We were all right....Mason & Dixon

[Mark Kohut]

Raging flame wars would not have held my interest. Become one meaning of your reading, I suggest. 


Sent from my iPad

> On Jul 20, 2015, at 9:09 PM, "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l