What hooked me on Pynchon...

Meg Larson mgl at svsu.edu
Sun Jul 27 19:43:48 CDT 1997


Gary Thompson hooked me on Pynch, pure and simple.  If he hadn't assigned
_GR_, well, draw yer own conclusions.
For me, what hooked me re The Book: the Rocket Limericks and the Story of
Byron the Bulb.  For your consideration:

"Byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pattern.  He learns how
to make contact with other kinds of electric appliances, in homes, in
factories and out in the streets.  Each has something to tell him . . .
Someday, he will know everything, and still be as impotent as before.  His
youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in the world seem impossible
now--the Grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are
more than enough traitors out on the line.  Prophets traditionally don't
last long--they are killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to
make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back.  But on Byron
has been visited an even better fate.  He is condemned to go on forever,
knowing the truth and powerless to change anything.  No longer will he have
to seek to get off the wheel.  His anger and frustration will grow without
limit, and he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it . . . "
(655).

This is, mais oui, our dear Tyrone, n'est-ce pas?  Part of his
fragmentation is due to his loss of interest in his quest, and the fact
that, the more he learns the less it matters.  Slothrop was able to move
around in the world of the Preterite because he was one of them, but as he
acquired more info about his quest, he lost interest and lost his
invisibility, or his insularity, perhaps?  When I was struggling mightily
to make sense of _GR_, this passage finally brought it home, or at least
shed some light on Slothrop.
To pay Doc T back, I hipped him to the pynchon-l--nice of me, huh???

Meg
----------
> From: Gary L. Thompson <glt at svsu.edu>
> To: pynchon-l at WASTE <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Subject: Re: What hooked me on Pynchon...
> Date: Friday, July 25, 1997 11:07 PM
> 
I had to snip a long, very well-written post re: Pynch's musical moments.



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