Happy Birthday GR....sent 6:15 AM Australian time.....a good, good piece....

[Arthur Fuller]

Is it a coincidence that Oedipus begins with OED as in Oxford English
Dictionary?

On Wed, Mar 1, 2023 at 5:38 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Needless to say, I disagree. Great books are universal or they aren't
> great. if any of us---including the Board of
> Trustees of Columbia University cannot read the Brigadier Pudding scenes
> then they can't feel some of Pynchon's
> insights; those scenes are *meant to *embody,as ongoing metaphor, the
> ways we eat shit all the time as sick denizens
> of our power dominatrix world. Sadomasochism as daily life, so deeply
> unfortunately.
>
> New mothers, new parents--and most of civilized England refused to read
> Swift's *A Modest Proposal* since they could not
> stomach it, so to speak...The one about eating babies to stave off the
> starvation of being ground by those in power into virtually disappearing
> as a human being, ala Slothrop.
>
> I cannot read books nor watch movies where children die any longer, *my
> acknowledged admitted weakness* since I obviously feel so
> helpless and full of fear about my grandchildren. Hardly close enough--3+
> hours away-- to even feel deceptively protective.
> But I can remember when younger, arguing hard against peers and friends
> who said they could not read a well-praised novel by
> a fine writer---Rosellen Brown, I believe---about a family's loss of a
> child, perhaps in a moment of negligence by one and how they
> lost everything else...
>
> All great literature---god did I feel Oedipus's blindness the last time,
> an adult, I read that play---must crack the frozen ice within us
> as Kafka put it or else novels are just entertainment. IMHO.
>
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 6:01 PM Dee Kilroy <deadendkid76 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> re: "Readable"
>>
>> While I wholly agree with that, that which is Readable By All is not
>> meant to be Read By All.  My boyfriend has a copy of GR he's never cracked,
>> nor am I encouraging him to crack it.  As a book that contains multitudes,
>> some of those multitudes are distasteful to readers w/ certain
>> sensibilities.  I can read about the scat & not be put off; whereas I don't
>> think my boyfriend would want to endure the suffering of Brigadier
>> Pudding-- much less truck with the underage sex scenes.  As a gay guy I
>> love Pynchon, but I'm not going to pitch P to anybody in my community any
>> more than I would push William S. Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, Dennis
>> Cooper, or Samuel R. Delany.  Some writers are meant for a discerning,
>> limited, readership.  Hopefully not an obscure one!
>>
>> Much as I love P, he's perversely uncommercial.  A Gilbert Sorrentino
>> with more enduring mass-appeal celebrity.  (Not an insult!)
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 11:21 AM Arthur Fuller <fuller.artful at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Unreadable? What idiot could not make it past the first sentence without
>>> falling into a well of Readable? I am no scholar in terms of 20th C
>>> literature, but I am fully prepared to argue that GR stands as one of the
>>> Great Novels of the 20th century. So does V., and so does The Crying of
>>> Lot
>>> 49.
>>> Lest you dismiss me as a Pynch-ophile, let me add that my second
>>> favourite
>>> American author of the previous century is William Gaddis -- whose books
>>> (all too few) I have read several times. IMO, JR is a masterpiece, but so
>>> was The Recognitions -- how appropriately titled, given itss
>>> un-recognition
>>> as great art.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 3:38 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> https://theconversation.com/amp/join-the-counterforce-thomas-pynchons-postmodern-epic-gravitys-rainbow-at-50-196657?fbclid=IwAR2pKRckXm7QxRt6YVVx6LIxIvLb7FGWCoPKfMhia49HUBroPzD0z7VYrTU
>>> > --
>>> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Arthur
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>

-- 
Arthur