Here's a third to post, please

[John M. Krafft]

From:	MIAVX2::JMKRAFFT     "John M. Krafft" 21-FEB-1992 00:16:49.23
To:	
CC:	JMKRAFFT    
Subj:	Re: Is Thomas Pynchon Gibson's Secret Love-Child?

X-News: miavx2 alt.cyberpunk:406
From: evenson at hitl.washington.edu (Mark Evenson)
Subject:Re: Is Thomas Pynchon Gibson's Secret Love-Child?
Date: 20 Feb 92 08:19:03 GMT
Message-ID:<EVENSON.92Feb20001903 at jabberwock.hitl.washington.edu>

	Whoops.  Hit the wrong sequence.  Didn't mean to send that out (the
article to which this is a followup), kinda retracting my comment if you
will, but since I have to apologize (sorry) for the goof, I might as well
give a tentative iteration.

	Seems to me that the question of maternity is skewed right?  I mean
the parts of _Gravity's Rainbow_ that caused critics to think of "Ruggles"
as a sci-fi guy, are exactly the components that you mention as being like
the spwarl--megacorps running the world (influence of Max Weber's
bureacratization of charisma), increasingly entropic rundown of social
relations, emergence of messiah cult figure running through a surreal
Zone/Matrix (Slothrop as Case in a shared lack on critical intelligence,
constant paranoia, adopting postures and attitudes) for an unspecified
Counterforce/net holism.

	But all this comes from the archetype plot elements present in
both, right?  Pynchon, in _GR_ "hangs" his tale on the standard loner vs.
the establishment and then drowns the read in uncertainty over what exactly
is being fought over, is there a narrative, is there even a hero?  Gibson,
speaking of _Neuromancer_ as a central text, grabs the detective potboiler
plot (which is equivlant to _GR_s) , digitizes it with a complex linguistic
mesh, and then hands it out as science-fiction (which promptly
"crosses-over" to academia as _the_ novel for the post-hip).

	_Vineland_ reads like Pynchon went heavy into the Marquez basin, in
that the forces of disintegration are satirized, never given the heavy hand
(I mean, like, _Vineland_ has an ending right?  Prarie and Fresni are gonna
live happily ever after, Reagan is gonna fall, and the Thanatoids finally
get to die).  The only point that waxes of the Net comes as the forces of
infotech erase Fresni's life, and the narrator raps on the Yin Yang, binary
split riff, the 1's and 0's of the computer of God.  Straight Pynchon
talking the stoner talk, but here, unnconnected with the narrative in any
but a superficial sense.

	So I guess I would argue that:

0)  Pynchon wrote _GR_		1963 (?) - 1973
					[_Lot 49_ was a money fill]

a)  Gibson read _GR_, dug its corporations but didn't concsiously imitate
it				1983-1984 (Mr Maddox?)

b)  Pynchon needed some cash (maybe the MacArthur whetted his hunger),
wrote _Vineland_ having sampled some of the Movement in a periphary kind
of way (He's rumored to be West Coast these days--that's where the
NYT _Review of Books_ editorial on Rusdie's death sentance was located),
and incorporates basic themes perhaps without reading Gibson.
				1988-1990

	Oh, what a mess.  But some ideas anayways.


		keep on keepin' on

"Money, shit and the Word--the three basic American truths."
		_Gravity's Rainbow_