GR/Trainspotting

[CLAY JONATHAN D]

> From:          RICHARD_WILSON at udlp.com
> Date:          Mon, 11 Jan 1999 11:20:50 -0600
> To:            pynchon-l at waste.org, Joseph Silber <zoseph at jps.net>
> Subject:       Re: GR/Trainspotting

> Joseph Silber <zoseph at jps.net> writes:
> > if anyone has noticed the similarity between the scene in which Slothrop 
> > dives for his harmonica (p. 72ff in the Bantam mass market edition of 
> > 1974 or 75) and that in Trainspotting in which Renton dives for his lost 
> > suppositories
> my first thought on seeing that scene in the film was "gee, aren't they 
> plagurizing pynchon or something?"). but it occurred to me that the scene 
> might not have been in the original novel (though i think welsh did the 
> sceenplay as well as the novel). i keep meaning to check the novel but alas keep
> managing to forget....
> 
> > (p. 26, but handled much more graphically in the movie)?
> i'd say that the description of slothrop's journey down the sewer and all the 
> 'red river valley' stuff is considerably more graphic in detail than a written 
> description of the scene in trainspotting would be (a'la "junky dives down 
> toilet to retrieve defecated suppositories, emerges into beautiful blue lagoon, 
> swims to ocean floor, digs through sand, finds suppositories 'white shiny and 
> new', and swims to surface to reemerge from the worst toilet in scotland"). just
> imagine what the scene in GR would be like if in film...
> 
> --rwilson
> 
> "perhaps my brains have turned to sand" -- eno
>
If memory serves, the scene in *Trainspotting* the novel is very 
different from the one in the film, in that there's no blue lagoon or 
any of that sort of thing. It's much more naturalistic in fact, with 
Renton simply paddling in toilet water and delving through shit etc..
Yours

"Bewildering spring, and by the Auvezere
Poppies and day's eyes in the green email
Rose over us"      
              "Near Perigord", Ezra Pound

Jon Clay - [cj833 at greenwich.ac.uk]