Tommaso Pincio on Thomas Pynchon and Xmas

[Ya Sam]

Sorry if posted before.

Of course you know about the erratic Italian writer who took a pseudonym 
'Tommas Pincio [pronounced Pyncho I guess]. Just by accident I stumbled 
across his article on the role of Christmas in Pynchon's oeuvre. The article 
is quite interesting. It is called 'Tra Thomas Pynchon e il Natale i conti 
non tornano', I'm afraid I might be wrong, but it might mean something like 
'The accounts between Thomas Pynchon and Christmas are not settled". He 
writes that the theme of Christmas runs through the works of Pynchon, 
especially in GR. He gives some background info on Pynchon, and referring to 
Nabokov who used to 'remind' that the two 'fundamental texts' on the table 
of Joyce while writing Ulysses were a Dublin guidebook and the daily Evening 
Telegraph of June 16 1904, he says that in order to find bearings in the 
'monumental labyrinth' of GR it is necessary to get the respective map of 
London and the Times between December 18 and December 26, 1944. Then he sort 
of compares Joyce's Dublin and Pynchon's London. He then focuses on 
Christmas symbolism of the novel, dwelling some on the relationships between 
Jessica and Roger Mexico. Maybe that's my perception, but some Italian 
sentences sound really cool like 'L'arcobaleno della gravita si disperde in 
un dedalo di temi' 'Gravity's Rainbow disperses itself into a maze of 
themes'. Or this one:

"Il cupo paesaggio della Londra devastata da bombe che piovono dal cielo 
come stelle comete sembra uno schiaffo al Natale e alla possibilità di 
speranza e salvezza che questa festa annuncia"

"The bleak landscape of London devastated by bombs that rain down from the 
sky like comets seems to be a slap in the face of Christmas and to the 
possibity of hope and salvation announced by this festival"

Sorry for the sloppy translation.

The PDF with the article is available online

http://rizzoli.rcslibri.corriere.it/rizzoli/rassegna1/pdf/Pyncon.pdf

P.S. The French text posted by the Great Quail looks like an MA thesis on V. 
(Not sure that a PhD would be 90 or thereabouts pages long). Good 
bibliography and some germane references to French philosophy.

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