The BEER Group Read: Who's asking anyway?

[Mark Kohut]

I'm starting early because it is a long weekend, I talk too much when I'm interested, I have lots of saved SPAM to feed y'all
and ...."Who wants to know.. anyway?" ,,,,,Yes, that's a BE allusion but relevant as
so many plisters have decided to drop off "the bleedin' edge", as our English
listers might put it. Who does still want to know? 
 
Jill, we've had lotsa substance here on the List since you asked for it.
With two hosts dropping out and all the spots not yet taken, I hope this BEER doesn't go the
way of the Unfinished. But, who knows....Plisters seem to like early, overarching Gestalt readings rather than
group crawls, life and all and everything else. At least since Against the Day. 
 
That's the way it is on W.A.S.T.E.
 
I quote Nabokov's "There is no reading, only rereading" too often. I guess because I like it. I mean, if V. NABOKOV 
can tell us he had to read CRIME & PUNISHMENT 3! (three!) times to get its greatness, who ya gonna call now? 
I'm calling Vladimir. 
 
 I'm going to quote and point to the text; I'm goin' to try to describe the phenomenon
of the prose,---"you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style", Vlad had Humbert say; explore aspects of the style(s); explain (some of) the jokes; explore 'hidden' meanings, allusions and P's tropes and many 'obvious' things (that will make many groan before they delete) that will be done under this principle: Every word a real writer chooses MATTERS. Could have been different. Why these?  EVERY scene is there for some reason (within the book);  every character is, at least, an embodiment of some kind of meaning within the author's vision. From Shakespeare (and earlier of course) thru
Alice Munro, we can feel it, often, and try to say why. As Wood did on Munro's subtle simplicity of style, for example. 
 
FYI. I have not read anything on the pynchon wiki yet re BLEEDING EDGE, only the good (heh, heh) reviews and the plist postings. I know 
some of where I stand. I hope to broaden my stance with this reading.
 
I will ask questions that I hope will invite the jumping in. I will offer opinions that should get me attacked. 
I will be wrong. I might be right. I will be right (on some stuff).
 
You can start by tasering me for this self-important, surely pretentious introduction to my hosting---hey, sorry I don't
have enough of a real life, but, who's asking anyway? 


Prolegomenon: 
The expressed (by Pycnohn) description "set in the early days of the internet" accents for me what some have been 
sayin', BLEEDING EDGE is presented as an historical novel despite its near-contemporaneity. This line, since 
the internet is not that old (in historic time) yet, will be in some distant future. This description also echoes certain
sci-fi ways of placing, to me...."in a galaxy, etc"..comes to me but other books and movies that allude to the last time 
things were normal, etc......Others see this? 
And, of course, this fits right in with all the late capitalism references.....this book, this artifact is a late capitalism artifact 
now that whatever comes next has come--it kinda, almost implies, no? 
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l