GRGR: dogs

[rj]

doug writes:
> 
> I offer these correspondences for fun, in no way pretending to be
> uncovering anything definitive. I'm not schooled in the relationship that
> might exist between _The White Goddess_ and GR, and I'm certainly not a
> fluent interpreter of Graves' work; I have heard Graves' book called a
> source for TRP's fiction. I'd be surprised if some Pynchon scholar has not
> already traced out the relevant links between GR and TWG, and placed them
> in their proper context -- if somebody knows of and cares to point me to
> such a resource, thanks in advance. Maybe I'm just barking up the wrong
> tree.
> 

Judith Chambers (_Thomas Pynchon_, Twayne, 1992) makes quite a bit of
the connection between Graves, and _The White Goddess_ in particular,
but in reference to _V._ and _Lot 49_ more than _GR_. And, as it is a
major source for Gaddis's _The Recognitions_ too, it may be one of the
common reference points which has lead many subsequent critics and
readers to compare the two American novelists, even to the point of
claiming that they were one and the same person. I think Doug's
discovery is pretty sound, though, particularly in light of those dogs,
"engineered and lethal" which guard the gates as psychopomps outside
what is soon to become the Archangel Pointsman's ghastly domain.

Thanks Doug.

best