M & D Read

[Monte Davis]

A Tale of Two Cities plays a larger part in the Anglophone world's
second-hand "folk memory" of the French Revolution than any bookcase full
of histories. (These days so does Les Miserables, which half the
musical/movie audience seems to believe was about 1789, not 1832.)

M&D's frame-story Philadelphia of 1786 has some subtle foreshadowings of
the profound split that the French Revolution would bring in American
politics and culture wars -- one faction sympathizing almost reflexively
with rebellion against monarchy, another increasingly wary of the Mobility
in full spate.

On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 1:25 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com> wrote:

> 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/?listpynchon-l
>
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