SLPAD 9 - wandering scholars

[Mark Kohut]

More narcissism: Why do I have this book on my shelf and have STILL not
read it?
a) because I think TRP gave me enough since
b) I have little interest in the middle ages
e) going on the road.....
f) thinking about when I used to hitchhike between Toronto and Pittsburgh.

On Sat, Feb 25, 2023 at 4:29 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> “A collateral effect, for me anyway, was that of Helen Waddell’s The
> Wandering Scholars, reprinted in the early ’50’s, an account of the young
> poets of the Middle Ages who left the monasteries in large numbers and took
> to the roads of Europe, celebrating in song the wider range of life to be
> found outside their academic walls.”
>
> Helen Waddell was an Irish poet, playwright, & translator who accompanied a
> volume of translations of medieval Latin lyric poetry with another book
> containing an account of its wandering scholarly authors, the “goliards.”
>
>
> The full paragraph devoted to the wandering scholars & their spiritual
> heirs in the 1950s & ‘60s seems to be the capstone of Pynchon’s list of
>
> “alternative lowlife data that kept filtering insidiously* through the ivy”
> & drawing intelligent & creative young people away from academia.
>
> A strange attractor, if you will?
>
> “Some of us couldn’t resist the temptation to go out and see what was
> happening. Enough of us then came back inside with firsthand news to
> encourage
> others to try it too—a preview of the mass college dropouts of the ’60’s.”
>
>
> He then turns his attention to the Beats.
>
>
> * “insidiously” - is this used facetiously, or is there a touch of regret
> for the costs of such an exodus from the Groves of Academe? (Hitchhikers
> getting beaten up, degrees abandoned with concomitant reduction of lifetime
> earning potential, drug abuse, so forth)
>
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insidious
>
> Insidious comes from a Latin word for “ambush” (insidiae), which is
> fitting, as this word often carries the meanings “deceitful,” “stealthy,”
> or “harmful in an imperceptible fashion.” The first two meanings may be
> applied to people or things (“an insidious enemy,” “an insidious plot”),
> while the last is usually applied to things (“insidious problems,”
> “insidious sexism”), in particular to the gradual progress of a disease
> (“an insidious malignancy”).
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>