English majors

[Ian Livingston]

CoL49 was my introduction to Pynchon. We read it in a 400 - level
Contemporary English Lit class at the University of Wisconsin in the spring
of 87. I was a 30 year old senior, and the prof was the department chair
and a great fan of Joyce. His lasting comment on CoL49 was that it was a
useful application of undergraduate research into the history of mail
delivery systems. A fellow tutor at the tutoring center said that, if I
liked CoL49 (which I very much did), I should read GR, which I did that
summer in the sweltering attic room I inhabited a few blocks from the
Wisconsin River, much to my lasting delight. I read Vineland and M&D as
they became available in paperback, saving from my insufficient wages to
buy Vineland in its first paperback run and receiving M&D as a bday present
from my girlfriend. I bought AtD in hard cover upon its first appearance in
Logo's Books in Santa Cruz, and discovered the liste in the course of my
first reading, as I was newly acquainted with computers and the web and
found the wiki when I was looking for insights regarding the math.

On Sun, Sep 30, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Amazing that so many have wanted to post on this topic. Interesting.
> What is most interesting to me about the posts, may be the tidbits of
> Discovering, first reading Pynchon.
>
> I learned of Pynchon at college age, when I was reading literary mags and
> periodicals
> To find out about contemporary writers. Article praised P. probably before
> Lot 49 was in paperback so I got V. I stopped out of it, unable to get/
> like/understand the perspective
> On the Whole sIck crew....I thought we were to identify pretty
> wholly...but that scene
> Between Pig and Paoli....???
>
> so, I didn't read Lot 49 next.....I bought a copy of Gravity's Rainbow (in
> hardcover! ) at
> A Walden in Connecticut while on a job- interview........buried on lower
> rack.....not until later did I
> Learn there was a simultaneous paperback which is the one I read (although
> later)......
>
> Many years later, I sold that Mint copy of GR to pay for some of my son's
> college.....
> (I think TRP would like to hear that and will be in the letter I keep
> writing in my head)
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad




-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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