AtD Here's the [a] thing.

[Mark Kohut]

Worth lots more discussion and anti-intellectual might be the wrong label BUT he is satirizing, I think, lots of the
IDEAS his satirized characters bloviate about and does seem to invest more positive values in plainer types and
perhaps, very perhaps, living without all that mind chatter......

From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 5:45 AM
Subject: Re: AtD Here's the [a] thing.

Anti-intellectual? Not like a lot of folks in the U.S and elsewhere. I do note some suspicion (ala Julian Benda) of academics, afterall he takes some jabs at them (eg. the Deleuze Guatarri bit in VL and then the PhD comments that comes up in IV). Satire satirizes everything but that doesn't mean that the satirist is against everything. Part of not taking yourself too seriously.
 
mc

From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 6:16 PM
Subject: AtD Here's the [a] thing.


There is no reading, only rereading. ---Vladimir N. 

Even reading AtD on this group site back when and following the brand-new
wiki for it, it still presented (to me) the same problem reading GR the first time did......

Trying to figure out stuff, an earnest, largely intellectual endeavor made it harder (again for me,
maybe not you) to see how much was being laughed at, satirized. This reading I suggest---almost
ALL of the 'intellectual' conversation stuff....all the bloviating characters and their bloviations is played for laughs. 
All satirized like Swift did or others.......

'Truths' in TRP's visions mostly rest---so far, always with a "maybe" qualifier---in the quotidian, often offhand stuff within scenes,
around the sympathetic characters' sympathetic moments........

One might even make the case that TRP is severely anti-intellectual in some way, despite all the learning
he puts into his books.     ???

Your thoughts?
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