Farnina and Pynchon

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

I'll fess up--I posted the observation that the film version of BEEN DOWN sucks.

Andrew Dinn also notes:
"Why is he                     
called Gnossos?  Because he's so hip to everything? It's not that
Farina has the themes but not the style. He only uses the hip culture
to show off...  hip culture. Only it doesn't look hip any more just
crass. Pynchon ties popular culture, drugs etc into everything else -
this is `a progressive knotting into', remember.
 
[And before anyone gets too suspicious - what with my middle name
being Ned and all - I'll just state up front. Knots are knots. You
can't believe or disbelieve in them (no matter how hard you try). Most
of the time you rely on them holding. Occasionally you have to try to
unravel them.]"

It's been a while since I hit the book, but I recall an affinity of style and
theme between BEEN DOWN and P's early short stories.  Gnossis struck me at the
time as similar in pretentiousness to the guy in "Mercy and Mortality in Vienna"The knotting point is well-made.

On Porky and the anarchist, recall that this was not original with Pynchon, but
that he appropriated the image from the Tex Avery Warner Bros. cartoon, "The
Blowout."  What he does with the image is, of course, another matter!

Don Larsson, Mankato State U. (MN)