NY Times Magazine Reference

[JEShirk at aol.com]

Extract from article "High is Low," by Ann Douglas, Sep 29, 1996 NYTimes
Magazine, p. 178, answering the question "what works created in the late 20th
century will still be discussed, viewed, read and cherished 100 years from
now?  The New York Times Magazine asked experts in various disciplines to
speculate.  Here are their answers."

"Luc Sante
Author

'Gravity's Rainbow,'
Thomas Pynchon, 1973

Just as Homer was vital through the Dark Ages not just for his poetry but
because his epics served as encyclopedias of how life had once been lived,
instructing benighted readers on how to conduct wedding feasts or equip
sailing ships, so 'Gravity's Rainbow' will be the totem of a sort of cargo
cult.  Readers of the future, starved and all but cretinized by merchandising
and tehcnology and religion and entertainment, figuratively if not literally
living in caves, will dissect it for clues, refer to like an almanac, plan
their lives on its basis, imagine they could reconstruct the 20th century
from its pages."

Yep, sounds like me.

Jim Shirk