Group Read

Sat Dec 23 16:19:03 CST 2017

Yep. I wrote here a couple of months ago:
   I was teaching The Scarlet Letter to HS seniors, mostly poorish
readers, struggling with the vocabulary and sentences. I got so wrapped up
in helping with that that I wasn't reflecting that they'd not had any kind
of chronological lit survey or a good Am history course... and realized
only after a week or so that they thought this *was* early-17th-century
Puritan fiction... nonono, people, let's back up, Hawthorne was as distant
from Massachusetts Bay Colony as we are from him.

On Sat, Dec 23, 2017 at 3:38 PM, Kyle <kylehgross at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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