The Book

[Jane Grant]

 I recall that Simpsons episode, Doug! What a classic. Though it's probably exactly what would happen with The Book, I think Neil's idea is fucking brilliant. Why the hell not chip in and buy that proof? What a great X-mas gift to The List! With all the Leftist rhetoric hereabouts and those not infrequent laudatory refs to der Fuhrer's Putz Alex Cockburn, ownership should not be an issue. I suggest some selfless revolutionary soul volunteer (not me!) to start a website called, what else, The Book where the manuscript would be available for all Pynchon scholars to study at their mordant, slothful leisure. Hell, if the Net was around during Dubya Dubya Two, that's what Pointsman, Spectro, etalia would have done! I think whoever volunteers to run The Book site should optically scan the manuscript in with the corresponding published page on the same screen for comparison. Imagine the mystical insights that will accure like wondrous pink coral from our scrutiny of these mysterious changes in M&D. What's more, if we don't buy it, some Japanese zillionaire or Bill Gates'll get it instead and hide it away with the Popish Trystero mss. in their case of sugared glass deep in the Hollow Earth next to Rembrandt's portrait of Lola Montez. Anyone who's seen Tim O'Brien's radically different versions of In the Lake of the Woods knows how enlightening comparing proof to published version can be. As another example, I've seen a proof copy of William Gaddis' boring novel A Frolic of His Own and the epigram is different! How about that? WRT M&D, I heard substantial copy editing was required, which makes you wonder just what the hell Pynchon was doing for eighteen years besides Vineland and which makes the List's study of this variant proof an absolute requirement. 
  After The Book has been widely disseminated on the Net, I propose we make a gift of the actual manuscript to Dr. John Krafft. 
  This is real Outlaw shit people! Pynch would approve, I think. If not, who cares.
  Great suggestion, Neil! Somebody designate a Soupy Sales and start sending $$$. Let's get that mss. and get more empowered even than Madonna! That's what I say...

Jane

On Mon, 7 Dec 1998 18:24:08    Doug Millison wrote:
>Wasn't there a The Simpsons episode about Bart and a couple of his friends
>getting together to buy a rare comic book?  That ended with the comic book
>ripped apart -- tugged in as many directions as there were partners in the
>purchase -- in the rain? Perhaps I'm hallucinating again. ;-)
>-Doug
>
>At 6:12 PM -0800 12/7/98, Neil Conaty wrote:
>>P-listers! I suggest we get together and buy this copy.
>
>


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