Bowman/Pulse

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	6/3/96
Subject	Bowman/Pulse
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Bowman/Pulse

I read David Bowman's "Let the Dog Drive" a year or so ago, and I thought it was
very funny and very wonderful, even kinda Pynchonesque in the lighter, "Lot 49"
kind of way that is reasonably common.  Original and really funny, it managed
references to Emily Dickenson and Clifford Brown without seeming heavy but was
hardly without its own pop cultural connections.  I recommended it to people,
even bought somebody a copy.

Now, this piece in PULSE.  It had to be partly a joke because we all know that
Pynchon didn't write "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Recognitions" and I don't
anyone's ever even semi-seriously credited TRP with authoring Dylan lyrics --
except that it isn't written like a joke at all.  Bowman's error about "the
light-bulb down the toilet" seems not like some funny intentional mistake but,
well, a real error.  And the error of finding either of these two passages (the
harmonica down the toilet or "The Story of Byron the Bulb") to be trivial seems
like exactly the kind of error you would make if you absolutely DIDN"T GET
Gravity's Rainbow at all.

Is Bowman making fun (with Sokolesque subtlety?) of US, the fans, the people who
think that Pynchon is responsible for anything and everything that we otherwise
like, running out and buying the Lotion album based on TRP alone?

But here's the key element.  When your publishing essays in the on-line version
of a record store's give-away magazine even though you're a published novelist,
wouldn't you be kinda sensitive about the seriousness of criticizing a published
novelist for interviewing rock bands in magazines?  I don't mean that Bowman is
completely wrong in what he wrote about the value of the Pynchon's recent career
as a journalist, just that -- given the errors and obvious misstatements in the
essay -- Bowman's gotta know that his opinion is compromised all over the place.
 So: joke or no joke? 

- Will Layman