....it sorta happened the FIRST time through with AtD.................
If we don't make this reading...different......it won't satisfy many, I sez.....
 
Maybe just a 'great' book we can riff on?.....rather than one we need to plumb and analyse? 
Yes, maybe Moby Dick or War & Peace?.....(like Life on the page almost, imho. We can all riff on Life, as we do, yes?)




________________________________
From: Emma Wrigley <ecwrigley at excite.co.uk>
To: markekohut at yahoo.com
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 2:10:45 PM
Subject: Re: On Group Reads

Right, so now I'm really enthused about a group read of AtD. I'm just wondering how I'll manage with Ulysses and AtD.

I'm swithering and about to leap from my chair and grab AtD...

Emma
<-----Original Message-----> 
>From: Mark Kohut [markekohut at yahoo.com]
>Sent: 11/5/2010 5:55:50 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: 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................
>
>
> 
>.
> 


      
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