M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz

[David Ewers]

I really like the "Nerve-Lines of concentrated Light" image as well.  It might be a bit subjective, but the image I got was of lightning and its formal similarity to oak trees in particular.  From there to mythic (and scientific) oak/lightning connections, self-similarity in general, and electricity.


On Jan 5, 2015, at 3:20 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Notice; :p. 6..... "wounds....not ev'ry one commemorated"---
> 
> "Nerve-Lines of concentrated Light"....isn't that a magnificent
> metaphor/image?...I LOVE it.
> 
> Trees, the nerves of the Country, a country---remember the Vineland
> cover and tree motif?-- all a--glowing with that
> great Thing,  Light because snow-covered......
> 
> People live, eat drink, more great active verbs about bustling Life...
> 
> and Politics is a seething Pot....and "the Times", the meaning of
> current events, impossible to calculate......as the Distance to a
> Star...which alludes to reading from the heavens and THIS could not
> yet be done..(but M & D could measure from the sky)
> and when is it not?
> 
> This, and more already show TRP working in his non-realistic,
> universal, moving toward a mythic pattern, Romance vision.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 5:56 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>> V. is my favorite Thomas Pynchon book.  Maybe it's because it was the first of his big ones I'd read, but that book both took my breath away and changed my mind like no novel before or since.  I've remember getting the sense, while reading V., that Mr. Pynchon was discovering the stuff in those words as he wrote them.  Even Gravity's Rainbow felt a little more like cataloguing to me, compared to V.  So I would (very) personally say Herbert Stencil.
>> 
>> On Jan 5, 2015, at 2:31 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> 
>>> C'mon Everyone....go a--guessing with Laura. it is fun.
>>> 
>>> Lew Archer is the detective as truth-finder in AtD. He experiences
>>> epiphanies, artist's truths.
>>> 
>>> I'll bloviate more if others jump in
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jan 5, 2015 at 2:08 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>> A side question: Does Pynchon have a character that he identifies with (or whose voice he speaks through) in his other novels? Profane, Slothrop, Zoyd, Doc? Maybe Oedipa and Maxine? Harder to discern in ATD. Here, I think Cherrycoke best represents him (which is not to say that the lugubrious, paranoid mason, and the more sanguine, humorous Dixon don't reflect aspects of his personality).
>>>> 
>>>> He experiments with distancing himself from the storyteller as early as V - as Stencil relates Mondaugen's Story.
>>>> 
>>>> Laura
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>>> Sent: Jan 5, 2015 1:54 PM
>>>>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>>> Subject: Fwd: M & D Deep Duck Read. Pop quiz
>>>>> 
>>>>> 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
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> 
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l