My favorite bit in Oz' last post was the textual evidence he finds to show that "Wilson & Shea wink at Pynchon in Illuminatus! and Pynchon winks right back at them in Vineland through the shared rubric of "Kick out the Jams." I think Oz makes a pretty strong case.
Here's a bit where RAW is asked about Pynchon:
JW: How do you regard Pynchon as important? Obviously he's a conspiracy theorist...
RAW: We have a lot in common. It's one of those things, like Darwin and Wallace, when the time is right a couple of people are going to be saying pretty much the same thing. There are enough differences between Pynchon and me that I think I'm a little more than just an echo of Pynchon. At least I like to believe that. Shea and I were finished with Illuminatus! when we read Gravity's Rainbow and then on the rewrite we deliberately threw in a couple of references to it, but we had worked out the structure on our own, mostly on the basis of the nut mail that Playboy gets.
Of course, there's no Pynchon interview I can cite, but Oz' citations convince me.
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia entry on Robert Anton Wilson says (about Illuminatus!), "Throughout, the Paranoia engendered by any and all attempts to understand these pixilated conspiracies, of which all the things of the world were emblems, reminded many readers of Thomas Pynchon; but an unPynchonesque lightheartedness permeates the sequence." Vineland certainly has a lot of lighthearted humor; could that be the influence of Illuminatus! on Pynchon? Just throwing that out there to see if anyone thinks that makes sense.
A few links:
Here's an old post from me, we did eventually do Pale Fire.
A possible RAW reference Spookah spotted in Inherent Vice.
Rufus Flypaper on RAW vs. Pynchon.
A reminder that Robert Shea once published Pynchon.
2 comments:
In the interview fragment from RAW he mentions him and Shea throwing in a couple of references to Gravity's Rainbow in Illuminatus!. I wonder where? The one direct reference to Pynchon there refers to The Crying of Lot 49. Perhaps (very likely) I missed something? A google search didn't turn up anything. I guess I'll have to reread Illuminatus in the near future.
I tend to agree with Spookah regarding the flying lasagna bit in Inherent Vice intended as a small RAW homage. That seems just like Pynchon's style to have the reader put it together that this delicious pasta flies in the song. In my blog on Bleeding Edge I list what I consider several allusions to RAW. The link is in the last Vineland post.
Perhaps the confluence of RAW and TP could be named 'The Homing Pynchon'?
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