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Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1992 23:01 EDT
From: "John M. Krafft" <JMKRAFFT at miavx2.ham.muohio.edu>
Subject: More from News, 2
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From:	MIAVX2::JMKRAFFT     "John M. Krafft" 26-FEB-1992 22:48:02.50
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CC:	JMKRAFFT    
Subj:	Re: Is Thomas Pynchon Gibson's Secret Love-Child?

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From: jessec at yang.earlham.edu
Subject:Re: Is Thomas Pynchon Gibson's Secret Love-Child?
Date: 23 Feb 92 19:12:22 GMT
Message-ID:<1992Feb23.141222.15806 at yang.earlham.edu>

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 didn't get all the way through *Vineland*, to tell the truth-- it 
felt like a disappointment after reading *The Crying of Lot 49* and *V., a 
novel*-- but I didn't really get that feeling.
   Neal points out various similarities, and asks:

> 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)

"When I went to see *Blade Runner*, I panicked and fled from the theater."

   --William Gibson

   I believe he only recently watched it all the way through.

> 2) The `real eighties' (as seen by Gibson) are simply the inevitable result
> of what Pynchon saw coming in the sixties (now _there's_ a nasty thought
> for you)?

   Hmm... not sure how to answer that.  What do you think that Pynchon 
foresaw, really? And which of his works do you draw this vision from?

> 3) Pynchon reads Gibson?

   No idea.  But I'm pretty sure Gibson's read Pynchon.  If I can get a 
hold of it, I'll check out this magazine interview again, because I'm 
almost sure he (Gibson) said something about Pynchon in it...

> 4) None of the above?

   Maybe all of the above?
   Anyway, to Neal's examples of similarities between the two:

> Granted most of _Vineland_ is about the sixties,
> but the parts set in the eighties included 1) Ninjas,

   Ninjas were an eighties thing, not solely a cyberpunk property.  I 
remember Andei Codrescu's piece, "Ninja Flu" (in the collection *Raised by 
Puppets, Only To Be Killed By Research*), where he talked about the new
popularity of that image in the West.  He said that it was the exact 
mirror of the Japanese preoccupation with cowboys...

> 2) Big, menacing Japanese corporations,

   Another presence from eighties America... the social/economic scene...

> 3) Hits carried out on
> behalf of said corporations by means of martial arts and hi-tech (I was
> particularly impressed by the mid-air plane-jacking sequence...), 
> 4) computers,

   Again: very much an eighties thing.  Even if, as various people have 
complained, neither Pynchon nor Gibson understand how the things do what 
they do... (in particular, Pynchon's computers always *work*.)

> 5) terrifying subterraenean paragovernmental organisations 
> (admittedly this is hardly something new for Pynchon)

   For sure.

> and 6) the 
> `commodification' of the world (notably the way that every film title 
> given in the book is followed by its year of initial release in brackets). 

   This too you could chalk up to eighties culture.  Brand name society.

> Any comments? I was also intrigued, incidentally, by the way in which every 
> review of _Vineland_ I saw concentrated on the sixties parts, and not a
> thing was said about Pynchon on the eighties... (it's a conspiracy, I tell
> you!)

   It was a very eighties thing, in a backassed way, to be obsessed with 
the sixties...

> Neal Tringham

   Could you have picked a more intentionally mysterious author than 
Pynchon to investigate the influences of?!? Interesting questions, though. 
 I guess the eighties-zeitgeist theory is most promising to me... but to 
really make a case for it, I think you ought to include more examples of 
such from different genres... future thesis there...?
   Thanks for posing a fun set of speculations, though.  Take it easy--


    --Jesse.