Pynchon's Achievment (was GR the movie)

[John Boylan]

  Here's the structure of a typical GR scene : 1.) novelistic present,
2.) flashback, 3.) digression within the flashback, 4.) flashback within
the digression within the flashback, 5.) back to novelistic present, 6.)
"dolly" movement of the visual field as we pull back and leave behind
the original setting, describing the route as we arrive at 7.) new setting
with new characters where, when the dramatic momentum of the sequence is
completed, the visual field swivels to 8.) image, where we have a page
of trance vision.
  Now, to continue the exercise in Pynchon appreciation of imagining a
hypothetical GR movie, Tarkovsky would be my choice (if he were still

among the living, of course) to manage the structure of such a scene --
but what about the sly comedy (Kubrick?), the ghostly kinkiness of the
atmosphere, the texture (Herzog?)?
   GR is among other things a tour de fource of tone. What about the
R. Crumbish sequences of irreal ferocious farce? The Tex Avery-on-acid
bits? No movie director, past or present, has Pynchon's enormous range
of effect.

                                                   --John Boylan