V-2nd C3

[Michael Bailey]

>
> My reason of course for not making much of a Fitzgerald connection is
> the guy's so effing gloomy, his books so unrelentingly sad.  Not what
> I get out of Pynchon at all.  No sir, not a bit of it.
>

par ejemplo, I enjoy talking about P's books, to anybody that'll
listen.  It takes the form of retelling.  Whereas if I start in trying
to recap certain other authors, that doesn't work so well and you
start talking about it as a book.

check it out:

Gatsby, there's this guy, see, and he's made a bunch of money but he's
still really sad.  It's really well written.

Tender is the Night, there's this guy, and he like messes up his life
by drinking too much.  But at the end he takes up bike riding, so I
guess maybe he was able to give up drinking.  It's really well
written.

In V., you've got Benny Profane, he's a schlemihl, yeah, I looked it
up; anyway, he's just out of the Navy or something and there's this
wild cat named Pig Bodine who's got a Harley and is revving it in the
alley, and he reads existentialists and has a code of honor; well
Benny see is basically trying to deal with the aspects of being a
schlemihl, right, and we all can dig that because, well, even
Presidents stumble getting off of airplanes and have rabbits jump in
their canoes and fall off their Segways and shit; so Benny is like one
focus (say, maybe the book is like an ellipse or something, yeah it's
called V. but maybe that's just to put you off the track) and the
other focus is this cat named Stencil.  I mean there's like a 3rd guy
named Sphere (conic sections much, huh?) and he's a jazz musician and
he's pretty important, but if you took like the 7th derivative of the
book stripping away all the powers you'd probably have Benny and
Stencil (like Benny and the Jets, yeah I know).  Anyway Stencil is way
fucked up, English chap who refers to himself in the 3rd person...

and I could go on and on and often do.  I just can't get that worked
up about most stories as easily.  This is something special.




Yippy dippy dippy,
Flippy zippy zippy,
Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
- Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")