GR party

[Lindsay Smith]

>I'm thinking of having a party to celebrate 23 years of The Book. So far
>I've come up with the idea of having little toy rockets lying about &
>featuring refreshments that have bananas as a primary ingredient.
>


Great idea, I'm in Seattle, let me know if this comes to pass.

I do believe that an essential refreshments would be hashish.  I myself
haven't seen of that particular drug in perhaps twenty years, haven't
looked either but I wasn't looking that hard when I saw it back then.

On a somewhat diferent note I'm a lurker finally joining into the fray.  I
first heard of Pynchon from my freshman collge English teacher who
recommended GR back in '73.  It took me until '79 to actually read the
book.  I read the first 700 or so pages in a week then hit a brick wall.  I
finally read the last ten pages, the ten pages before that and so on till I
had at least read all of it.  Didn't make a hell of a lot of sense that way
but I was so fascinated by the book that I was determined to finish it.
Last time I read GR it had coalesced sufficiently till I felt comfortable
reading that last section.  That comfort in its own way was slightly
off-putting.  There was the elment of a loss of specialness, a feeling of
accomplishment and the minor thread of "If this makes sense, I'm probably
in trouble".

Still GR is my favorite travel book of all time.  Waiting for a Bimo in the
Indonesian drizzle, open it to most any page and there you
are..............

>
>Lindsay