Not P but DFW: Richterish-looking sound wave

[Mark Kohut]

It refers to the Richter scale....jagged sometimes earthquake-like size....

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 1:18 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The following excerpt is from David Foster Wallace's *Host*:
>
> NexGen (a Clear Channel product) displays a Richterish-looking sound wave,
> of which all different sizes of individual bits can be highlighted and
> erased in order to tighten the pacing and compress the sound bite.
>
> It was suggested by a proofreader that the Richter here refers to Gerhard
> Richter, a German painter, and the picture of the sound wave displayed by
> the NexGen software looks like some of his abstract paintings. I've never
> heard of the artist before but it does sound plausible, and the word
> "Richterish" is similar to "Picassoesque". Does anyone care to confirm or
> refute this?
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>