Erik T. Burns eburns at gmail.com
Mon Feb 7 11:56:24 CST 2011


I'm kind of also betting that a group read of The Recognitions won't get off
the ground here, more declaring my interest than anything else. As you know,
I haven't exactly been a vital contributor to ANY of the group reads here
(except for the moral contribution of reading them carefully and enjoying
them immensely, as I do most Pynchon-L activity).

Meanwhile, TRP was a songwriter? News to me, aside from the many songs
scattered throughout the works -- what other songs did he write?

etb

On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

>
> On 07.02.2011 12:07, Erik T. Burns wrote:
>
>  No, I'm questioning the idea that since Gaddis likes lengthy dialogues he
> should have been a playwright. That's like saying because Pynchon likes
> songs he should have been a songwriter...
>
>
> And Tom was one for some time ... But back to Gaddis: To me these lengthy
> dialogues - unlike those in the Magic Mountain - are no fun to read at all.
> And that 'Guess who's talking?'-trick is tiresome and cheap. Uwe Johnson,
> who did this too in his early novels, had to drop it in order to write his
> phantastic opus magnum "Jahrestage" (four volumes). But if the dialogues in
> "JR" do please you, I have no problem with that. And if the list goes on and
> on and on and on to do 'group reads', I most certainly cannot stop that.
> This is a free list. It's just the Social Foo-Foo around 'group reads' which
> is turning me off profoundly. Not your fault, Erik, I know. And it's true
> that once a 'group read' has started, I now and then throw in a dime.
> Wouldn't be possible in this particular case, though. But hey, an
> US-sociologist predicted the death of mailing-lists already in 2007, yet the
> Pynchon-list still keeps on rocking, so maybe this kindergarten game called
> 'group read' has some "latent function" that escapes me in
> this very moment ...
>
> Doing my own thing,
>
> Kai
>
>
>
>
> Listening to the _J R_ audiobook in particular emphasizes how un-play-like
> the dialogues in that book are.
>
> Anyway, Gaddis did write a drama, based on _Agapé Agape_; performed only in
> German, on the radio:
> http://www.phonostar.de/radiomagazin/radioprogramm/detail.php?id=228&datum=2011-02-19
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>>
>> Because of Oscar Crease, you supadupa Gaddis freak ...
>>
>>
>>
>> On 06.02.2011 23:18, Erik T. Burns wrote:
>>
>> >All these lengthy dialogues, perhaps Gaddis should have become a
>> playwright himself ...
>>
>> Er, why?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 11:17 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>> lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I don't like his style.
>>>
>>> Being interested in the sociology of law, I read about 120 pages of "A
>>> Frolic of His Own".
>>>
>>> All these lengthy dialogues, perhaps Gaddis should have become a
>>> playwright himself ...
>>>
>>> KFL
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
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