M& D Group Read

[Mark Kohut]

And, I left this unsaid: this is a joke about " depth" from P as well, since he is deeper in his vision of the world (and 'just' America) than 9 out of 10 good writers with their " lush prose" and " the fancy prose style" "you can always trust a murderer to have" as is said early in Lolita. 

This oblique comment on literature, if it is,  in M & D also reminds me of Shakespeare ( not comparing P to the greatest here but in this way) his plays,  of the most beautiful grains of humanity worked entirely as surface action and dialogue. First. But the depth is there too. 

And, as the best readers/critics aver: all great literature works like this in some way. There are plenty of deep thinkers even in fiction whose ideas die a boring death. 



Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 26, 2017, at 8:26 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Perhaps the place to comment on that famous Card Table early on, page 5 , I think, with the Wan'dring Heart grain and its "illusion of depth". 
> 
> Pynchon wrote in one of his letters that everything is there on the surface of his texts and 
> I always think of that.
> Despite his buried allusions, the surface sings with his jokes, lyrical observations, overtly expressed themes--like this one about his own prose. 
> 
> And this reading I ask if it is a card table because decks of cards are patterned from the start? One after another, like ordained fate, yet " mysterious until revealed? 
> 
> That this is what the new world is too. Always is. 
> The "illusion of depth" depth is just the next unknown card in the limited patterned reality? 
> 
> Similar conceptually but entirely different from his use of Tarot cards in GR?
> 
> He says for conversation starting. 
> 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
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