"Thomas Pynchon said, grandly"

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Dave:

>.... the Frank Miller cover version is completely useless with the 
>"critical apparatus" ...

Well, almost useless. The 2nd edition of the single most important book on 
GR, Steven Weisenburger's "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion," is keyed to both 
the original Viking Penguin edition, the Bantam edition (does anyone read 
that one any more?), and the repaginated Penguin. Weisenburger's book can 
also be used as a of conversion table for those wishing to translate the old 
page numbers into the new ones.

As for an annotated edition of the novel, I seriously doubt we'll see one in 
Pynchon's lifetime. Even a set of 'neutral' annotations is, in some sense, 
an interpretation of the novel, and I'm pretty sure that Pynchon won't 
sanction any interpretation of GR by having it appear between the same 
covers as the actual text. Note that while the other books in Penguin's 
Deluxe Classics series have introductions, GR doesn't: Even something as 
seemingly innocent and modest as an introduction constitutes some sort of 
authorized portal into the landscape of the text, and by emphasizing certain 
aspects of the text at the expense of others, it can to some extent 
influence how the text is read. So while I don't think Pynchon has anything 
in particular against his text being read, "picked to pieces, annotated, 
explicated, and masturbated till it's all squeezed limp of it's last drop" 
(GR, 520), I think he's very careful not to set up any preferential 
interpretational paths by allowing forewords and annotations to appear 
alongside the text itself.

My personal (and completely unsubstantiated) theory is that the Everyman's 
Library edition of GR (which was announced back in the mid-90s but never 
appeared) was abandoned because the editors were adamant that the edition 
should have an introduction (like all other Everyman's Library- editions), 
and Pynchon was adamant that it shouldn't....

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