Editing GR

[Orlowsky at aol.com]

Someone asked whether GR had been edited or simply published as is.  I posted
something about this once before, but here are the original sources for my
post a year or two or three ago that GR had been drastically edited by Faith
Sale.

"[Harrison] Starr said he didn't know much, but if I wanted to know more I
should call up Pynchon's friends, Kirkpatrick and Faith Sale. Then Starr told
me that Faith Sale had edited Gravity's Rainbow down from about 2000
manuscript pages to 1200. . . . So last night, after brooding about it for 48
hours, I rang up Kirkpatrick Sale. I thanked him for his help on the Farina
piece, and said that I had another matter to discuss. I asked him if his
wife, Faith, edited Gravity's Rainbow in the summer of 1972. Yes. . . . I
asked him if his wife edited The Crying of Lot 49 in 1966. He said he
couldn't remember. I asked him if his wife edited V. in 1963. He said he
couldn't remember. I asked him if he'd helped with the editing. No."
--John Calvin Batchelor, The Ghost of Richard Farina, Soho Weekly News, April
28, 1977.

"Faith and Kirkpatrick Sale are one of those devastatingly bright young New
York couples. Lovely house, and a place in the country. Undoubtedly perfect
children. A story about them in People magazine. He published a highly
praised book about the rise of the Southern Rim, she was the copy editor for
Gravity's Rainbow. . . . Faith Sale had told me that she and Pynchon had
argued, she had mentioned a fight about Pynchon's use of the word "moire" as
a verb, a quirky thing he does an unusual number of times in Gravity's
Rainbow."
--Robert Cooke Goolrick, Pieces of Pynchon, New Times, October 13, 1978.

To another question, Siegel is indeed the only primary source I've ever seen
who connects Pynchon and Brian Wilson.

Bob