I was gonna 'research' this more before

[Monte Davis]

Not coincidentally, I was just thinking of the uses of Hamlet in Ulysses
and AtD...

On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 10:33 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
wrote:

> No doubt the relations between agents and institutions is central to
> understanding the symbolic exchanges that occur across the social spectrum
> (I would say that living in M. Beach during the Watts riots was at least as
> important as knowing Kirk Sales who was then working as Editor at NYT - BR
> or Magazine, can't remember). I would add that that sytem of relations also
> includes the relations of writers (fledgling or otherwise) to other writers
> in the field, past or present.
>
> I might add that P's review of Love in the Time of Cholera seems to extend
> his relationship with latin America and its writers. Bear in mind not just
> the Austin letters mention of Borges, but the translation of Cortázar's
> Axolotl.
>
> Moreover, we may have a large sample size (in which the author A mentions
> the author/writer /thinker Z repeatedly) but omits a work that was clearly
> important (consider Joyce's use of Manuels of Catholic Philosophy). Of
> course then it's a question of what they do with it. After all, Joyce's use
> of Vico is no more akin to a historian's use of Vico than is Pynchon's use
> of Weber.
>
> ciao
> mc
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 3:39 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I hope I give direct testimony due weight, but my caution was prompted by
>> Mark's "Why NEVER a mention of a couple we know were YUGE
>> [influences]?... Just no reason nor opportunity to?"
>>
>> Authors who write lots of book reviews, essays, introductions -- who
>> lecture and sit on PEN panels and talk with Melvyn Bragg or Charlie Rose
>> and authorize literary biographers-- provide a large sample, which supports
>> high confidence in saying "yes, Author A *did* read and return to and talk
>> frequently about Influencer Z over the years."  The Pynchon sample is, by
>> comparison, so small that I'd expect chance and happenstance to play a
>> larger role: living in Manhattan Beach during the Watts riot, a request
>> from his agent for a jacket blurb, a connection to the NYTBR when Love in
>> the Time of Cholera came out. That's all.
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 7:10 AM, matthew cissell <mccissell at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Good morning sir and Happy new Year,
>>>
>>> We should be more than wary of inferences where there is little proof
>>> (e.g., name dropping Deleuze and Guttari in VL doesn't make me think that
>>> he has read them or provides the reference as a way to 'read' the book).
>>>
>>>  But surely you accept at face value the mention he gives to Kerouac's
>>> OTR? I find the SL intro very telling in terms of what writers informed
>>> him, when taken along side the letters in the Austin Collection it is
>>> rather informative. (The list of writers in the Ford Foundation application
>>> is framed in a manner that makes it seem he is striking a bit of a pose.)
>>>
>>> Direct testimony has a weight all its own to put next to the sample and
>>> the data obtained.  Don't you think?
>>>
>>> mc otis
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 12:03 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> ​Insufficient data, insufficient sample size. P has revealed so little
>>>> about influences and sources (compared to the scope of the oeuvre) that I'm
>>>>
>>>> (1) wary of inferences that those ​
>>>> ​he does acknowledge are especially canonical for him, and
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> (2) very wary of inferences from what he *doesn't* say.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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