M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz

[David Ewers]

Hello,
Thanks for setting up this group reading.  This will be my second reading of M-&D- (my first was when it came out) but my first time publicly discussing it (or any Pynchon book, for that matter...), so I beg your pardon in advance for my hamfistedness.
I was wondering about the Cherrycoke frame as well.  Are there other Pynchon books that start this way, looking back from a comfortable future?  I can't think of one.  
If  Cherrycoke is a stand-in for Mr. Pynchon, could the framing have something to do with the idea I've read (eavesdropped) here, that Pynchon started M-&D- many years earlier, set it aside to do other things (Vineland?), and returned to it later from a different place in a different America?  In M-&D-, there's the twenty year span from the tale (1766) to the telling (1786).  It seems to me that those years fairly well match with the twenty years Rip Van Winkle slept; also roughly the years from Gravity's Rainbow to M-&D- (...when we all slept?).  I'm not sure how fruitful it is to draw too many autobiographic connections, especially when there's so much rich stuff to dig around in here, but I figure I'd throw it out there.

On Jan 5, 2015, at 10:54 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> A + +
> 
> Why did he not have Cherrycoke tell it all, ya think? and.... that old
> modernist staple [started with The Good Soldier] of
> ye unreliable narrator......wha?
> 
> p. 8 "stoven, dismasted, imbecile with age---an untrustworthy
> Remembrancer [see---all on the surface]
> for whom the few events yet rattling within a broken mamory must
> provide the only comfort no remaining to him,---
> 
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 1:27 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> All I see is the Omniscient Narrator handing off to Cherrycoke here. Are you talking about the book as a whole, or just this section?
>> 
>> Cherrycoke is a stand-in for Pynchon himself, perhaps? Family outcast, paid money to keep away? Well, no. But famous reclusive, one-time writer of something labeled "obscene," long-time bachelor, no real job other than being a highly-paid (relative to most working drones) writer, now ensconced solidly within a family setting and telling a tale.
>> 
>> LK
>> 
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> Sent: Jan 5, 2015 1:00 PM
>>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>> Subject: M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz
>>> 
>>> Who is narrating?, or should that be Who are narrating?
>>> 
>>> And what does that imply, maybe, in various ways, about the tale?
>>> 
>>> 25 words or fewer..
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l

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