RE> before you know it

[ChrisO at fieldschool.com]

RE> before you know it
3/7/96
To Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>, pynchon-l at sfu.ca


Lovely dispatch - by the by:

certainly someone has put together the "Pynchon's band" rap
of the last weeks and this LA thinking and has come back to
Steely Dan as - oh, I don't know, something that rides the
same spiritual Suzuki as Himself with the same guts in a
spasm AM station blaring.
Turn that jungle music down,
Just until we're out of town...

chris o.

--------------------------------------
Date: 3/7/96 11:06 AM
To: ChrisO
From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at s


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.   
     


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Subject:  before you know it
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