authors influenced by Pynchon

[Monte Davis]

Chris Broderick:

> 2 huge things that I don't believe any of the authors 
> mentioned as 'Pynchon influenced' share: -Musical numbers -Schtick

Good call. The songs and production numbers are too often minimized as
idiosyncratic tics, but they're very carefully embedded. P knows very well
that the pervasive seep of pop culture reaches deeper and wider than the
most penetrating apercus from Henry Adams or Walter Benjamin. In GR, think
of the rusty Piranesi-industrial world of the opening Evacuation, and the
bright adventure-filled city of the Raketen-Stadt: "swoop-facaded and
balconied skyscrapers, lean chrome caryatids with bobbed hairdos, classy
airships of all descriptions drifting in the boom and hush of the city
abysses..."  

Any director of opera or musicals knows how to turn one into the other with
a lighting change and a few bars from the orchestra, but I've never seen
anyone else come close to doing it on the page the way P does.        
    

Monte Davis
monte.davis at verizon.net
http://montedavis.livejournal.com/