Various rants

[Shirley Lim]

First, the Harvey Pekar review (once again at 
http://www.auschron.com:80/current/books.pynchon.html). It's rilly worth
checking out, if only to see just how venomous some foax can get about
Pynchon. He goes after a whole bunch of straw men: Pynchon as the
encyclopedia, Pynchon as the creator of all po-mo, Pynchon as impossible
to understand, etc. It's a nice how to manual on what things not to judge
TRP on, as he of course leaves out (as all too often do the other, more
positive reviewers) the idea of Pynchon as a damn fine writer. Ah well, it
doesn't sound like he even tried to read it...

Meanwhile The Times is plastering Tom's pic everywhere. Don't you love how
the media feeds off itself, picking up stories from other media sources
until every outlet carries the same news? I can just picture some
flustered editor screaming at his staff "They beat us to the Pynchon
story! Do you know what this will do to our street cred!?" C'mon, the
man's been 'round for 60 years, and he's not headed anywhere. Are they
gonna have a 200,000 limited edition run of the paper so they're sure all
the Pynchon fans who picked up M&D will buy a copy? Geez..

The media pick of the day is "The spider's stratigem" a great flick by
Bertolluchi (sp? [who are we kidding, it should be "sp!"]) based on a
Borghes story (The theme of the traitor and the hero) which is complicated
and paranoic enuf to merit a mention. I feel real blicero parallels in the
hero who the story revolves around.

And finally, some actual TRP stuff. Finally finished my latest GR re-read,
and I was just blown away by the ending again. The whole rocket launch
sequence had me rilly rilly turned on. I'm trying hard to pinpoint whether
Blicero succeeds or fails. He gets the rocket off, but does he get his
rocks off, and if so, is it ultimately satisfying. I used to think that
each CATCH was the film running out, but it's starting to feel more like
they're in Gottfreid's head. In any case, I love the acceleration that
they give the writing. Oh yeah. If Zhlubb (Nixon) has the shroud death
wish, equating him with gottfried, then who is his Blicero? Is Zhlubb then
crashing into his own theatre? Of course, as Nixon, his theatre is the
USA... Well, more unanswered questions. Should come as a surprise to
no-one.

	Gershom Bazerman (from the wrong address)

P.S. I'm working(kinda) on the tarot thing I promised. Honest (kinda) to
Judas.