Thumb Wars: The Great Divide

Dave Monroe against.the.dave at gmail.com
Wed Mar 20 02:22:50 CDT 2013


But some things haven’t changed in almost half a century. In his 1966
novel “The Crying of Lot 49,” Thomas Pynchon describes his heroine,
Oedipa Maas, crossing campus:

“It was summer, a weekday, and midafternoon; no time for any campus
Oedipa knew of to be jumping, yet this one was. She came downslope
from Wheeler Hall, through Sather Gate into a plaza teeming with
corduroy, denim, bare legs, blond hair, hornrims, bicycle spokes in
the sun, bookbags, swaying card tables, long paper petitions dangling
to earth, posters for undecipherable FSM’s, YAF’s, VDC’s, suds in the
fountain, students in nose-to-nose dialogue. She moved through it
carrying her fat book, attracted, unsure, a stranger, wanting to feel
relevant but knowing how much of a search among alternate universes it
would take.”

http://www.dailycal.org/2013/03/14/thumb-wars-the-great-divide/



More information about the Pynchon-l mailing list