Why not do a group read of THE great American novel? Moby-Dick?

[Monte Davis]

It ended around the beginning of November, after my posts on Ch. 7 (to p.
79). There was, however, lively discussion of 100 Best Horror Films, Woody
Allen, and literary quotations about beer -- IOW, all the things that have
drawn so many new Pynchon readers to the list, and kept old ones so
engaged, in recent years.


On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 8:32 AM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:

> I forget where we were in BE!
>
>
>
>
> John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Why is Moby-Dick a Great American Novel? Honest question. I've never
>> understood it as a novel that grapples with the Americanness of
>> America the way so many other novels try to. The way M&D does, or so
>> many of the others you list do. Moby-D is a frickin' GREAT novel
>> written by an American. If I were one for leaderboards, I'd call it
>> one of the greatest books ever written. But it's about the human
>> condition as a crisis between epistemologies and ontologies, not what
>> it means to be American, right? But, not being an American, I may be
>> missing something.
>>
>> And while I'd love a group read, we got about a quarter of the way
>> through the last novel written by the feller we're all subscribed here
>> for. The IV read at least managed to limp across the finish line; the
>> AtD was a long march that lost many good soldiers by the way. None of
>> this is a reflection on the books, just on the world of digital
>> disengagement in which the Pynchon List is a Web 1.0 relic. We've been
>> offered too many mindless pleasures to engage in the kind of deep and
>> ongoing group read these volumes merit.
>>
>> Prove me wrong, kids, prove me wrong.
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 9:36 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Traditionally, though, the typical GAN candidate requires heft, range,
>> > verisimilitude, and--lest we forget--popularity. While beautifully
>> > written and constructed, both William Gaddis's demanding The
>> > Recognitions and Peter Matthiessen's Faulknerian Shadow Country have
>> > failed to drum up a widespread readership. Thomas Pynchon's Mason &
>> > Dixon is, by most measures, a better attempt at a GAN than Gravity's
>> > Rainbow, but the latter boasts a hundred times as many fans.
>> > Similarly, works on the margin, no matter how fine or insightful about
>> > American life, seldom make the grade. One could argue strong cases for
>> > the GANship of John Crowley's Little, Big; John Sladek's Roderick, or,
>> > The Education of a Young Machine; Thomas Berger's Little Big Man; or,
>> > with just a slight stretch, Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My
>> > Lovely--but, even now, they all remain tainted with the dread word
>> > "genre." Yet if Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind can be proposed
>> > for GAN honors, why not Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged? Not that I'm doing
>> > so, by the way.
>> >
>> > http://www.vqronline.org/big-read-can-single-book-sum-nation
>> >
>> > On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:35 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> Only problem is with the idea of the great American novel, a concept
>> >> that has, if nothing else, made for pulp and grist to/for/from the
>> >> mill, but it's difficult to dismiss Melville's great white whale as
>> >> candidate, and for Pynchon fans, in the world of great books,
>> >> Moby-Dick or The Whale is a great influence. The common whiteness
>> >> theme alone needs further development, and, as Melville's monstrosity
>> >> gained critical mass when the excesses of market capitalism capsized
>> >> the nation and the world's economy, it's seem a revisiting Melville
>> >> now makes much ado of something, though what that something is has yet
>> >> to be defined, though some will name it and paint it in clear shades
>> >> of blackness, it seems so like the mysterious whale itself that
>> >> smashes down on the masts of industry and greed, then suck all down in
>> >> a Vortex to the bottomless perdition where God's foot weaves the
>> >> tapestry, the mantle of Varo's Earth.
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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