We were all right....Mason & Dixon

[Mark Thibodeau]

I think the reason why group reads of Pynchon tend to break down (and I say
this with a guilty conscience at my own part in the unraveling of the last
M&D group read attempt) is that his work is SO RICH and full of constant,
almost fractal levels of allusion and multi-contextual referencing (moreso
perhaps than any writer aside from Joyce) that trying to maintain some kind
of managed flow-through is literally impossible to do.

Any reader takes from a work of art only that which he or she is capable of
taking. We all bring our own personal contexts into some kind of
intermeshing with the context of the work that we're approaching. Someone
steeped in pre-Revolutionary American history will have a different reading
experience from someone who knows a lot about, say, the history of science.
Both will find it a masterwork, but for different reasons.

For that reason, I think Pynchon slots in with those writers who are both
difficult AND rewarding.

MT

On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Misc.
>
> just read an interesting essay by Stanley Greenblatt, Shakespeare and
> Beyond
> Scholar---this essay is on Milton, however---that applies to many a great
> writer
> including our writer from Long Island.......
>
> Thesis: The depth of full scholarship analysis of such as Milton, say
> another
> long book on all the subtleties and breadth and depth of his politics
> explored thru
> his major poems......tends to kill why he is great.....
>
> The poetry on the page.
>
> Discuss.
>
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2015 at 2:07 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> > is an incredible book....
> >
> > Throw out more stuff about....
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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