Fw: On Group Reads: TOO MANY CHOICES

[Joe Allonby]

I'd definitely go for Infinite Jest.

Funny, I'm rereading Man in the High Castle now. I'd be up for that,
Flow My Tears, or any of the Valis trilogy. Scanner, Androids, and
Three Stigmata have been done to death and imho overrated.

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 3:35 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> If not AtD, then V. for me (of Pynchon)
>
> Re the Coetzee read.....I thought it focussed not a fizzle but ............
>
> I would like to read Ulysses with this group.....I recently had it sent to me in bits via a site that sends out bits daily.......interesting way to scatter like Slothrop.....we could sign up the pynchon-list for this service and have something to comment on any day?.............
>
> But there is so much done on Ulysses already.....and one does need Joycean/Dublin background just to have solid ground...
>
> If not Pynchon, or with Pynchon, I'd prefer something less ..annotated.....
>
> I would like to read Hamsun, esp Hunger....
>
> I like The Golden Notebook suggestion.......ADA............or Stanislaw Lem.................
> As well as Bellow..............................................
>
> Or someone like Grass.............The Tin Drum? or even a lesser one?
>
> Or new Nobelist Le Clezio?.............some Pynchonian themes there, I gather.
> OR Saramago
> or new Nobelist Herta Muller?
>
> Or old Nobelist Herman Hesse after the scrim of time has reframed him?
>
> Or Dante, a Pynchon fave........various translations to throw around....lotsa history and theology...and sin to explore...
>
>
>
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Tue, May 11, 2010 1:25:58 PM
> Subject: Re: On Group Reads
>
> 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................
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>