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

Sun Apr 13 12:27:20 CDT 2014

Thanks for the enlightening article.

On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 12:34 PM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com>wrote:

> Yeah, no shortage of books to read, films to watch....we might add
> Melville's C-M to the list.
>
> If you really want to understand the heart of darkness that defines
> American society, it is necessary to read Herman Melville. While
> Melville has the reputation of being a combination yarn-spinner and
> serious novelist, he is above all a profound social critic who
> sympathized with the downtrodden in American society. In his final
> novel, "The Confidence Man," there are several chapters that deal with
> the "Metaphysic of Indian-Hating" that, as far as I know, are the
> first in American literature that attack the prevailing
> exterminationist policy.
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/confidence_man.htm
>
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 11:57 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Speaking of great books, The Public Burning is one. So many books, so
> little time...
> >
> >
> > Www.innergroovemusic.com
> >
> >> On Apr 13, 2014, at 11:53 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm also definitely up for a group read this summer, completely at
> peace with the idea that it will fizzle to nothing by early fall.
> >>
> >> Laura
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >>
> >> From: Keith Davis
> >>
> >> Sent: Apr 13, 2014 12:50 AM
> >>
> >> To: Michael Bailey
> >>
> >> Cc: P-list
> >>
> >> Subject: Re: Re: Why not do a group read of THE great American novel?
> Moby-Dick?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> www.innergroovemusic.com
> >> -
> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> -
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>

-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
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