VLVL2 warm-up: Dedication

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 "For my mother and father"

 in regard of pynchon's dedications it might make sense to distinguish, in terms 
 of 'age' or 'generation', between Horizontal and Vertical dedications. 

 in the case of vineland - the novel's last word is "home" - we have a vertical 
 dedication to tom's parents: while this would have looked at least 'uncool' in 
 pynchon's former novels it fits well to this book that is focussing much more 
 on family relations than the other four or five. 

 the horizontal dedication of gravity's rainbow says "For Richard Farina", the  
 dead friend who also was at times for pynchon kinda artistic twin brother. in  
 the introduction of been down so long it looks like up to me trp writes:  
 "sometimes at college we also succeeded in getting on the same literary  
 wavelength. we showed up once at a party, not a masquerade party, in disguise - 
 he as hemmingway, i as scott fitzgerald, each of us aware that the other had 
 been through a phase of enthusiasm for his respective author". an artistic  
 male couple (as theweleit would put this), all things still possible, and 
 tender was the night.       

 while v & col 49 bear no dedication it's perhaps possible to speak of a hidden 
 one in slow learner. its intro's last sentence goes like this: "but as we all 
 know, rock 'n' roll will never die, and education too, as Henry Adams always  
 sez, keeps going on forever". a vertical dedication to henry adams would make  
 sense here since pynchon's early work is, as everybody knows, heavily  
 influenced by adams. is there any work of art more 'adamsianic' than v? 

 interesting that mason & dixon  - "For Melanie, and for Jackson" - has both 
 types of dedication, a  horizontal (to pynchon's wife) and a vertical (to his 
 son) one. so there are two different dedications, separated by a comma. 
 vineland's dedication, in its purely vertical nature, knows no comma and only  
 one "for". all i have to say today -- 

 any ideas about the dedication of the forthcoming hilbert-novel?


KFL +