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

[Keith Davis]

A summertime GR (pun-ish) might be a good time had by some, including me.
Since I didn't get to do BE, I'd vote for that, or Melville, or M & D, or
any of a long list....


On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 12:13 AM, Michael Bailey <mikebailey at gmx.us> wrote:

> You make a good point!
>
> That part about fast fish and loose fish isn't so much about the america
> that could've been as about the law of having & holding - Mr Dick maybe
> represents that wonderful america, turtle island, this huge intelligent
> being that was minding its own business - colonizing krill, if you will -
> till Ahab came along. Oh yeah
> And with his harpoon
> Pricked Moby-Dick - Owey! O weh!
>
>
>
> alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Great questions and comments. Yeah, hard to keep folks engaged. But
>> thee has been talk of reading M-D here for years so...
>>
>> Yeah, we would certainly take on the American novel question. M-D
>> doesn't go west across the continent sized nation, cutting it open,
>> exposing its buried voices, it doesn't race through the dust to the
>> grapes of wrathful California, it doesn't even take a road less
>> traveled or go into the woods to suck deeper from the bone marrow of
>> land. Most of the action takes place far from America, on ships,
>> boats, islands, though it does begin, as Melville's life begins, in
>> NYC, it quickly ships off with an international crew, islanders
>> mostly, and with one noted exception, none of the crew return to
>> America. But that one voice is American, it does return to America and
>> the yarn Ishmael spins is American, is told from an American Point of
>> View, and is about America, albeit, about a subjunctive America, one
>> that might have been, one that had promise but lost its way. So, in
>> theme, the book is most Pynchonian or Pynchon's are Melvillean. And
>> Ahab, the tragic captain has much to say about how America has
>> organized its sick crew of of islanders and chased whiteness and oil.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 7:55 AM, 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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