GRGR Is it fun? / Gerontion / Wingstroke / GR film - Slothrop / 1,5 gleanings

[Michael Bailey]

There was an article in Rolling Stone by a guy who was friends with
Owsley (the article was years and years ago, '82 maybe) -- Owsley was
often giving him new drugs to try.  The author said he would always
ask himself 2 questions: "am I high?" and "Is it fun?"

Looking at Gravity's Rainbow and reminiscing about the various times
I've read it (or "in it", for not always have I read it sequentially
beginning to end) I know that it is potent stuff.  Is it fun?

Abraham Lincoln, I've read, reviewed a book by saying "If this is the
sort of thing you like, you'll like this."  I think that Pynchon knew
what he was doing when he wrote it (Umphrey's Law, again) - it can be
read superficially for pleasure, but yet it rewards deeper study.  My
sister, who worked for awhile in the book trade, told me people
referred to it as a "GUB" or great unread bestseller, so there is a
3rd market as well, though that's driven mostly by the people who
design the cover, advertise the book, and by the 1st 2 markets
(recreational readers who enjoy it and recommend it, and professors
who assign it)

It's fun.   When it seems to appeal to my baser instincts, there is
always something in the prose to develop my conscience.  When it seems
impenetrable, that is where I need to do some research.   Just when I
think I have it nailed, some detail that has escaped me tweaks me,
engendering a new hypothesis.   (Example: the 4 parts, do they
correspond to the 4 Gospels, and/or to the 4-fold carboniferous bond,
the 4 elements - the reference to structure, VERY strong in 1,2 - "not
often death is told so clearly to fuck off"   - there's got to be lots
of structure in the book, I was going 4-happy a couple weeks ago)
As one of my English Lit professors told the class about Yeats, "This
is great stuff!"

I totally can't remember where I read this undoubtedly fictional
anecdote (a Neal Stephenson book, maybe?): it seems an American flyer
during WWII crashed in Okinawa or someplace in the Far East, and the
indigenous peoples who found his body wanted to bury him properly.  So
they found in the cockpit a copy of Finnegans Wake, and gave him a
burial according to that, with all the wordplay.  I hope to never be
in such a circumstance, but there are some books that are touchstones:
 maybe a Bible, maybe for some, Knight's Modern Seamanship (there was
a fellow, one of my superiors, named Kurtz, at my job who - for real -
had a copy of that in his office), possibly Gravity's Rainbow...just
musing here

Browsing back through the archive about 3 weeks ago, I found a posting
(by Andrew Dinn, but I can't locate it - i've been looking for an
hour, reading some more posts while at it, and remembering good parts
from the '90s) that made 2 great points:
"like Gaddis, a lot depends on what you bring to it" (or words to that
effect)  --
and the other point was
ideally "read all Pynchon's books, stories, essays, and blurbs.  Then
read all the books he specifically mentions by name" and there was
more, recommending about a 10 year program, and then another 10 years
on Gaddis.  Then he referred to that movie that Osbie Feel made  (-:
That would be fun - reader's greed
-------------------
Gerontion - Brigadier Pudding?
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Wingstroke - projecting Wingstroke onto GR: the "revels of Pan" -
Slothrop's adventures ///  when the skis cross, and the narrator
falls, that is a V, but round it out and it's an arc

----- GR film
for Slothrop, I'd think about getting the guy who played Sam in Lord
of the Rings

--------------------
1,5
Latakia - apparently this is fine tobacco, cured over a camel-dung
fire - the camels ate lots of herbs so the smoke was fragrant (still
made, but cured over burning herbs instead) http://latakia.dyndns.org/
Reinforces the notion of wealth, but also, the money/shit connection

Snoxall's - sounds like something the Adenoid would emit
Relationship between Snoxall's / White Visitation / PISCES ???

-----------
I think I got rid of the gunk by going to a text format (instead of
rich formatting)

----
hope it's ok to spend a few more days on 1,5
i can't think of many more things i would like better than to be
interrupted by a new TRP;  this GRGR could take years, but someone
said so could the editing - I read that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was
Mr Pynchon's editor for awhile, wouldn't it be something to edit a TRP
book WOW MOM.  LIke that guy that edited Thomas Wolfe, except that the
process would probably differ in many ways - however, when I read the
"mouth-tripping" time, wasn't there something in Wolfe like that:
"green beans, for the healthy balance of the diet" in Look Homeward,
Angel? or was it "You Can't Go Home Again"?  Where he's with a
socialite and driving thru the night on an old (then new) 2-lane
highway they stop at her country home or something?  And the cook
whomps up a meal, some exciting mashed potatoes...i forget how it
goes, good stuff tho

bis morgen,
Mikel Bailey
"I've always had enough freedom to do the things I really needed to do."
- Kenneth Rexroth (inexact quote, from his (offered as fiction, with a
frame tale of telling his daughter about his life) autobio)