Editing Pynchon?

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 7, 2009, at 1:34 AM, Stephen Musgrave wrote:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OCS08rabE
>
> Where are the pieces of gauze in Pynchon? I think we should be told.

"I bet there's thousands of paintings we're not allowed to see . . ."

Like those instructional paintings Louis XV commissioned for Louis the  
XVI or Mickey's collection of hand painted ties  [actually, we're  
allowed to "see" those, aren't we Guv'nor?]

Gravity's Rainbow appeared during a time when you could issue a book  
without the little pieces of gauze covering up the naughty bits, even  
sell such "obscene" materials in a Vons or a Safeway—I recall seeing  
GR on revolving racks of mass-market paperbacks in supermarkets in the  
mid-seventies. Of course, a Pulitzer Prize committee famously dumped  
GR from consideration due to it being obscene and unreadable but that  
never stopped them from handing out Pulitzers to the New York Times,  
did it?

Pynchon was/is lucky enough to be writing and living in a time when  
books as turgid and obscene as Gravity's Rainbow can be distributed  
without fear of censorship. Just the luck of the draw, I guess. Had he  
lived in another era, his books would have been burned, something OBA  
doubtless was hyper-aware of thanks to notable moments in his family's  
history. Timing has a lot to do with Pynchon's success—he had the  
right nasty things to say at the right nasty time.

"My aunt Dolly would have done it for nothing."
"She does anything for nothing, doesn't she?"

> > From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net
> > To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Subject: Re: Editing Pynchon?
> > Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2009 15:27:01 -0700
> >
> > On Aug 6, 2009, at 3:15 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
> >
> > > If some critic decides that certain elements ought not to be
> > > included in a great work and causes those elements to be
> > > changed, what has that critic done for art?
> >
> > Taken out the naughty bits?
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFE40kidXcE

"See ya in the Dutch Masters."