Rushdie/Pynchon

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	10/22/96
Subject	Rushdie/Pynchon
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List

Rushdie/Pynchon

For those interested in the Pynchon/ Rushdie connection, I strongly recommend
you read the piece Rushdie did for "The New Yorker" on May 11, 1992 in their
"Critic At Large" column.  The essay is called "Out of Kansas," and it is about
Rushdie's analysis of and personal reaction to the classic 1939 MGM "Wizard of
Oz."  While Rushdie never writes about Pynchon in this essay, he reads the
classic American children's story as a central story (or kind of "myth") about
our culture and finds in "Oz" some subversive, unsettling and frightening
elements that prove pretty definitively (for me, anyway) that the "There's no
place like home" ending is the movie's essential false note.  This take on a
children's story -- and "Oz" in particular -- is reminiscent of "Gravity's
Rainbow."  I think it's a marvelous essay, but then I'd rank "Midnight's
Children" very near the top of my personal list.

-- Will Layman