Bleeding Edge better 2nd or is it 3rd time?

[Mark Kohut]

I personally do too much else to handle larger chunks of any reading. I
read like ice melts. Fine, my guess is the early leavers won't even join
the faster read but it is yours to lead.

On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 9:17 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> What I have seen with our too slow, too scheduled reads is that
> participation fades quickly and the group ends long before the novel is
> done. This has happened several times. Taking the novel in faster larger
> chunks should not not limit granular focus or in-depth explorations of the
> story or a theme. The question of disgreement is merely a suggestion. Avoid
> arguments that can’t be resolved. Accept variations of thought, heresies,
> punk attitudes, Pynchon piety. For my thinking there is no correct or
> incorrect interpretations, particularly with an honest attempt to
> understand. There are no TP bishops or popes; people read as they read,
> think as they think. The value of diversity is not final proof but the
> broadening  and balancing effect of different ways of seeing.
> There is a wonderful Ursula Leguin  series of short stories about
> transilience, a technology that allows a ship and people to move many light
> years instantly. The fiirst story is callled Shobie’s Story.The first group
> to test it end up with different members each having a totally different
> and sometimes divergent experience following the transilience which only
> begins to be resolved when they gather and each tells her or his story.
> Another story includes a charismatic person who tries to control the whole
> thing and ends up with delusions that lead him to electrocute himself in a
> misunderstood religious ceremony.
>
> Anyone else up for this?
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 19, 2021, at 4:08 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I am afraid you lost me at ..."my idea is to move faster than we tend to
> do." Nope, slower is always better imo. it is feeling the detail, all of it
> that matters most. Rendering the generalities that arise in touch with the
> reality of the text. Otherwise it is
> > bloviating with one's higher order "truths', which may be truths but
> exist independently from a connection to the text.
> >
> > You also lost me here: " I also suggest we try to avoid the you’re wrong
> I’m right approach and  handle disagreement with more respect or simply to
> try to enjoy the variety and put down one’s own thoughts."..Have you been a
> part of our most recent but
> > now in the wayback time, Reads? They have already been what you want.
> There is so much to notice and say. You, Joseph, as I've said to you
> directly do mini-essay riffs I like when you put down your thoughts. Your
> test-based thoughts. Also, it seems simply a fact that there can be scores
> of different readings, more than scores, but there can also be simply
> mistaken ones that need pointed out as mistaken. Otherwise the words of
> Bleeding Edge have no meaning at all.
> >
> > IF you may be thinking of some of my rude language regarding non-Pynchon
> writers, like the way I call some moronic commentators you quote, morons,
> know I do not do that, never have, on a Group Read and won't. If you quote
> one of them moronically I will note that.
> >
> > I'm up for a reread of Bleeding Edge. I hope it would be more than we
> two. But if you want to comment via a faster read, continue as you did to
> start this. Nice observations.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> > JT: No worries about spoilers etc. freely seeing the text as a whole in
> commenting on any given passage, theme or event. It really is quick as an
> audio book. The reader is good with narrative flow and dramatic voicing if
> sometimes weaker with longer ruminations.
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 12:26 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net <mailto:
> brook7 at sover.net>> wrote:
> > I am listening to Bleeding Edge via Library audio  book system today. It
> seems different with 20 years of distance from actual 9/11 and from  the
> time of  publication, both funnier and darker, in some ways more eerily
> prescient( maybe not so eerily). I have HS students born after 911.
>  Pynchon's approach of viewing the event through the lens of the internet
> and digital technology that is such a large part of our cultural reality
> gives it a McLuhanesque spin that is worth some thought. In some ways New
> York is one of the last outposts of dense non-digital neighborhoods and
> human contacts but is increasingly, as all places, mediated by cell phones,
> commercial media, isolation and less by social gathering and conversation..
> Still there is an intensity of color in NYC that P works with expertly.
> >
> > If anyone wants to engage in a read/listen/conversation and all the
> attached risks, my idea is to move faster than we tend to do. I also
> suggest we try to avoid the you’re wrong I’m right approach and  handle
> disagreement with more respect or simply to try to enjoy the variety and
> put down one’s own thoughts. No worries about spoilers etc. freely seeing
> the text as a whole in commenting on any given passage, theme or event. It
> really is quick as an audio book. The reader is good with narrative flow
> and dramatic voicing if sometimes weaker with longer ruminations.
> >
> > Anyone? Mike? How many would make a quorum?
> >
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