ST ch 19 French 75s, Greasy Thumb Guzik

Fri May 15 06:41:47 UTC 2026

Pynchon might be the 20th Centuryplus Shakespeare in English, or an
American Shakespeare....

On Thu, May 14, 2026 at 5:56 PM Corbeau Castrum via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> From an interview with William Gibson (
> https://philipdick.com/resources/articles/william-gibson-on-philip-k-dick/
> ):
> “I never got into Phil Dick. Somehow I missed him, coming up. I don’t
> remember reading any of his novels when I was a kid. I may have read some
> of his short stories. But by the time I realized who he was, I had already
> read Pynchon. Pynchon will do for you what Dick does, but it’s like
> free-basing. I never needed Dick.”
>
> Kim Stanley Robinson speaks of "reality breakdowns" in Dick's work and
> suggests it occurs on three different levels: “the protagonist in his
> fictive world, the reader reading the text, and the reader in his world—and
> each reflect the other two, and this resonance lends the text significance.”
>
> I just finished my thesis comparing Dick and Pynchon (happy to send if
> anyone is interested), and I generally concur with Gibson. Dick is already
> mind-twisting and crazy and Pynchon totally destabilizes (in GR at least)
> any sense of a stable or coherent truth of the narrative and storyworld,
> such that there are sometimes multiple reality breakdowns on one page. But
> I don't think it's fair to say that we don't need PkD's writing—rumor has
> it that Pynchon was devouring Dick's books during the latter 60s. They both
> lived in California and were connected to the counterculture. The
> comparison is very interesting. But PkD is Northern California and Pynchon
> is Southern California? I wonder if it's possible to make a coherent
> argument about how this affected their novels and style. Fredric Jameson
> once referred to PkD as the "Shakespeare of science fiction", which I
> suppose makes me wonder what would be the appropriate comparison for
> Pynchon—but perhaps he defines his own category and thus needs no real
> comparison or historical forbear.
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> On Thursday, 05/14/26 at 15:38 Robin Landseadel via Pynchon-l <
> pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> Great post, do think the thing in and of itself is the real criteria for
> any given artwork, not
> adherence to whatever source materials were deployed. OBAA is a great film
> not because
> it sticks to the original material—nope, didn't happen—but because there
> is an essential
> story embedded in Vineland, buried (or is it entwined?) under all manner
> of potential
> distractions—The "Pynch" is great at mindless pleasures and {seemingly}
> pointless
> tangents. Paul Thomas Anderson found the emotional essence of Vineland and
> distilled
> it. Is OBAA attempting to be "Vineland" in the same way "Inherent Vice"
> pretty much sticks
> to the plot?  No, but it says so right on the box. The movie is decidedly
> not an "adaptation".
>
> Think I'll watch it again today with my headphones on. Soundtracks really
> matter in
> Pynchonlandia, Vineland being no exception.
>
> People's Republic of Rock 'n' Roll anyone?
>
> Bueller? Bueller?
>
> https://youtu.be/KS6f1MKpLGM?si=747ZfVR6vKKSmTVl
>
> Speaking of "Adaptations":
>
> “ . . . Some kind of classical music coming from the TV room. Mozart. In
> these desperate
> stretches of early-morning programming, she finds Ernie tubeside, his face
> transfigured
> in the ancient Trinitron glow, watching an obscure, in fact
> never-distributed Marx Brothers
> version of Don Giovanni, with Groucho in the title role. She tiptoes in
> barefoot and sits next
> to her father on the couch. There’s a big plastic bowl of popcorn, too big
> even for two
> people, which Ernie after a while nudges in her direction.
>
> During a recitative he fills her in. “They cut the Commendatore so there’s
> no Donna Anna,
> no Don Ottavio, this way, without the murder, it’s a comedy.” Leoporello
> is being played by
> both Chico and Harpo, one for lines and one for sight gags, Chico
> fast-talking his way
> through the Catalog Aria for example while Harpo runs around after Donna
> Elvira (Margaret
> Dumont, in the role she was born for), pinching, groping, and honking his
> bicycle horn, as
> well as later picking harp accompaniment for “Deh vieni all finestra.”
> Masetto is a studio
> baritone who is not Nelson Eddy, Zerlina is very young, lip-synced and
> more-than-presentable
> Beatrice Pearson, later to portray another ingenue with a fatality for
> scoundrels opposite John
> Garfield in Force of Evil, (1948) . . . “
>
> Bleeding Edge pgs. 417/418
>
> See also:
>
> " . . . “Yes, I forget your name, you had your hand up?”
>
> “Let’s say that in life, in his career as a network slimebag, Frank Stokes
> accumulated a
> huge pile of truly horrible karma. So next time around, to work off this
> karmic debt, he gets
> to expose, mock, ridicule and otherwise invite contempt for the very
> behavior he was once
> guilty of in his former life. Lying, corruption, the abuse of power, so
> forth.”
>
> “Hmm. If we could pitch that in shorter sentences…”
>
> The Daily Show – Pynchon’ Foreword for the 10th Anniversary Concert
> Program
> https://thomaspynchon.com/the-daily-show-thomas-pynchons-foreword-for-the-10th-anniversary-concert-program/
>
>
> Corbeau Castrum: " . . . I took a class last year all about adaptation and
> the academic
> criticism associated with since the 1950s. What academics up until present
> day
> simultaneously discuss and attempt but fail to exorcise is so-called
> "fidelity criticism," i.e.
> evaluating the film based on/with respect to the original novel instead of
> seeing it as a
> separate art object. (Every article we read disavows fidelity criticism as
> irrelevant in the
> first several pages. Lady doth protest too much methinks kind of
> situation.) The class
> specifically focused on Martin Scorsese's adaptation of The Age of
> Innocence by Edith
> Wharton (interestingly Scorsese calls it his most violent film, i.e.
> emotionally violent), which
> attempts to be super literary* in its style (overlaying text from women's
> conduct books from
> late 19th century at the beginning, having the main character mournfully
> fondle books,
> introduce physical objects into the scene just as a novel's narrator would
> describe them,
> include voice-over narration). Growing up I was indoctrinated in the
> book>movie ideology
> (my mum is a book publisher), but I discovered when I got older that if I
> watched the
> movie adaptation before reading the book, I would appreciate both a lot
> more (otherwise
> I would think the film just sucked). I guess if anything ever sells itself
> as an adaptation,
> it's really difficult to get away from comparisons with the source
> material.
>
> My favorite adaptations:
> PkD's A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater)
> Harry Potter 1 Chris Columbus)
> Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
> Inherent Vice . . . "
>
> *I was operating on the motto "Make it literary," a piece of bad advice I
> made up all by
> myself and then took."
>
> Slow Learner, Introduction, pg. 4
>
> Parenthetical note, digression, tangent, tendril perhaps; got my battered
> copy of Slow
> Learner from Serendipity Books, the most magical bookstore I've ever
> walked into:
>
> Era ends: Liquidation sale at Berkeley's Serendipity Books
> https://www.berkeleyside.org/2013/11/07/an-end-of-an-era-serendipity-books-liquidation-sale
>
> This was in Berkeley on University, I was at the store sometime in the
> 1990s during a period
> of temporary insanity.
>
> https://youtu.be/ycv4vLVvkB8?si=tVTUJQG9OTkbDfEi
>
> My copy is stamped:
>
> "NOT FOR RESALE
> DISTRIBUTED BY GREEN THUMB"
>
> Doubtless Antifa terrorist scum.
>
> Agree about all four movies you cited. "A Scanner Darkly" is a classic
> movie. It manages to have brilliant performances, very little deviation
> from the plot, perfect visualization:
>
> https://youtu.be/seP2DPqd0o8?si=ezBfVBRvFwChDC1V
>
> Most people making films using PKD as a source really mess with the
> material. Blade Runner
> is brilliant, but "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" it isn't. Ridley
> made a classic film, some
> of the best stuff in the movie was improvised on the spot, without the
> director's knowledge:
>
> https://youtu.be/HU7Ga7qTLDU?si=9CSGwQgPulHh0R-n
>
>
> Tears in rain monologue - Wikipedia
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears_in_rain_monologue
>
> If Philip K. Dick is the poor man's Thomas Pynchon, is Pynchon the rich
> man's Dick?
>
> Curious people want to know.
>
>
> “There must be a Pony in here somewhere.”
>
>
> --
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>
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>