We were all right....Mason & Dixon

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Think a raging flame war would've held people's interest. We erred on the side of civility. And all those competing facebook pages don't help!

Laura

John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

>There were lots of successful group reads in the past.
>
>I blame the changing culture of the internet. Back then there just
>wasn't that much to do online, so more people could spend an hour or
>three with a book and a browser and a leisurely mind.
>
>Of course I'm romanticising but in the global shopping mall that the
>Deep Archer and most of the web has become, the P-List is a rag and
>bone shop. If we had more funny quizzes, lists like the Six Most
>Amazing Ways Pynchon Will Improve Your Sex Life, ways to tag each
>other in emails, ability to autogenerate our favourite P characters as
>avatars, some kind of dedicated app, a gamified reward system that
>gave us badges for posting more, a font of our own, a Game of Thrones
>crossover week, a photo feed and sold advertising space that can be
>blocked so users think that the real product isn't our data, maybe
>we'd have a chance? Seriously, why isn't someone selling our data
>here? We're nothing!
>
>On Tue, Jul 21, 2015 at 6:36 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I blame myself.  I was simply in no condition to participate on a
>> regular basis @ the time.
>>
>> Meanwhile, some day, the Inherent Vice group watch?
>>
>> http://pdl.warnerbros.com/wbmovies/awards2014/pdf/iv.pdf
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 1:46 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> When enough are not newly reading and responding, the silence is loud.
>>> And one needs to be following the bouncing ball
>>> when one posts who is, otherwise it is not new.
>>>
>>> Too many too busy or otherwise out of the Group Read. Life in late
>>> capitalism ain't easy.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 2:34 PM, David Ewers <dsewers at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> -
>>> 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
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