TP's Funny Bone

[John Bailey]

One thing Pynchon has certainly gotten right in M&D is the British humour. 
Fully aware as I am of the potential fallacy in allocating a national 
identity to a gag, I still do think that a lot of P's research for this 
novel was in the form of 1970s British film & TV. The setups, punchlines etc 
really sound different to the earlier novels, at least to my ear. Compared 
to VL, in which I find a really Californian tongue, M&D feels like a homage 
to a kind of humour rarely found in products from the US. Not that I'm 
elevating one over another here; to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of either. 
But you gotta laugh.


>From: "Peter Fellows-McCully" <pfm at anam.com>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: TP
>Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 12:33:49 +0100
>
>Something about this most recent sequence of chapters has fed
>a growing suspicion in my mind that the reason we have so little
>actual output (quantity rather than quality, of course) from Mr. P.
>is that he's spending all his time writing the Discworld novels
>of Terry Pratchett. It's been in the back of my mind before, but
>some of the slapstick comedy in these chapters increases the
>suspicion.
>
>Now I come to think of it, M&D sound like some kind of conjoined
>Rincewind. Emerson is definitely "Bloody Stupid Johnson" (the coat)
>and The Royal Society can be nothing other than Unseen University.
>
>Couple this with the initials and I sure I'm on to a winner here.
>
>:)
>
>pfm
>




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