BtZ42: on the road to Greenwich

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

The assumption is there for a long time. On the back cover of the very 
first book in Germany about Pynchon --- Heinz Ickstadt (ed.): "Ordnung 
und Entropie. Zum Romanwerk von Thomas Pynchon" from 1981 ---, which got 
published when the German edition of GR ("Die Enden der Parabel") 
appeared, it says: "Thomas Pynchon verbindet die obszöne 
Sprachphantasmagorie William Burroughs' mit der Musilschen Leidenschaft 
für die Mathematik des Unendlichen". This sentence was likely written by 
Ickstadt himself (in his essay on CoL49, pp. 104-125, here 121, it says 
again "Pynchon - dessen Fähigkeit, den mathematischen Umgang mit dem 
Unendlichen zu erschließen, an Musil denken lässt - ...", yes, in 
Vineland we even find an explicit Musil reference), whose introduction 
("Einleitung", pp. 7-15) dates from June 1979. But I cannot remember 
having ever read something substantial on the issue. Nothing like, let's 
say, "Burroughs and Pynchon as satirists of Cold War America".


On 26.03.2016 10:45, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> Get this book in print▼
>
>     My library
>     <https://books.google.de/books?uid=114584440181414684107&source=gbs_lp_bookshelf_list>
>     My History
>     Books on Google Play <https://play.google.com/store/books>
>
> The English Penguin Books Restored text edition assumes--or knows?-- 
> it influenced Pynchon.
>
>
>   Naked Lunch: The Restored Text
>
> Front Cover
> William S Burroughs 
> <https://www.google.de/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22William+S+Burroughs%22>
> Penguin Books Limited, Jan 29, 2015 - Fiction 
> <https://www.google.de/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=subject:%22Fiction%22&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0> - 
> 224 pages
> <https://books.google.de/books?id=8r4cBAAAQBAJ&dq=adenoid++%22naked+lunch%22&sitesec=reviews>1171 Reviews 
> <https://books.google.de/books?id=8r4cBAAAQBAJ&dq=adenoid++%22naked+lunch%22&sitesec=reviews>
> A cultural landmark and the most shocking novel in the English 
> language, /Naked Lunch/ is an exhilarating ride into the darkest 
> recesses of the human psyche. An unnerving tale of an addict unmoored 
> in New York, Tangier, and ultimately a nightmarish wasteland known as 
> Interzone, /Naked Lunch/'s formal innovation, formerly taboo subject 
> matter, and tour de force execution has exerted its influence authors 
> like Thomas Pynchon and J. G. Ballard; on the relationship of art and 
> obscenity; and on the shape of music, film, and media in general.
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 26, 2016 at 5:35 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen 
> <lorentzen at hotmail.de <mailto:lorentzen at hotmail.de>> wrote:
>
>
>     On 25.03.2016 17:22, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>>     ... So... why an adenoid (i.e. a tonsil), rather than an appendix
>>     or spleen or hypothalamus? Why human tissue at all, rather than
>>     some other stand-in for Osmo's fears? Its slimy protoplasmic
>>     aspect led me on first reading to think of SF movies:
>>
>>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
>>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Master_X-7
>>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_II
>>
>>     And its _sshhlop_ing of the troops is parodically close to a
>>     scene of the Martian death ray in Wells' The War of the Worlds.
>>
>>     All I got -- not much -- is a vague association of the
>>     "adenoidal" voice with a nasal drawl allegedly common among the
>>     UK twits and toffs who might have populated the Foreign Office in
>>     those days. Still around under new management:
>>
>>     http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/that-adenoidal-nasally-geek-voice
>>
>>     And Gogol's Nose:
>>
>>     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_(Gogol_short_story)
>>     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_%28Gogol_short_story%29>
>
>
>     The word "adenoid" also appears in Naked Lunch:
>
>     https://books.google.de/books?id=8r4cBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT78&lpg=PT78&dq=adenoid++%22naked+lunch%22&source=bl&ots=YNC0HlpPxh&sig=BPDoowd0_TTYShFszA2npU8SneI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiowqr59t3LAhXC0RQKHYCtDwYQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=adenoid%20%20%22naked%20lunch%22&f=false
>
>     In its more sarcastic passages, the sound of Gravity's Rainbow
>     resembles that of Burroughs' novel. And "Meeting of International
>     Conference of Technological Psychiatry" sounds like something
>     Pynchon could have come up with in part 4 of GR. Does anybody know
>     for sure whether Pynchon actually read Burroughs' novels and what
>     he thinks about them?
>
>
>

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