Noomninam’s
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(group member since Nov 12, 2012)
Noomninam’s
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from the Aggressive Reading Crew group.
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The video to which the first guy refers reverently. I love this guy's demeanor, his gestures, his messy apartment, and his accent: "The important thing to see is I think that it's a focking messed up book." Along with all that, he shares some very astute and, I think, useful insights into the book and how it relates to the postmodern genre. Thirteen minutes well spent, sez me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua7VR...
And just so I don't lose track of this link, here's an excellent ten minute intro by someone I've never heard of, with no credentials I can discern, and links below to other useful vids:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syYPq...
Warning note: there are some very strange agents out there sharing their "insights" on Pynchon and GR. Example: Here are a couple of viewer annotations under a YouTube post including an unknown voice singing "The Doper's Dream" (page 368):Klaatu
2 years ago (edited)
Slothrop spelled backward is Porhtols which is German for Portholes/ portals. Probably deliberate on P's part. Portholes to where? A kind of zero point energy he talks about in the book? That corresponded with the supposedly fictional scalar energy theories that always claim to be real and frequently connected with Tesla. (Stephen King refers to something similar in Revival) English researchers doing pervy Pavlovian experiments producing extrasensory abilities in Slothrop along with attempted seances. Subtle physical energy body over-mind or another way of saying the soul is not internal but encases the outside of the body. An invisible energy portal several feet above the head that can be hacked by a gestalt hive consciousness? Oboy, maybe not.
Jack Helsdown
+Klaatu I love that TYRONE SLOTHROP is an anagram for SLOTH OR ENTROPY. As though Pynchon is offering the reader a choice; is our inability to do anything a sin committed by ourselves or is it just the natural order of things?
Though, to the extent that one can't resist looking up references, the best no-cost online GR assistance module I've found is at:https://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki....
Especially the Annotations by Page tab. And of course the ebook has built-in dictionary and web search capabilities. Happy haunting...
So, I'm about eighty pages in, depending which edition I consult. Been alternating between the Google epub and the audiobook. One alternately pulls ahead and I turn to the other to catch up, so in effect hearing/rereading everything twice -- which probably isn't enough! I don't generally recall a lot of detail from fiction, but most of it is coming back -- yet visually, and in overall tone, the book is different this time. Because I'm literally a different person than I was in the mid-90s when I left that unfinished copy on the train? Whatever the reason(s), the meta-meta-pomo wisecracks are still there, including cascades of juvenile and obscure cultural minutae. But the scenes I remembered before starting the reread, including the banana breakfast in the old hotel, Roger Mexico's sports car and the abandoned house he shares with Jessica Swanlake in an evacuated, forbidden London neighborhood, it's all pervaded for me this time with the sadness and pathos of war. He conveys this more in breathtaking scenic depiction than in the contorted, silly verbal and mental meanderings of the main characters. And all of it delivered in declamatory waves of incantation not unlike the verbal sweep of Walt Whitman. Possibly hearing the magisterial reading of George Guidall brings this rhythm to the reader's attention. Plus, as a bonus, Guidall sounds almost exactly like Edward Everett Horton, who some may remember as the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales" in the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show.As several multiple-run-through readers of this difficult book advised, really don't stop to look everything up the first time, and don't give up when you don't understand a strange, abrupt segue. Instead, plug on, as it's probably going to pop up in further iterations later on that explain it to the patient reader. This is the time for aggro reading, if ever there was a time, in other words!
Book dedication: I knew that Richard Farina had something to do with Joan Baez, but did not know that he was Pynchon's roommate at Cornell. Interesting article, which makes me want to hear his Greenwich Village folkie efforts and read his (only completed) book:https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
To get myself going again on this challenging literary milestone (I read about 2/3 of it years ago and then left it -- accidentally, I swear -- on an Amtrak seat in D.C.), I used an Audible credit to pick up a recent re-recording by audiobook god George Guidall. I expect to go mostly with audio at least through the first of this novel's four sections. It's entitled "Beyond the Zero," and in my Google epub, which appears to be taken from the Penguin version with the blueprint rocket plan cover, takes us to page 137. Or, in the 1973 Viking Compass paperback edition (originally $4.95!) I found on eBay and snapped up for something in excess of original list, for reasons I'll outline later, Part 1 takes us to page 177. However many pages that translates to for you, should be doable by end of April, eh? Yeah...I'll create more folders as needed for our ongoing notes, impressions. Aggro members should be enabled to post and create additional folders (let me know if you're not). Please share insights/hurdles! Have a good month. JW
Medium length, generally positive biopic and overview of Tartt and all three of her books:http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/gre...
And for the opposing view, from some would-be cultural gate-defenders:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/201...
First look at Jason Siegel as David Foster Wallace. Read 'em & weep, chilluns...http://flavorwire.com/newswire/heres-...
While working on a piece about how various writers have motivated themselves, I hit on this tidbit about our current man of the moment...Jonathan Franzen has famously described how he wrote The Corrections wearing “earplugs, earmuffs and a blindfold”, and for his latest novel, Freedom, he shut down his Ethernet port with Super Glue.
Hey - whatever works!
Just getting started, but I'm immediately struck by the book beginning with an extended character study – albeit a very entertaining neighborhood portrait. This goes completely against the minimalist, "show, not tell" writing style espoused by all the creative writing teachers I had (the same generation of educators whose approval DFW both sought and rejected). Not unlike Michael Chabon in mood and style – but again, I'm only a few pages in. What does anyone else think?
More than I've ever known about this author who even wore a mask when guesting in cartoon form on the Simpsons!http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas...
http://longform.org/stories/the-incre...I'm sure this will be of interest to Lisa, and possibly others: back in 2006, George Saunders went to Nepal to investigate stories of a "Buddha Boy" who had meditated under a tree for seven months without food or water. I think he channels a bit of DFW's reportage style, but definitely in his own voice.
BTW, if you like to read articles here and there, but have no time for regular subscriptions, signing up at http://longform.org/
gets you a really well curated list of links once a week. As someone who throws away more New Yorker issues than reads them, this has been working well for me.
The first one here was especially revealing for me as to the "simulated world" concept that seems important in the novel (and then fades back a bit at the end):http://www.jgoodwin.net/?p=711
http://hungrylikethewoolf.wordpress.c...
Victoria wrote: "John- I'm sorry I didn't get to say goodbye on Wednesday!"My semi-rude custom to disappear suddenly -- and my loss! So, is the Bistro's perennial residence on so many Top 10 Burger lists justified?
Also: Did anyone continue east on 4th Street later? When I was walking that way, there were some lights up and reflectors on the next corner, and three paparazzi guys blazing away on motor drive cameras with long lenses at a couple on the next corner. I'm probably out of touch, but neither of them looked remotely familiar to me. Maybe they were just stand-ins until the lights/exposure was set -- but then why all the frantic photography?
Anyway, happy holidays, everybody!
7:00 Wednesday 12.18.13Art Bar @ 52 8th Avenue, New York, NY - Between Horatio & Jane on the East Side of Eighth Avenue. 212.727.0244
We have selected, and some have started, "Chronic City" by Jonathan Lethem. It was generally agreed that the group needed a break from endnotes, footnotes, and thwarted desire for resolved plots and the like. This work should satisfy at least some of those needs.
We are currently reading Mark Z. Danielewski's 'House of Leaves.' This book seemed a natural follow-up to the nearly limitless highways and byways of Infinite Jest.
If you're taking 'breaks' from our current behemoth with (typically) less challenging fare, where are you going? Thinking books here, but this could also mean magazines, online content ... opera librettos?
