Pynchon-Gibson Connection

[J.D. P. Lafrance]

   I found those Gibson interview quotes from an excellent anthology called,
"Storming the Reality Studio" which is edited by L. McCaffery, but I will
definitely check out that Mississippi Review homepage....

   Regarding Tom Maddox's bit of "rather silly (and not unPynchonian, to coin an
Orwellism) bit of shtick" I dug up an old interview between William Gibson and
Timothy Leary and they go on a bit about Pynchon which is fascinating... Gibson
describes Gravity's Rainbow as an encyclopedic novel that "stopped my life cold
for three months. My university career went to pot, I just sort of laid around
and read this thing." They also mention something about an article on Pynchon in
Esquire (anybody know anything about this?) and Gibson comments, "this guy
[Pynchon] makes Salinger look like Boy George. The levels of secrecy that
surround this man. I know a man in Vancouver who claims to have washed a sinkful
of dishes at a Christmas party with Pynchon. Not the kind of guy who would make
up a story." To which Leary replies that he heard several stories that Pynchon
wrote Gravity's Rainbow down at Huntington Beach "and he would wake up - he was
taking a lot of LSD - and he'd wake up the next morning and reread what he'd
written and he didn't even remember what he'd been writing about."

bfn,
JDL