The Ice Storm & GR

[Paul Mackin]

On Aug 31, 2006, at 1:33 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> I waffled on this earlier, but, while on the one hand,
> Pynchon had the better part of a year betwixt the
> scandal's emergence and the publication of GR, he was
> clearly not a fan nearly a decade earlier, writing of
> Sick Dick and The Volkswagens and Peter Pinguid (cf.
> Slick Dick) in The Crying of Lot 49.  It was mentioned
> that he'd changed the epigraph to Pt. IV to that
> Nixon, uh, quote.  Source on that?  Reliable?  At any
> rate, I'm still not sure these anything SPECIFICALLY
> Watergatian, but if anyone spots anything, well ...
>
> --- John Carvill <JCarvill at algsoftware.com> wrote:
>>
>> That's good. But I think I'd have to agree with
>> Paul M that GR was probably published too early for
>> Watergate to have been incorporated....



Just to follow up I looked up the  date on which one of the   
burglars, John McCord, hoping to get a lighter sentence,  famously  
informed Judge John Sirica that the other defendants had pleaded  
guilty under duress--that they  had committed perjury  and that  
others were involved in the break-in. He  claimed  that thy lied at  
the urging of John Dean, counsel  to the President, and John  
Mitchell, the  Attorney-General. The date was March 19, 1973. This  
was effectively the start of "Watergate" as the straw that broke  
Nixon's back. Before that nobody saw the  burglary as having much  
significance. It had hardly figured at all in the '72 reelection  
campaign, for example.

So Pynchon might have had a short window of opportunity to refer  
directly or indirectly to "Watergate" but it would have been very  
slight. (depending on the date of publication, which I haven't looked  
up yetP

Unless of course he could see into the  future.