The Ice Storm & GR

[pynchonoid]

There are people around who know this sort of thing,
that's what's maddening, people who could speak
authoritatively about the various versions of the GR
manuscript that come before the published book, and
how Pynchon might have added to or otherwise revised
it after turning it over to Viking.  

--- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:

> For whatever reason this has become more interesting
> since I first posted
> the, admittedly unlikely (?), reference in GR to the
> Watergate plumbers.
> According to the Washington Post timeline Dave M
> posted, the term 'plumbers'
> was first used with reference to the Ellsberg case
> in 1971, which predates
> comfortably Pynchon's delivery of a typescript to
> his publishers in January
> 1972. According to Gerald Howard "the untitled novel
> that Pynchon delivered
> ... is at least 99 percent the book that readers of
> Gravity's Rainbow
> encountered" (Bookforum, June-Sept, 2005, 36),
> although he is unable to
> provide any sound evidence in support. The Watergate
> shit didn't hit the fan
> until 1973, after the publication of GR in February;
> but the news story that
> made Woodstein's reputation was well under way in
> the middle of 1972, and
> would surely have been picked up by any astute
> Nixon-watcher.
> 
> I accept (clumsy/lazy reading the first time) that
> Moody was probably
> referring, not to GR, but to his own novel (I mean,
> as if ...). Nonetheless,
> the media term 'plumbers' might have attracted P's
> attention when he was
> still 'finishing' the version he would hand in to
> his publisher, if only
> because it jumped into the toilet, so to speak.
> Beyond that, there is an
> interesting question, one we cannot answer--how far
> did P continue to write
> and rewrite the novel after January 1972? The OED
> gives a reference for
> 'plumbers' in Time, for August 1972, which probably
> means the term has been
> in circulation for quite a while. I suppose I'm
> thinking of the
> famous/notorious example of Joyce and Ulysses; but
> if you've written
> something like that it might be difficult to 'let it
> go' until you really
> have to (so to speak).
> 
> 
> 
> 


>http://pynchonoid.org
"everything connects"

>http://OnlineJournalist.org

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