Gravity's Audio

[Carvill John]

> Think about the couple-three-four OVERT allusions/quotes from P's oeuvre. 

Where? (I ask genuinely, not argumentatively.)

I'm a bit biased against Anderson because he's a critical darling whose films I have not enjoyed. Probably this reached a peak with 'There Will be Blood'.

Who knows, the IV film may stand alone as something we - old fans who have always been at the movies - may enjoy. 

But will Anderson explore, say, the autobiographical aspects of IV? Or the tendrils that wriggle back into the earlier works? If Anderson is really on the Pynchon ball, will he have Phoenix living in an apartment with a dutch. or' Sportello' door? Now that would be cool. As a reminder, here's an ancient post from the days when IV was still new:



A 'sportello' is a door or a window, or a counter, eg where you buy a
train ticket, right? A door, or a window, or a door which is also a
window. Well, didn't Pynchon's apartment on Manhattan Beach have a
split door, like a stable door, ie. it had a door which was also a
window? Seems so. See here:

http://www.themodernword.com/Pynchon/pynchon_biography.html

"Ervin was always generous. He gave no hint of being a snit, a snob,
or even a literati. When you knocked on the bottom half of the wood
Dutch-door of his apartment (the top was normally open to the
elements), Ervin would greet you with a genuine smile and fling the
bottom half of the door open with a welcome".

Very strong autobiographical clue there, surely? Doc's name means
door/window, and he lives where Pynchon used to live, and when Pynchon
lived there his place had a dutch/stable door, a door that was also a
window, a Sportello in fact.

Any possibility that Pynchon (a) was unaware of the door/window
meaning of Sportello, and/or (b) forgot the fact that his old place -
which he's waxing nostalgic about - had that style of door? Unlikely
eh?

In fact, now I think of it, that kind of Dutch door was also mentioned
in Vineland, wasn't it? When Zoyd (who is a lot like Doc) first met
Hector:

"Down here, a long screened porch faced out over flights of rooftops
descending to the beach. Access from the street was by way of a Dutch
door, whose open top half, that long-ago evening, had come to frame
Hector under a ragged leather hat with a wide brim, peering through
sunglasses, the darkening Pacific in pale-topped crawl below."

Kute, no?










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