>A few serious questions.  First, which sections are you referring to?  It
>may
>be that there are those on this list for whom those sections are not
>boring,
>and who may be able to enlighten the rest of us as to the value and
>excitement
>that they find.

Hmm, being caught without my copy of the cantos on holiday here, i can't
give any specific referents in terms of line numbers or even whole cantos,
but generally I find a decrease in enjoyment after about canto 26 until the
mid 40s and even sections of rock-drill outside of 91-92. I suppose it's a
selective reading on my part- I realise that's next to useless as a
specific, and I apologise (note to self, remember to have text when making
judgements in future), but I think my earlier assertion is one that more
than a few people on this list might agree with.

>Second, part of the enjoyment of reading Pound is to make
>the discoveries that come with secondary and tertiary readings.  To expect
>to
>understand a text immediately, or nearly so, reveals a bias on the part of
>the
>reader which is, if one thinks about it, limiting.

I don't think i ever said anything about this and I certainly never meant to
imply you should be able to understand the cantos by browsing them; what i
am referring to is the inability of the reader of the cantos to understand
large sections of it without help, i.e. things outside of the text such as
terrell- how can you get a copy of Coke nowadays, how can you understand
something such as the references to italian peasants (luigi is the one that
springs to mind) or the DTM prisoners without a biography? You could easily
say that 'within the text they are not important as people, simply for what
their actions are', and therefore understandable purely as symbols within
the text, but we're all so wrapped up in the circumstances of his life
anyway that we do take them as people and not as symbols. I think i just
resent that large part of reading almost any canto which is the drudge
through the library for a reference that doesn't necessarily seem to matter-
i don't think Ep ever learned that lesson from WCW's father well enough,
that if it's a book you should call it a book. A lot of the time you're
enlightened by source hunting, but too often in the cantos it leaves you
cold.

I think i've said a lot of stuff I don't necessarily agree with there, but
it's a valid approach and one that a lot of readers of pound who are not as
fascinated by him as we are would agree with.

              Rich

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