Pynchon mentions

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/story/6010107p-6966508c.html>

Sacramento Bee
One captivating 'Wife' at B Street
By Marcus Crowder -- Bee Theater Critic
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Tuesday, January 28, 2003

[...] The honest, dark edge to Busch's humor makes
"The Tale of the Allergist's Wife" something much more
than the generalized Broadway comedy it could easily
be. The literate script drops comical references to
artists from Thomas Pynchon to Schnitzler, Rilke,
Fassbinder and Hesse. Busch takes us inside this
specific milieu, finding universal humanity and
abundant humor, without demeaning the people. [...] 


<http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20030128tony0128p5.asp>

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Tuesday, January 28, 2003

War: Nasty leftover from an overactive national libido


The front page of yesterday's USA Today carried an
intriguing story and headline: "Some troops freeze
sperm before deploying." The subhead was even more
sublime in its absurdity: "Soldiers fear loss of
fertility, not death."

Hmmm. This is definitely not our grandpa's military. I
don't know how I feel about a volunteer army that's
had the fear of death so efficiently bred out of it,
but obsessing over how to maintain the health and
welfare of the "family jewels" while the bombs are
bursting over Baghdad seems a bit narcissistic, even
by the dismal standards of postmodern warfare.

It also brings new meaning to the old military
admonition to suck it up. There was a time when
surviving a war, including mosquito-infested
imperialist romps like Panama and Grenada, took
precedence over a serviceman's natural desire to
perpetuate the species.

But times, as they say, have changed. Along with
drawing up one's last will and testament before
shipping out for war, making a timely deposit at a
cryonics laboratory has become de rigueur. Servicemen
concerned about the effects of exposure to uranium
shell casings and other war-related toxins have a good
reason to feel anxious about their ability to make
babies in the future. 

But as concerned as a reported 80 or so American
servicemen are about such things, there probably won't
be too many Iraqi cryonics labs left after our cruise
missiles reduce the world's oldest civilization to
atoms and dust. And, it probably goes without saying
that that wily Saddam smuggled his sperm to safer
climes months ago.

The strangeness of this story sounded familiar. I
never made it through "Gravity's Rainbow," Thomas
Pynchon's tragicomic novel about World War II, but I
understand that it makes explicit links between the
worship and preservation of the phallus, national
virility during the V-2 rocket attacks on London and
the fine art of human destructiveness. [...] 


-Doug




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<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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