AtD Wiki

[Mark Kohut]

I still hold my opinion despite the fact
 that because of more tech posting weakness than I have now, which is still noticeable, and because of too much of muchness, I was asked off the list. 

Long Live Captain Ware!---Billy Budd

And another fart zinger: at least that wiki is about Pynchon. 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Apr 28, 2017, at 3:25 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I figured people here contribute/d to it. And that some/many might share the sentiment I kind of hoped you would have and publicly voice, Mark.
> 
> My inclination is to basically agree with you and enjoy whatever wholesomely anarchistic spaces we can get. And I really don't like to complain. I deleted an earlier draft of the complaint because it didn't sit well with me.
> 
> But. 
> 
> As someone to whom Pynchon's work is personally important, the form of the wiki was getting persistently frustrating for a few reasons.
> 
> -I'm always trying to get people I'm close to to read Pynchon. It is personally important to me, as is his work. For many of them, sadly, overall difficulty and density are a barrier to Pynchon's genius that isn't insurmountable but seems likely to not really get surmounted, in the end. Just the way it goes.
> -For still others who do end up reading him (self included here), a lot of what seem to be the richest and most singular (almost want to say important) parts of his work are still really difficult to access alone. On first (usually only for non-devotees) or any read. 
> -In my particular reading experience, some of the annotations in that place have been an invaluable resource. 
> -I'm always thinking about not just how to get people I know to read Pynchon but how to access.
> -Some of the people I've turned on to Pynchon to some degree or another have found the annotations a resource that is sometimes invaluable and sometimes confounding. 
> -When confounding, when it seems to be more about Pynchon fans' selves than Pynchon's work, it feels like a waste of time, or like the valuable stuff is watered down.
> -The investment of time (not to mention focus) is already one of the notablest barriers to Pynchon's work, I think.
> -The lovingly anarchistic stuff is great but can tend to either the weird nitpicky infighting or to the circle jerk, both of which--in basically all fields, I think the learning scientists might tell us--are huge barriers and disincentives to novices joining a 'discourse (community)'. 
> 
> I'm aware that most of these points can/do cut the other way or have obvious Pynchonian counterperspectives. Pynchon shouldn't be easy, or fast. Should not be efficient or mechanistic or inhuman. Pynchonia should not be tyrannical, a land of only voice (even if it's his). Should not focus to the point of repressing or eliminating--the work includes all things, and so should the community.
> 
> I guess because I wasn't around for the making of the wiki, I just naturally feel like the plist is a nice inclusive communal anarchistic space. The wiki I think of more as a reference.
> 
> Maybe it's a mistake of singularity and exclusion on my part. I guess I'm taking the less sexy stance here. I just want something that's ultimately going to increase readerly communion with Pynchon and so the universe. I wonder if the wiki in its current form does that. Or if it's now more a kind of reliquary for other things. But then what's a novel but a reliquary, after all.
> 
> In the end: whatever. 
> 
>> On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 1:57 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> No time for a longer post--I've bloviated in the archives on it---but the ATD wiki is the perfect online symbolic reenactment of the ideal of sharing t-shirts from a pile --so offhandedly but brilliantly used by TRP as wholesome anarchy in a too-possessive world.
>> 
>> I LOVE every twist and turn and stupidity ( including all my own) and speculation and insight in it. 
>> That's reading in a democratic way....as we know ANYONE can " improve" it if they think they can and the more the more Pynchonian.
>> 
>> I could end with an aggressive aphorism about that wiki but.....
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>>> On Apr 28, 2017, at 1:00 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Sorry to e symbolic form of  at y'all but I'm reading AtD at the moment, along with the annotations on the AtD wiki...
>>> 
>>> About 50% of the material really shouldn't be there. Somehow it's largely a forum to masturbatorily (yet anonymously, which seems contradictory somehow) 1) demonstrate close reading that's shallow or reckless or both, or 2) wax rhapsodic and editorial about how much the annotater likes the novel/ist (e.g. 'This 'Skip' episode is not to be skipped or skimmed; it sets ATD's readers briefly aglow with sweetness and light — and sadness.)
>>> 
>>> And an uncomfortable percentage of the more informative annotations are also largely a waste of time to read.
>>> 
>>> Anybody else find this? I used the annotations for GR, M&D, IV, BE...seem to remember them mostly being much better than this.
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20170428/99e06c2b/attachment.html>