https://www.internationalpynchonweek.org/conference-program?fbclid=IwAR3fAQX-rs2SbFbi-oax4yvXGTyCYuyh-ev5MGDesy5-WfnJnXT4RdWHoz8

[Mark Kohut]

Dear Honest, Vulnerable because honest, Jerky,

I admire you writing this here in Late Plist. Showing us all what to
confess. So, I will. It took me a
number of false starts to read GR. False starts that had years-long gaps. I
finally did *with the help*
*of books and articles on Pynchon and it. *I wasn't smart and disciplined
enough to get it straight, get the whole vision,
the perspective and many themes. The f'in STORY itself. Slow learner. Not
until a later rereading again with the full annotative help
of a major book about it could I really start to internalize it.

Re:V. I stopped out of that the first time too. Which wasn't when it was
new in paperback either, and of course, not the hardcover.
(But here's a book career tidbit: I heard about, in the 80s I think, a guy
who ran a small book distributor in Michigan who had to close it down
and in the closing down found a box of first editions V.....AND, and maybe
this is an urban book business legend, a guy who found a box of hardcover
first editions of GR like in the eighties when his company took over
reorganizing the Viking warehouse, notoriously a system-fail mess by then.
My first attempted reading of V was the short-lived Modern Library edition,
which as we know TRP has since refused to exist. I found that edition
decades later---with the bookmark still in it!--. It confirmed what I
remembered. I stopped out at the "used a little too much force" part of the
Whole Sick Crew party event scene.....because I could not understand how P
could present that straight, too stupid to see the satire of the Whole Sick
Crew.

BUT, even older, M & D was the hardest for me to read straight. When new. I
was working very hard, life-wasting hours
(but life-giving hours too) and had little time to read what I wanted and
it was so slow going I couldn't remember it whole for long.
And THOSE CAPS bothered the hell out of me.....Why were they
there?......What ones were capitalized and why?
PS:

Isaac Chotiner
<https://twitter.com/IChotiner>
@IChotiner
<https://twitter.com/IChotiner>
·
10h <https://twitter.com/IChotiner/status/1507122124602765320>
The only three people I have ever met or read about who insistently
capitalize random words are Donald Trump, Ginni Thomas, and Marty Peretz.
Maybe not a great sign?

And, fully mature and fully into Pynchon, my first reading of* Bleeding
Edge, *brand new, and I couldn't feel it....couldn't like it because....
not rich and interesting enough.......LOL......I immediately read it again
in order to avoid Plist embarrassment and it began to
reveal itself....

My major epiphanic and wonderful reading experience re Pynchon was that I
learned of this Plist right before/around when * Against The Day* was being
published---thanks so fully, Mike B, forever grateful, I hope you are more
than well---and joined THE AtD Read when it was brand new as was the novel
and the wiki had just been erected and it was a glorious experience. I
learned how to read again.

I then filled my mind with all of Pynchon to my max. As I once wrote here,
it seemed that every day for a long while the real world was newly
illuminated somehow with perceptions that came from Pynchon's vision. And
the books were too as I read and reread. It is my failing to need a
biblical writer, I know, but there it is.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 5:44 PM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Man, I hate to admit this, but I have yet to read Against the Day.
>
> I just can't wrap my head around the basic identity of the thing if that
> makes any sense, and that's something I kind of need to be able to do with
> a novel before I tackle the actual reading part.
>
> Also, I'm not the brightest bulb in the marquee, so while I read Lot 49,
> Vineland and Inherent Vice without difficulty, it took me about a half
> dozen runs at V. to get past "that" chapter (Stencil's quick change
> chapter), it took me well over 20 false starts with Gravity's Rainbow (and
> now I know the first fifty pages or so by heart), about the same for Mason
> & Dixon. As for Bleeding Edge, I quit at the third awful sex scene, and
> have yet to get back to it. I realize the group read would have been a good
> opportunity to fill that Pynchonian lacuna, but I just had too much going
> on when y'all started.
>
> Jerky
>
> Jerky
>
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 9:50 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Agreed.
>>
>> And *Against the Day* is the largest and richest of all. But not as
>> perfect as those two.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 9:42 AM Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Agreed.
>>>
>>> Pynchon has masterworks to spare. And GR has already been thoroughly
>>> explored.
>>>
>>> Mason & Dixon, for example, is arguably the superior work.
>>>
>>> Jerky
>>>
>>> On Thu., Mar. 24, 2022, 9:35 a.m. rich, <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> program is interesting in GR is hardly the subject of any, if at all,
>>>> which
>>>> is a good thing
>>>>
>>>> rich
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 4:22 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>> >
>>>> https://www.internationalpynchonweek.org/conference-program?fbclid=IwAR3fAQX-rs2SbFbi-oax4yvXGTyCYuyh-ev5MGDesy5-WfnJnXT4RdWHoz8
>>>> > --
>>>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>> >
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>