AtD - well, whadda ya know ...

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Well, here's my weird theory. In "Goldbug Variations", Richard Powers manages to include Glenn Gould as part of the story without even mentioning his name. The prescence/abscence of Alstaire Crowley in "Gravity's Rainbow" may be more chimerical than Gould's in "Goldbug Variations, but so many of the specifics in the "White Visitation" point in that direction, that you have to factor in one of the biggest occult prescences active during WWII, making the failure to mention him in "GR" somewhat sinister. Somehow (thanks in large part to the "Courier's Tragedy") John Dee occcupies a similar abscence in "The Crying of Lot 49". At least in my mind. 



 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Chris Broderick <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com>
I know what you mean about Lot 49.  I think part of it
has to do with the fact that it's such a short novel,
and the only one of his that has a single, central
 protagonist.  In a way, I feel that what TRP was
trying to do to Oedipa Maas in Lot 49 is what he tries
to do with the reader in Gravity's Rainbow, to
gradually strip away all certainties about connections
between things, people, ideas, etc.  Maybe I'm just
overly enchanted with the line (I'm madly
paraphrasing, because my copy of lot 49 has been lent,
never to be seen again...) where Oedipa is walking
under the indifferent stars.  It's a good & healthy
point for an atheist like myself to begin.  Isn't it?