How Pynchon once mistook a virus for a metaphor

[Becky Lindroos]

Hey Laura, thanks, 

I don’t have deliveries but I’m doing pretty well. I’m trying to look out after myself - keep self safe, etc.  My good neighbor/buddy took me to the ER and stayed there with me last night.  My cleaning lady checks on me regularly.  But I took myself to the market pharmacy this morning to get new Rx’s and a few extra goodies mostly because I was really curious about the situation.  I’m always pretty well stocked without being a prepper.  

Thank you for asking -  :-) 

Btw, I’m reading the new biography,  Mr Putin by Fiona Hill (of Congressional Hearing fame) and Hilary Mantel’s 3rd in her Thomas Cromwell series,   They’re both quite good although the bio can get a wee bit boring at times,  

Becky 

> On Mar 18, 2020, at 10:47 AM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Yikes, Becky. Please take care of yourself. Can you get food/medicine deliveries where you live? 
> 
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 12:38 PM Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Gag re the Orange Pustule, Laura - yep.  I forget that I’m 72 and not in great health and my kids worry as they live half way across the country.  I also have friends here who check on me. 
> 
> Soooo…..   I was in the emergency room last night (8 hours!) and I had a mask because I had symptoms (BUT my symptoms were stomach flu and dehydration).  Most others - (the non-patients) did not have masks. Generic corona-virus testing was somewhere else and the tent for determining that was outside the hospital doors. .  ??? -
> 
> Fwiw,  I had lung surgery in September (I don’t know if I mentioned that prior) and although I’m pretty well recovered I’m still weak - vulnerable.  It was stage 1 cancer.
> 
> Becky  - a Boomer who will not be Removed - 
> So be safe - keep me safe! 
> 
> 
> > On Mar 18, 2020, at 8:46 AM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > And, on cue, there goes the Orange Pustule referring to coronavirus as the
> > Chinese Virus.
> > My favorite name for it so far: the Boomer Remover.
> > 
> > Laura, age 62
> > 
> > On Wed, Mar 18, 2020, 9:14 AM Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> the Spanish Flu is relevant also because it didn't start in Spain; it was
> >> called the Spanish Flu because Spain was one of the few countries that was
> >> reporting on it truthfully, the others were hiding the pandemic to maintain
> >> wartime morale. no one really knows where it started; it might have been
> >> Kansas (as per *wikipedia* <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu>)
> >> 
> >> On Wed, Mar 18, 2020 at 1:06 PM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
> >> lorentzen at hotmail.de>
> >> wrote:
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> The concrete sentence from "Entropy" goes like this:  "Not even the
> >>> clean constant winds of Switzerland could cure the GRIPPE ESPAGNOLE:
> >>> Stravinsky had had it, they all had had it". Oh well ...
> >>> 
> >>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
> >>> 
> >>> " ... Though it may not be wrong absolutely to make up, as I still do,
> >>> what I don't know or am too lazy to find out, phony data are more often
> >>> than not deployed in places sensitive enough to make a difference,
> >>> thereby losing what marginal charm they may have possessed outside of
> >>> the story's context. Witness an example from 'Entropy.' In the character
> >>> of Callisto I was trying for a sort of world-weary Middle-European
> >>> effect, and put in the phrase GRIPPE ESPAGNOLE, which I had seen on some
> >>> liner notes to a recording of Stravinsky's L'HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT. I must
> >>> have thought this was some kind of of post-World War I spiritual malaise
> >>> or something. Come to find out it means what it says, Spanish influenza,
> >>> and the reference I lifted was really to the worldwide flu epidemic that
> >>> followed the war.
> >>>    The lesson here, obvious but now and then overlooked, is just to
> >>> corroborate one's data, in particular those acquired casually, such as
> >>> through hearsay or off the backs of record albums ..."
> >>> 
> >>> Slow Learner (Introduction)
> >>> 
> >>> --
> >>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >>> 
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >> 
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>