Adulterated Pynchon

[Ya Sam]

It was Otto who posted some time ago a review of the novel Grand Tour oder 
die Nacht der grossen Complication (Grand Tour, or the Night of the Great 
Complication) by Steffen Kopetzky in which the latter was dubbed a 
'Gepantschter Pynchon' i.e. "Adulterated Pynchon"

http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72875&keywords=Kopetzky


I stumbled on the English review of the book

http://www.new-books-in-german.com/aut2002/book08a.htm


and a sample translation

http://www.new-books-in-german.com/aut2002/book08c.htm

The whole premise of the novel seems a bit shallow with me, although, if 
somebody has read it in German and has some opinion I would be glad to hear 
it, but just a passing glance at the opening paragraph albeit in translation 
seems to corroborate the title of the German review. GR is hovering over 
these sentences as a menacing phantom:

'We enter railway stations, which are almost always located in city centres, 
their massive façades looking out on the main boulevards, gateways to a 
world of timetables and destinations. We enter railway stations somewhere or 
other, we stand outside the Gare de l'Est in Paris, our gaze wandering over 
the front of the building, we rise, we pass the figures of Traffic and 
Modern Progress, now a hundred years old, we settle briefly on one of the 
masonry ledges, a vantage point from which the apparently chaotic movement 
of travellers coming and going assumes an ordered appearance, a logic of 
exchange and free flow that looks ever smoother and more natural the higher 
we climb, like the skeins of railway tracks that appear baffling and random 
when you're on their level. But now, at this moment, as we finally survey 
the whole of Milano Centrale station, having taken in the classical 
arrangement of its colossal stairways, we turn north again, marvelling as we 
assess the cluster of tracks before us, branching off in different 
directions. Never mind which set we follow, they lead away, always branching 
again and again, until they reach the confidently towering south-east façade 
of Geneva Central, the theatrical setting of Strasbourg station, Genoa's 
oriental phantasmagoria with its pointed little cupolas and its platforms 
built into the rock, looking like long, cool caves. We hover around the 
delicate portal of Copenhagen Central, embedded as it is in the city 
traffic, we see Helsinki's silent guardians, those huge granite figures 
holding mighty glowing globes up in the northern night, we savour the hectic 
atmosphere of Santa Maria Novella in Florence or note the breathtaking 
spaciousness of Vienna West, and finally we think of settling somewhere 
inside these stations and interrupting our flight. But the steel girders 
there, the columns, the iron balustrades arching airily in defiance of 
gravity, are all bristling with sharp spikes and treacherous wires that give 
us electric shocks. We're not tolerated, we're driven away as soon as we 
alight anywhere. So we move restlessly through the station halls, flying 
back and forth between the exits, we gather in the concourses, rising up in 
flocks, and sometimes we let ourselves be driven into quiet corners full of 
cigarette ends and garbage where we are suddenly alone, all by ourselves. A 
single creature. One among many. There she is.' ...

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