Fw: On Group Reads: TOO MANY CHOICES

[David Morris]

PKD is "outsider" art.
Fascinating, but limited by the mental illness.  Limited but beyond
rational bounds.  Focused on tinfoil hat inspiration.

On Tuesday, May 11, 2010, Thomas Beshear <tbeshear at insightbb.com> wrote:
> I read The Three Stigmata... when I was about 12 -- I think it blew off the top of my head. I've been afraid to re-read it because I'm sure my 50-year-old self would feel let down.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Allonby" <joeallonby at gmail.com>
> To: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2010 8:17 PM
> Subject: Re: Fw: On Group Reads: TOO MANY CHOICES
>
>
> 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 i