RE- Getting it

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	6/5/96
Subject	RE-  Getting it
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

RE:  Getting it

RF Nance wonders what I meant by my statement that David Bowman (in his Pulse
rant) must not "get" Gravity's Rainbow if he thinks that Byron the Bulb and the
harmonica down the toilet are trivial elements of the big book.

Can't and wouldn't even think of taking your bait on this one, Mr. Nance -- even
the Cliff's Notes people haven't tried it yet.

I meant that reading GR teaches you to see things in different, new ways.  The
book flips fairy tales on their heads, turns cartoons into complicated fears and
alchemizes garbage into literature -- and probably vice versa.  I don't pretend
to know what it all means (and certainly not what it all means for anybody other
than myself), but -- I speculated -- if you don't find "The Story of Byron the
Bulb" to be serious stuff, then there's something about the method of GR that
you are missing.

What that method leads you to . . . ?

-- Will Layman