before you know it

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Hi all,

has somebody written on _GR_ as a L.A. novel, among other things?
Maybe it's because I just paid the first visit to Los Angeles that
I haven't paid enough attention to the mailings on Pynchon in 
connection with LA, and I do have the feeling that I have seen 
such mailings.

But it did happen that after throwing myself into Venice for the last
weekend, at some point the moist Monday came, and before I knew it,
I was taken unto the freeways. The car was a Pontiac.

Yes, it included the route from Melrose down Santa Monica Boulevard,
then down the San Diego, and, at "the interchange of the San Diego
and the Santa Monica", westward on the Santa Monica Frwy. (Not too
many freaks around this time.) Next up the Pasadena, then up to the
Hollywood Bowl on the Hollywood Freeway. We did not have the patience
to go as north as the Ventura, nor to go down the "ghetto-suicidal"
Harbor that begins at the interchange of the Pasadena and the Santa
Monica, right?

It was only on the plane in Tuesday when I had time to I think about
the matter. Why does Pynchon mention just these freeways, and why is
the Santa Monica the "freeway for freaks"? I took a look at the map.

Many thoughts came to mind. First, the San Diego, the Santa Monica,
the Pasadena, the Hollywood, and the Ventura form a ring, and quite
a ring, to say the least, having Melrose, the place of the Orpheus 
Theatre, approx. at its center. And it includes many of the Elect 
neighborhoods: Beverly Hills, Westwood, Bel Air, etc. And it includes 
Hollywood, naturally. Significantly, the "ghetto-suicidal" Harbor
is excluded.

And, as odd as it sounds, this closed figure reminds me of the head
of a wolf, with the Hollywood Bowl as its eye. It is about to swallow
Downtown. Of course, it can be one more serpent, too. 

But this not the only combination of the abovementioned freeways; it
only happens that the Elect Manager Zhlubb takes such a route before
the sound of a siren.

We get a new and larger ring if we include the Harbor, following
the Harbor and the San Diego down to their interchange. "One hesitates
to say it", but this time the figure is remarkably like Africa.

And this is where the idea of Santa Monica as a "freeway of freaks"
may prove fruitful. It is an interface between the North and the
South, the South with environs like Inglewood -- between white and
black, etc. And _GR_ is such an interface, too, as many have indicated.
Like the freaks on the Santa Monica, it comes "gibbering in at you from
all sides, swarming in, rolling (its) eyes through the side windows,
playing harmonicas and even *kazoos*, in full repect for the 
Prohibitions", that make "it difficult for you to follow the Manager's
entertaining story" (755).

But the Manager's story looms there as well, and can be interrupted
anytime by something that makes "you reach for the knob of the AM
radio", with "your guts in a spasm."



Heikki

P.S. I'll write soon to all Pynchomanes that I met in America; I just
had to get this written first.