a street corner of NYC where no Law & Order was filmed --Bleeding Edge, paraphrased and I hope accurate

[Mark Kohut]

We often watch a Law & Order of an early evening right before dinner. We
all remember
the episode where the female sergeant (I think that's her rank; I'm not
good at ranks but the street cops
report to her when she is in the script) is sitting reading* Gravity's
Rainbow*--the Bantam paperback, no less.

More of the certainty that Pynchon, that book particularly---"no one has
read it" --as the new movie *Knives Out* has it--- is known
to most of the major creators of our popular culture.

and maybe the one everyone has read, *The Crying of Lot 49, *too

A recent L & O was about a criminal diplomat, part of whose crime of murder
was
connected to phone calls in L & O NYC jurisdiction before he was a diplomat
in America therefore guaranteed immunity and our relentless justice seekers
wanted to convict him.
He was in the government of Chile at the time of the crime and the
federales wanted diplomatic
immunity to apply then too---They wanted no international problem for a
long-ago murder of a
protesting American student.

Quickly---it's TV of course--this case went to the Supreme Court with the
smartest arguments for both sides this show
can do. Textbook set pieces. We looked at each other and knew we couldn't
predict this ending.

SPOILER ALERT:

And then Law & Order showed once again why it is top of the heap. Our
lawyers are talking in the halls, judging the outcome as
well when they see the clerk of the Justices walking toward them with a
folder. "Looks like they've made a decision" says Sam's
assistant...two, three more steps and....

the credits start.........

Anyone in love with the great "ending" of *Crying of Lot 49* has to think
of it, I say.
And/ Or jus*t The Lady or the Tiger*
short story.