We were all right....Mason & Dixon

[David Ewers]

I believe you're on to something with why the group read fizzled, Mark T., although I think we had it going pretty good for a while there.  I'm not sure it's impossible to maintain that managed flow-through you describe, but (speaking for myself) it does seem to require some obsessing to do the discussion justice.  It's tough to be obsessed for several months straight.  Maybe we should have built some time-outs into the schedule?

Out of curiosity, is anyone still giving M-&D- the deep reading treatment?  If so, where are you?  
I've slowed down a lot in my M-&D- reading, lightened up some, picked up other books, etc., but I've got notes up to chapter 35.

I hope everyone (in the Northern Hemisphere...) is having a bitchin' summer!


On Jul 19, 2015, at 11:44 AM have a nice day, violet wrote this message:), Mark Thibodeau wrote:

> 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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