Guess you Had to be there

[Robin Landseadel]

It helps enormously to understand just how close Manhattan Beach is to  
Watts and what sort of possible permutations and combinations that  
proximity provides. As Pynchon is apt to note, there's a weird force- 
field keeping the two at arms length, even though Watts is just one  
freshly matched Kool away from Manhattan Beach.
On Aug 6, 2009, at 9:14 AM, rich wrote:

> All--
>
> I think IV is best at giving a sense of place, there seems to be more
> of an awareness unlike any of the previous books I would argue (If
> Pynchon could recreate places he's never been so successfully one
> can't be surprised at what he can do for places he's been in!)

No Baedekers necessary.

> Vineland has that, too but he's tackling a major American metropolitan
> city this time out (landmarks are important, street names, freeways,
> so forth)

Nothing that can't be sussed out via Google maps. Thank you ARPA,  
thank you TRW, thank you Howard Hughes, thank you Eisenhower.

> and I think that's the problem for me--I never felt connected to this
> book--it wasn't the lightness, the vulgarity, the cartoony goofballs,
> the paranoia (hell, that's in all his books), the push pull of the
> straight world and the counterculture...

. . . and what about that all important question—is this gonna be a  
bust?

> I felt like an outsider, peering in. don't know if that makes a lick  
> of sense.

Sho' nuff. Never had a Tommyburger? [nudge ,nudge, wink, wink, say no  
more, say no more.]

> still musing, more later perhaps
> Rich

And now, Raymond Raquello and his orchestra in a snappy arrangement of  
Eine blasse Wäscherin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa1i375FuGw