vineland and lot 49

[Paul DiFilippo]

The debate about relative merits of various P. titles reminds
me somehow of the bumpersticker, "A bad day of fishing is better
than a good day of work."  Better _any_ Pynchon than most 
of his contemporaries.
Here's a curiosity with ties to _Lot 49_:
I was browsing in a used bookstore recently (always a fruitful,
synergistic setting) when I picked up _Isaac Asimov presents the
best Fantasy of the 19th Century_ (Beaufort Books, 1982).  The 
Table of Contents listed Conan Doyle's story "Lot No. 249."
Well.  To say I was stupefied is to understate it considerably.  I
snatched up the volume and rushed home to read the piece.
I"d love to report that it was the secret template for P.'s _49_
but no such luck.  It's a scare story about an Oxford student
who keeps an Egyptian mummy in his room and possesses the secret
of animating it to carry forth his nefarious bidding.
And yet:  consider this sentence from the first page, which could
stand as an epigram to any (or all) of P.'s books:
"Yet when we think how narrow and how devious this path of Nature
is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science,
and how from the darkness which girds it round great and
terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a
bold and confident man who will put a limit to the strange
bypaths into which the human spirit may wander."
Chances P. once saw this story and remembered the title:
approaching 100%.  Chances he took anything from it:  aproaching
0%.
Paul

--
Paul Di Filippo/2 Poplar St./Providence, RI 02906/401-751-0139
"Those who can, screw; those who can't, preach. Those who can't
preach, preach preaching."