What's your favorite TRP scene? Please defend your choice.

[Dave Monroe]

November 2008
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
features
An Interview with Brian Francis Slattery

[...]

What's your favorite TRP scene? Please defend your choice.

There are so many to choose from, aren't there? My running favorite is
the one in Gravity's Rainbow where Slothrop, in his Rocketman
disguise, is sneaking under the porch at the Potsdam Conference to get
a bag of hashish, and just as he's leaving, he manages to bump into --
as Pynchon puts it "well, this may seem odd, but it's Mickey Rooney."
(This may seem odd? Of all the things in that book, this may seem
odd?) Then there's this exquisite paragraph where the two of them just
stare at each other in mutual what the heck are you doing here?
surprise -- Slothrop that he's seeing Mickey Rooney in the middle of
war-torn Europe, Mickey Rooney that he's seeing a guy in a superhero
costume holding a bag of hashish in the rain. I love the way Pynchon
suspends that moment, zooming in and out of both men's heads. It's
ridiculous and hilarious and then, somehow, suddenly, inexplicably
beautiful and touching; it's Pynchon doing that thing he does that no
one else can quite do. Is that defense enough?

[...]

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_11_013648.php