Group Read

[Kyle]

I find that collapse of history one of the more glaring issues of History
education in the US (particularly K-12).  A student learns only a
constellation of one major crisis to the next and these interstitial years
are skimmed at best. This is what leads to the disjointed popular
mis-understandings of history as well as a loss of the perception of the
infinity of human behaviors and actions that lead and surround such crisis
points.

The separation of people and events into Great and non is understandable
when covering so much ground in a short teaching cycle- but ends up
reinforcing something that I find quite damaging - the downplay or plain
ignorance of the average joes, who have just as many stories (as TP so
clearly demonstrates over and over) and of course just as much worth.

These historical novels of Pynchons life long project is a delivering the
human back into our understanding of history. I have toyed with using
passages of Pynchon when I was teaching High School History but i found the
orientation of the Pynchon atitide/understanding? to be too jarring to the
very discrete name and dates form of elementary history education which by
HS the students are already imprinted.

-kyle

On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 2:54 PM Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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