On "Mindless Pleasures",

[Lemuel Underwing]

be it a dagger rusted in it's sheath, a ruined tower, or once fine Boat
smashed to pieces in the tide of the great vast Mother the Sea ("who
endlessly cries for her castaways"), there is no shortage..

Tho' admittedly the first thing I thought of when I read the title *Mindless
Pleasures *was the Anubis....


On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Lemuel Underwing <luunderwing at gmail.com>wrote:

> sex 'n death are common topics unified by the Poet's perceptions... surely
> Shakespeare is the master of this in English but the Romanticists, Shelley
> in particular, have a field day with dem images
>
>
> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> My Latin vocabularly is weak too....this came, without quotation marks,
>> from Nuttall and we
>> know Shakespeare had "a little Latin [really a lot] and less Greek" and
>> Willeford, not so sure.
>>
>> Yours in translation.
>>
>>   *From:* jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
>> *To:* Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, May 12, 2013 10:48 AM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: On "Mindless Pleasures",
>>
>>   thy sheath?
>>
>> A short poem by Willeford:
>>
>> The Trooper Died,
>> And by his side,
>> They laid a wreath.
>> He tried to get the button
>> in the sheath.
>>
>> Try figure that one out!
>>
>>
>> 2013/5/12 Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>>
>>  "O happy dagger, / This is they sheath; there rust and let me
>> die"---Juliet...
>> The Latin for sheath is *vagina. *
>> **
>> The more I think on it, the more I think, yes, as Morris wrote,  Slothrop's
>> ego dies; Blicero dies in ecstasy....Pynchon's 'ambiguous' on both edges of
>> meanings with first title? His wont.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   *From:* Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> *To:* David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> *Cc:* pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, May 12, 2013 9:18 AM
>>
>> *Subject:* Re: On "Mindless Pleasures",
>>
>>   In a book on Shakespeare by A.S. Nuttall, I find this summary of a
>> concept we have explored
>> in discussing Pynchon in GR. Perhaps it is the way I can finally see
>> Morris's point, if it is (part of) Morris's
>> point? ....anyway, another possible slant on that alternate title?
>>
>> "the internal character of ecstasy seems to oscillate between maximum
>> intensity of experience and an extinction
>> of experience. One feels as one has never felt before and at the same
>> time the experiencing mind is blotted out,
>> one drops into nothingness. That is why "die' became a slang word for
>> "orgasm". [He sez.]
>>
>> [He adds: " The theme [of love "replacing" sexual  ecstasy] will grow
>> under Shakespeare's hand as he moves from *Love's Labour Lost*
>> *to Romeo & Juliet]*
>>
>>   *From:* David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>> *To:* Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> *Cc:* pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> *Sent:* Friday, May 10, 2013 4:50 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: On "Mindless Pleasures",
>>
>> Slothrup becomes the Buddha before disappearing.
>>
>> "Mindless" may be taken to mean something other than a contrast to
>> "mindfulness."  I don't know if that term was even used back then.  "Be
>> here now" was common, but "mindfulness?"
>>
>> Buddhist meditation involves stilling the frantic mind (sometimes called
>> the Monkey Mind) by focusing on what might be called mindless: eg.  the
>> sensation of breathing to the exclusion of all narration.  The goal being
>> to find a place within, still & quiet, from which to let chaos of
>> "thinking" become external, something to observe w/o letting it control
>> one's central being.  "Just Being" as opposed to Thinking.
>>
>> "Mindless" back then might actually mean what is now called
>> (ubiquitously) "Mindfulness."
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Friday, May 10, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:
>>
>>  the working title of GR, as we know. Is there anything known,
>> or have we bloviated yet on that possible title, used all the way
>> through submitted manuscript copies to paperback houses
>> to read and bid for paperback rights?
>>
>> What would be the mindless pleasures in GR? All of them?
>> Everything in it?
>>
>> And, this occurred to me last evening, prompting this post: maybe
>> this title was a working contrast to the concept of Mindfulness in
>> Buddhist thought?
>>
>> Anyone, anyone, Bueller? Bueller?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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