Group Read

[Monte Davis]

Or, zooming out: That snowbound story-telling is chronologically halfway
from the first lasting Anglo settlement (at Jamestown, while Shakespeare
was revising A Winter's Tale) to JFK's presidency. Or a bit more than
halfway from Columbus' landfall to today.

M&D plays some nifty games with our triple origin myths -- New World,
mid-latitude colonization, US independence -- and with how pop-historical
memory collapses the many generations between them.

On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 5:11 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> We are now about as far from the book's publication as Cherrycoke is from
> the story he's telling.
>
> On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 4:10 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "It's twenty years," recalls the Revd, "since we all topped the Allegheny
>> Ridge together, and stood looking out at the Ohio Country,--so fair, a
>> Revelation, meadow'd to the Horizon[...]"
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Yes, across the board. Coming out of the war there was much more
>>> dynamism, more synergy between government finance, private capitalism (or
>>> quasi-private like the East India Company), and mercantile/imperial policy.
>>> Like the US in WWII, the UK in the Sven Year War borrowed and spent on an
>>> unprecedented scale that frightened Trasuruy officials-- and came out
>>> richer and more powerful than it started.
>>>
>>> The main point I'm driving at is not to let historical tunnel vision
>>> collapse the 350-year history of the British Empire into one fixed thing;
>>> when M&D start their travels there's a lot about it that is new and "where
>>> is this taking us?" TO THEM  AS ENGLISHMEN OF THE TIME. I think P. knew
>>> that, which makes their exchanges about what they're seeing more
>>> believeable and less "As you know, Jere..." exposition P. contrived to put
>>> in their mouths for our benefit.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 5:42 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Good stuff, Monte--I just finished that Anderson book on the Seven
>>>> Years War you recommended, btw.
>>>>
>>>> Just riffing, correct me where wrong...
>>>>
>>>> It seems like one of the things that happens to the British Empire
>>>> through that war--driving its emergence as a much bigger and different
>>>> version of itself--is the Empire starts to learn and benefit from just how
>>>> powerful a force raw capital (via conquest, control of trade) is in making
>>>> & defending empire. Maybe this is the emergence of capitalism, inflected by
>>>> colonialism, through the prevailing lens of mercantilism.
>>>>
>>>> The BE starts increasingly targeting small Caribbean islands and other
>>>> European colonies/trade routes not only for their territorial/tactical
>>>> importance per se, nor because of any longstanding sentimental feelings (as
>>>> with much of the English emphasis on protecting Hanover) toward some
>>>> particular place/people, but because some of these islands simply yield
>>>> immense profits to their colonizers, which itself helps with the war effort
>>>> and starts to increasingly become the lifeblood of empire.
>>>>
>>>> Whereas pre-7YW Europe involves a delicate balance of power among the
>>>> major European states, Britain leaves the 7YW as such a massive and
>>>> far-flung empire (so capital-hungry not only because of the war but because
>>>> of the new scale of the empire itself) that it essentially becomes
>>>> dependent on maximally exploiting its holdings. Land cannibalism. And
>>>> messy, at that. The BE having no real idea of how much chaos is fermenting
>>>> in the American colonies--economic and political unrest, the frontier, the
>>>> Indians, etc.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 4:07 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Full agreement as far as the first read goes, Mike. Later, though -- I
>>>>> won'rt repeat some posts on the Seven Years War (locally for USAns, the
>>>>> French & Indian War) from the last year or so, but perhaps worth tucking
>>>>> away:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) As M&D themselves discover at sea, it was a *world* war. Most of it
>>>>> was in Europe, India, the Caribbean islands, and at sea, with the North
>>>>> American part a comparatively minor theater... even if it led, unplanned,
>>>>> to (1) control of Canada, (2) newly confident and uppity colonies along the
>>>>> Atlantic seaboard, and (3) indirectly, French disengagement from the
>>>>> Mississippi-Missouri basin that would become the Louisiana Purchase of
>>>>> 1803. USAn readers naturally think it's all about us, but IIRC at the time
>>>>> of the war of independence the UK's trade with the Caribbean sugar islands
>>>>> was several times that with all the about-to-be-US colonies together.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) The British Empire emerging in the mid-1760s was not just much
>>>>> larger, but very different -- in organization and in Britons' attitudes
>>>>> toward their place in the world -- from what it had been for the previous
>>>>> ~150 years. Much about it was new to M&D and their contemporaries. In some
>>>>> ways they have more in common with Slothrop in an about-to-be-Americanized
>>>>> Europe, or the 1950s USN sailors in the Mediterranean in V., than with
>>>>> Godolphin and Porpentine, or the Foreign Office mandarins in AtD.
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 1:13 PM, Mike Sauve <mpsauve at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> This is a huge overgeneralization, but the whole pre-America portion
>>>>>> is the most forgivable during which to suspend the "why" question. It's
>>>>>> also when it will come up the most, but upon first read, unless you're the
>>>>>> type to research and make notes of every page for that kind of
>>>>>> comprehension--it's this part you can just let wash over you, enjoy the
>>>>>> repartee, the jokes, etc. The East India Company and Clive of Fucking India
>>>>>> and all that is contextually important, but if you're not 100% clear on the
>>>>>> forces at work in the beginning, know that the narrative gains a far
>>>>>> greater cohesion and clarity once they reach the good old US of A.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 10:08 AM, L E Bryan <lebryan at sonic.net>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I seem to always get stuck on “WHY?” questions.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> But, of course there is that favorite advent section of GR with
>>>>>>> Roger and Jessica. I read it out loud to my friends - when I have any that
>>>>>>> will tolerate my idiosyncrasies  - or just to myself around this time of
>>>>>>> year.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lawrence, who started M&D again, last night…
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> > On Dec 21, 2017, at 2:08 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > Simple banal observation which, like everything in this great
>>>>>>> writer,
>>>>>>> > can lead to good discussion:
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > V and M & D begin in winter, near Christmas. Seemingly P's
>>>>>>> favorite holiday.
>>>>>>> >
>>>>>>> > True? and why?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -
>>>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>
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