The revolutionaries of May

[Carvill, John]

> Tore:
> I do think it a bit of a stretch, though, to place GR in some kind of LA/California trilogy.

Oh yeah, it's a stretch all right, but a stretch I personally feel like making, just to see if the ends can be made to meet up. Or maybe I'd better say, it's a stretch I feel like watching someone else making. And is it more or less of a stretch than linking IV with COL49? Well, probably, yeah, but still. I suppose that stuff just fires my imagination.

I'll never forget my first read of GR (who does?), coming to 'the end' and finding Nixon and freeways and LA etc. And those freeways, of course, being an American word, reminded me of that odd usage, in the book's opening dream sequence, of the word 'underpass', which struck me, on this side of the Atlantic, as incongruously American. Probably means nothing, I know, but what with all the suggestions regarding the relationship between the 'start' and 'end' of GR, whether Pynchon might be pulling an 'all together now', sellotaping the end back onto the beginning (a bit like his old mucker Dylan did with All Along the Watchtower), it struck me as intriguingly fitting that 'freeways' suddenly appeared at the end, while 'underpasses' stuck out like a sore thumb right at the start. As I say, there's likely no more significance in these details than I am personally finding in them, but then that's half the appeal of GR, some days anyway: on top of the countless immensitoies which Pyhchon has deliberately sewn into the fabric, we each of us have found our own resonances and meanings. Haven't we?