Cartography

[jporter]

>Dear list,
>
>I hate to break it to you, but there has already been a film made of
>Gravity's Rainbow. It's called Map of the Human Heart, and it's directed by a
>young Oceanian named Vincent Ward, who also made a terrific movie called The
>Navigator. It's very good, I think, and occasionally brilliant, and I
>encourage you all to go out and rent it and see if I'm wrong. I am, by the
>way, but not by much.
>
>While I've got you, the key text for me in any discussion of Pynchon and
>baseball is the one on p. 75 of Vineland that erased all my early doubts and
>let me know that TRP was truly back, viz.:
>
>Her father, Jess Traverse, trying to organize loggers in Vineland, Humboldt,
>and Del Norte, had suffered an accident arranged by one Crocker "Bud"
>Scantling for the Employers' Association, in plain sight of enough people
>who'd get the message, at a local ball game, where he was playing center
>field. The tree, one of a stand of old redwoods just beyond the fence, had
>been cut in advance almost all the way through. Nobody in the stands heard
>saw strokes, wedges being knocked loose ... nobody could believe, when it
>began to register, the slow creaking detachment from the lives around it as
>the tree began its slow descent. Voices found at last only reached Jess in
>time for him to dive out of the way, to save his life but not his mobility,
>as the redwood fell across his legs, crushing them, driving half of him into
>the earth....
>
>Pardon me while I go give up writing completely.
>
>Love
>David

My choice for the screenplay and direction of Vineland: John Sayles

jp