Are you there? Do you care about this stuff?

[John M. Krafft]

From:	MIAVX2::JMKRAFFT     "John M. Krafft" 22-FEB-1992 01:08:08.96
To:	
CC:	JMKRAFFT    
Subj:	Re: Is Thomas Pynchon Gibson's Secret Love-Child?

X-News: miavx2 alt.cyberpunk:414
From: TRINGHAM at usmv01.usm.uni-muenchen.de (Tringham, Neal)
Subject:Re: Is Thomas Pynchon Gibson's Secret Love-Child?
Date: 20 Feb 92 21:29:36 GMT
Message-ID:<1992Feb20.212936.18095 at news.lrz-muenchen.de>

In <1992Feb20.120143.23975 at latcs1.lat.oz.au> burns at latcs1.lat.oz.au writes:

> 
> In article <1992Feb18.220345.20640 at news.lrz-muenchen.de>
>  TRINGHAM at usmv01.usm.uni-muenchen.de (Tringham, Neal) writes:
> 
> > Did anyone else who read _Vineland_ feel that it was uncannily like
> > Gibson's Sprawl stories?
> 
> I read it, and wondered why we were still making such a fuss over
> Gibson.
> 
> I also thought it was uncannily like Ken Kesey.

Like Kesey? As in the novels, or the lifestyle? (I'm fascinated. Other than
that both Pynchon and Kesey are sort of sixties survivors, I really can't
see much in common). 

> > Does this mean that 
> > 1) There _really was_ an eighties zeitgeist, and Gibson and Pynchon both
> > caught it? (along with, perhaps, Ridley Scott, since I think Gibson
> > claims never to have seen _Blade Runner_ before writing the first
> > Sprawl stories, even though it predates them)
> 
> Well yeah, but I date it back to Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and
> Stanley Kubrik. Gonzo, man.

I find this interesting as well... I could never see that Tom Wolfe and Hunter
Thompson really had all that much in common, other than having come along
at much the same time with `new ways to do journalism'. Certainly _Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas_ and _The Bonfire of the Vanities_ strike me as coming not
so much from different genres as from different centuries... and even _The
Kandy-Koloured Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby_ (almost certainly not the
right title:-)) never seemed to me to be really enthusiastically fucked-up 
(and enthusiastic about being fucked up) in the way that lots of Thompson's 
best stuff is. I can see a certain relationship between Thompson and 
Gibson/Pynchon, tho. 

> 
> He was pretty gentle on the sixties, you must admit. Us old farts
> appreciate that, and it fucks up our reviews.
> 

Yeah, he made it sound _so good_ I almost wished I'd been born before they 
ended... (all right, I exaggerate. But only slightly). 

Neal Tringham