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

[Ian Livingston]

I would certainly vote for the great white Dick. If it were a summer read,
I could even follow along, possibly even join in from time to time.


On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:58 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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