Bob Dylan and Close Encounters of the Pynchon kind.

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

         Ya Sam:
         Have you had this rare experience when you bump into 
         somebody (I mean in offlist life!) who digs Pynchon just 
         the way you do and that's like a Masonic handshake, or 
         whatever, because this is a person you could talk for 
         hours with, as the ice has been broken by Pynch?

So many, many times. There's my dear dead friend Jason Halleman. who was a
walking, talking, living, breathing Pynchon character. Jason said he used to be 
Roky Ericson's "babysitter" during his tour of duty in the 13th Floor Elevators 
[there's a band from GR if ever there were]. He also played under Stokowski. 
And nobody, but nobody could clear out a room faster. He could be incredibly 
loud, his diction was a marvel and he was quite skilled in the arts of insult. 
He could do a convincing vocal impersonation of William S. Burroughs. 
He had a number of social interests that readers of GR would probably 
recognize, and a ten foot boa named "Binkey". He was just crazy for Finnegans 
Wake and made a convert out of me. We were both classical music collectors 
and would regularly go tripping down the Haight to hunt for Shaded Dogs or the 
ocasional "Wabbit". He died of Pneumonia in his early 40's and left me a Marantz 
8b and a bag that I never claimed that was stowed at the Berkeley Free Clinic.
 
There was a Philosophy Professor I encountered while at work, who came up with  
a familiar looking list of authors of Postmodern Philosophy [the light zapped on 
in my head], so I told him about the recent publication of Against the 
Day---this was back in December, just a few weeks after street date. It was some 
kind of "Masonic Handshake" moment. He lit right up, his complexion and 
demeanor were radically improved. The man had no idea that a new Pynchon 
book was up-coming. He loved it, by the way. When I was working at the Musical 
Offering in Berkeley, had a couple two-three conversations with Sandy Perlman 
[who turns out to be crazy about Elizabethan Consort Musicke and Dowland]. 
Think about all that the next time you hear "Don't Fear The Reaper."I had a few 
conversations [never really long enough] with Jem Bluestein, out here in Fresno. 
Then there's Paul Bloom, over in Oakland. 

Come to think of it, all these people really belong in a Pynchon novel, every 
last one of 'em. Either that or "Zapped" Comix.