A movie that moved TP?

[Paul Mackin]

On 1/16/2013 10:44 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> Kubrick's films, Paths of Glory and Dr. Strangelove.

Two good additions from the late 50s and early 60s when WWII was still 
pretty much on the front burner of American consciousness.

It was also the time when the idea for GR must have been percolating in 
P's own consciousness.  And what prodigious research and meticulous 
writing were required in order to produce such a rendering of that 
momentous event.

My own theory of the progress of the book's genesis (based on nothing 
but idle speculation) would be that Pynchon could not have foreseen how 
as the decade progressed the whole spirit and tone of of his generation 
would develop and overshadow the preoccupations of previous ones. And in 
my case capture a certain allegiance and even forgetfulness of times past.

What I'm getting at is that the book ending up in the Nixon era might 
well have been an afterthought.  Something to give it  more current 
relevance.

  I'm definitely not saying the ending is wrong or anything like that.  
And  I do offer my theory humbly.  Perhaps it is completely whack.

P


> LK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Matthew Cissell<macissell at yahoo.es>
>> Sent: Jan 16, 2013 5:38 AM
>> To:"pynchon-l at waste.org"  <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Subject: A movie that moved TP?
>>
>> I am not as up on movies as some on the list, but when I get the chance I try to watch something worthwhile. Last night I caught a movie on TV that I had no idea about until I saw it. As soon as I saw Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster and some others I knew it would be good.
>>   Judgement at Nuremburg was released in 1961 (filmed in black and white, at first I thought it was older) so it's a pretty safe bet that TP would have seen it. As far as I know this was one of the first films to refer to the horror of the Shoah and use images from the liberation of the camps by allied forces in ´45. Towards the end of the film IG Farben is mentioned, and a final note at the end of the film mentions that of the people convicted and encarcerated at Nuremburg none remained in prison at the time of the film´s release. Might this have set TP's wheels spinning? I don´t mean to imply that it was the origin of his idea for GR, but could it have been significant? What other films at that time might have moved TP to write?
>>
>> ciao
>> mc otis