M & D Read

[Becky Lindroos]

Absolutely!  (even if you were talking about my remark) -  that’s why classics are often very, very interesting from an historical point of view - but historical fiction can go far to explain some basic stuff and elaborate on other stuff for its own readers. There’s something to be said for each category -  (And then there’s War and Peace or A Tale of Two Cities which were historical fiction at the time and are also classics now - another layer to tease out.) 

Becky 

> On Feb 9, 2015, at 8:55 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Here is another pretentious remark picking up on this gloss: good
> readers, critics, scholars will talk
> about how the writing of even the best "historical fiction' is imbued
> with the tacit assumptions of the time
> it was written.
> 
> So, Pynchon sez: That's so true I'll write the 'tacit' out bold.
> 
> A---and, these truths have always been true.
> 
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:
>> In addition to parody,  I see where Pynchon makes use of the occasional anachronism - ideas of today which are voiced in the setting of history (although they may not have been completely absent from the era).  It heightens the insight and the humor with a bit of surprise.
>> 
>> Becky
>> 
>> 
>>> On Feb 9, 2015, at 4:08 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> All true but, for the historical among us, the very idea
>>> seems to have had no currency (from searching in ALL THE BOOKS
>>> Google has ever put up online; all of the now public domain books
>>> from Gutenberg on; all of the works of history about the past; all
>>> of the concurrent in their times books.)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Related but different: PTSD was alluded to in this Read as shorthand
>>> for trauma experienced (by Mason?). That works as an anachronous way
>>> of describing trauma but PTSD as Post-traumatic-stress-disorder
>>> was first named around 1955 and became prominent in these United States
>>> only after the Vietnam war.
>>> 
>>> Before then, it had other names; shell-shock perhaps the leading name.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 6:45 AM, alice malice <alicewmalice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Pretty 'radical' idea for the time, yes?  Tougher turn of the screw on
>>>>> the idea that marriage is > institutionalized prostitution.
>>>> 
>>>> Mason and Dixon would know all about this radical idea; especially
>>>> Dixon because as Quaker his is the first Christian church to give
>>>> public forum to women who take full advantage of it, allying
>>>> themselves with other oppressed groups, such as, naturally, the
>>>> enslaved and indentured, and prostitutes.    As learned men it would
>>>> be impossible for our boys to avoid this radical idea. Of course, in
>>>> Pynchon's mad comedy, all things are ampersanded, so tht folly and
>>>> hypocrisy abound.
>>>> -
>>>> 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