Suite Fransaise - Pynchon / GR

[bekah]

Sorry if this has been posted before:

I'm reading Suite Francaise,  a WWII work, in every sense of the 
term,  by Irène Némirovsky.   I looked up some info and found a 
little reference to GR  in a New York Times review by Paul Gray. 
<http://tinyurl.com/qtyfj>


"Storm in June," the first novella of "Suite Française," opens as 
German artillery thunders on the outskirts of Paris and those 
residents who have trouble sleeping in the unusually warm weather 
hear the sound of an air-raid siren: "To them it began as a long 
breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn't long before 
its wailing filled the sky." (Thomas Pynchon also hadn't heard of 
"Suite Française" while he was writing "Gravity's Rainbow," but 
compare his opening sentence, set in London, a few years later, same 
war: "A screaming comes across the sky.") The bombardment resumes: "A 
shell was fired, now so close to Paris that from the top of every 
monument birds rose into the sky. Great black birds, rarely seen at 
other times, stretched out their pink-tinged wings." With the utmost 
narrative economy, sharp, scattered images coalesce into an 
atmosphere of dread.

*****
Just thought I'd mention it.

Bekah
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