CoL49 group reading ch3 purpose of intermingling

[Michael Bailey]

Just kind of splashed up against my mind -

This idea:

You’ve got the sex scenes to draw an audience

They’re there, & probably what one would mention to a friend at the water
cooler, oh yeah, you’ve got to read Pynchon, “Oedipa does LA” - but does
one really get massively turned on by them? (Rhetorical question)

So by intertwining them with the historical stuff, and even drawing
comparisons, the reader who was trying to plunge into prurience starts
instead to use their brain to figure out what the heck he’s talking about

Not only a way to comply with the letter and spirit of “redeeming social
value”

But also a good marketing strategy

https://www.reddit.com/r/ThomasPynchon/comments/u4zoam/what_are_the_sales_of_pynchons_books_worldwide/

Apparently V [with both elements but slightly more discrete] had sold three
million copies in the US by 1970,

…

Crying of Lot 49 had also sold three million copies before GR came out, so
it was over six million before his most popular book



These figures, it turns out, came from the estimable

https://thomaspynchon.com/thomas-pynchon-1973-letter-to-bruce-allen-and-the-marketing-of-gravitys-rainbow/