The epigraphs in *GR*

[jbor]

Thanks for the tip, & here it is:

> From: CAESAR at vaxa.clarion.edu (TERRY CAESAR)
> Subject: a mystery solved
> Date: 1 Feb 1996 07:19:10 -0800
>
>
>      My heart flutters, my hand trembles. One of the great minor mysteries of
> GR--and what else is this list about if not loving attention to such things?--
> is whether or not Pynchon made up Von Braun's words at the outset of the book.
> We've discussed the question recently and inconclusively. In a few weeks I'll
> give a paper at the Twentieth Century Lit conference in Louisville where I
> allow the opinion that Pynchon made up the words. But he didn't! I was wrong.
> The proof is before me, in the form of the remarkable volume, The Third Book
> of Words to Live By, ed. by William Nichols (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1962).
>
>      The book consists of a selection of seventy-eight columns from THis Week
> magazine. Same: "On Integrity," by Sammuel Goldwyn, or "'Oh, Those Days of
> Childhood!'" by Grandma Moses. The editor ruminates in his intro. on the lost
> art of inspiration. Among the inspirers is Werner Von Braun, no less, on "Why
> I Belive in Immortality." On p. 120, toward the end, he says exactly what he's
> quoted by Pynchon in GR as saying. Interestingly, though, there's a final
para-
> graph after the first line about nature knowing transformation (mostly
blather)
> and then a final sentence after the bit about the continuity of our spiritual
> existence after death. The final sentence reads thus: "Nothing disappears
with-
> out a trace."
>
>      Much could be written--much will--on why Pynchon chose to omit this last
> sentence. For the moment, I'm still dumbstruck to discover that Pynchon didn't
> make up Von Braun's words. I should say that this Words to Live By volume only
> comes my way courtesy of Joseph Tabbi's new Postmodern Sublime (Cornell, '95).
> Tabbi has an introductory footnote where he mentions Norman Mailer's
collection
> of NASA papers, access to which were given to him by Robert Lucid (great
name!),
> Mailer's biographer. NASA evidentally liked to quote from this volume during
> the first (July, 1969) moon launch. Mailer underlined the first portion of
> Pynchon's quotation in his copy of Words to Live By.
>
>      Still not sure about extinction, but more sure about traces,
>
>                   Terry Caesar


----------
>From: "Basileios Drolias" <Basileios.Drolias at eurodyn.com>
>To: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>, "Dave Monroe" <monroe at mpm.edu>
>Subject: Re: The epigraphs in *GR*
>Date: Wed, Aug 16, 2000, 4:55 PM
>

>
>> .. anybody have a source at hand for that von Braun quote?  Seems to me
> there
>> might actually be one, but, if I ever had one, I sure don't have it now.
> But
>
> you can check the pynchon-l archives three-four years ago. I remember very
> well someone finding the quote in a book.
>
>