VLVL2 (15): "a story of transcendent courage"

[joeallonby]

on 5/28/04 11:29 AM, dedalus204 at comcast.net at dedalus204 at comcast.net wrote:
>  Besides Sidney Poitier as K.C. Jones,
> there was Paul McCartney, in his first acting role, as Kevin McHale, with Sean
> Penn as Larry Bird.  On the Laker side were Lou Gossett, Jr., as Kareem
> Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Douglas as Pat Riley, and Jack Nicholson as himself."
> 

> 
> Additionally, as we've seen throughout the novel Pynchon places actors in the
> roles of real peoples' life stories (the juxtaposition of low/high often being
> the gag), and I wonder if the gag is here the same, or perhaps slightly
> different.  Since professional athletes frequently convey a certain "persona"
> that makes them unique to the team (Dennis Rodman's "bad boy," I suppose), I
> wonder if the author has chosen actors whose (typical) roles don't somehow
> relate to the athletes' roles in this particular context (whether parallel or
> converse).
> 
> If so, this perhaps adds some dimension to the gag.
> 
> 
Low/high? That's in the gag. Liverpudlian McCartney is about 5'10".
Minnesotan Kevin McHale is 6'10" with a 7'4" armspan.