M & D Group Read (cont)

[David Morris]

If you ever stop wondering, Satan wins.

On Sat, Jan 13, 2018 at 3:13 PM Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we’re always wondering, in P, just how Panoptickal his Towers and
> Castles are.
>
> On Jan 13, 2018, at 4:51 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, I noticed that--Castles-- during the last almost line by line read I
> did. Not the Trial so much.  I have come to speculate that
>
> K's Castle might be TRP revisioning The City on a Hill loaded with
> narrative symbolism of the US, esp the last line of wikipedia's summary
> here.
>
> *The Castle* (*German
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language>: Das Schloss* German
> pronunciation: [das ʃlɔs]
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Standard_German>; also spelled *Das
> Schloß*) is a 1926 novel <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novel> by Franz
> Kafka <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka>. In it a protagonist
> known only as K. arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the
> mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle. Kafka died before
> finishing the work, but suggested it would end with K. dying in the
> village, the castle notifying him on his death bed that his "legal claim to
> live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary
> circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there." Dark
> and at times surreal <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism>, *The
> Castle* is often understood to be about alienation
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_alienation>, unresponsive
> bureaucracy <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy>, the frustration
> of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary
> controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.
>
> Them Jesuits.
>
> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 1:26 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Speaking of influences, homages, ancestries, reincarnations: I’m struck
>> again—mentioned it in one post but it may deserve repetition and
>> elaboration—at how much Kafka I see around here, these first ~150pgs or so.
>> (Which is not always the case with my experience of Pynchon.) I believe at
>> least three mentions of a/the Castle. The mass hypnosis. The folly that is
>> not quite mirthless, but is still kind of askew—amok—and horrifying. The
>> way there is madness that happens not center stage, maybe not even properly
>> on the stage at all.
>>
>> On Jan 10, 2018, at 12:03 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> This. I see Sterne everywhere in Pynchon, above all in their shared
>> conviction that digression and chronological skipping-about are truer to
>> our inner life than linear narrative. Cherrycoke is only P's most overt
>> tribute to that influence. I'm curious: does Sebald ever sound Sternean to
>> you, as he does to me?
>>
>> The timing is apt, too: Tristram Shandy came out in volumes between 1759
>> (Rebekah's death; Sterne's mother died and his wife was dangerously ill)
>> and 1767 (end of the Line; Sterne's meeting with Eliza, muse for A
>> Sentimental Journey and the Journal).
>>
>> Plus... just *look* at the guy. How can a Pynchonian not love a great
>> comic writer who so resembles Harpo Marx?
>>
>>
>>  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Draper#/media/File:Laurence_Sterne_by_Sir_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg
>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_Draper#/media/File:Laurence_Sterne_by_Sir_Joshua_Reynolds.jpg>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 10, 2018 at 11:08 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
>> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
>>
>>> Cherrycoke always brings to my mind that other irreverent clergyman,
>>> Lawrence Sterne. If I am not mistaken, Sterne also would have been
>>> addressed as the Reverend.
>>>
>>> Am 10.01.2018 um 16:28 schrieb Joseph Tracy:
>>>
>>>   I would be interested to hear how others hear or listen for Ccoke’s
>>>> voice.
>>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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