so i started gravity's rainbow the other day

"October 25: Rocketmen and Wastelands, an essay by Marshall Shord - Shord is a recent graduate of Washington College, Maryland, who won the nation’s largest undergraduate literary prize, the Sophie Kerr Prize, in large part thanks to his 100-page critical thesis on the first three novels of Thomas Pynchon. Shord was awarded a check for almost $56,000 for his scholarly excellence and last we heard he’s been traveling the world. The Modern Word is proud to share the Pynchon paper worth a BMW, which could be characterized as one reader’s personal dialogue with Pynchon’s first three novels."

http://themodernword.com/pynchon/shord.pdf

^thanks for this...v. good reading on a slow day at work.

pers'n'ly i am for thinking it is awful

who would make the best film adaptation of gravity's rainbow? i think the coen bros would do the best at casting the array of characters.

i read this book 15 yrs ago in fits & starts over six months mostly "under the influence" so it passed by in a semi-comprehensible haze. what stuck was the names, i almost made "geli tripping" my first ILM tag.

ken's takes on the science/literary split feel absolutely OTM to me.

I read the first ten pages the other day! If I could only quit it with the Internet for a week or two I'd be able to get through the rest. Already I can sense it's gonna be pretty sick.

if you read gravity's rainbow in two weeks i doubt you are really reading it

i like the coen brothers doing this, but, dumb question, wouldn't it have to be a miniseries, not a movie?

if you think about the timeline and actual narrative in gravity's rainbow, i think it would fit into a 2 hour (or maybe a little more) film

Have you heard Saunders' Issac Babel reading on the New Yorker podcast?

no wai cutty -- slothrup would barely be parachuting within the first two hours, and that's omitting the musical numbers.

i do not think coens are a great match, because of their tendency to flatten the whole range of humor into one dry sadistically funny band, and i would submit alex cox as a better director.

i don't think you could do it justice in 2 hours! you'd have to leave too much out and all of the plot digressions are what make the book what it is.

also i think the coen brothers would make it too hokey. i don't really think gr could be made into a worthwhile film, actually.

i would say maybe terry gilliam over the coen bros tho

howz about coens for the dance numbers, someone else for the rest.

Have you heard Saunders' Issac Babel reading on the New Yorker podcast?

wrong thread?

Ha, yes. That was for "Book Remakes".

just found a link to it, i will check it out!

and that's omitting the musical numbers.

the musical number in the white visitation room with all the lab workers in a maze, damn that would be so awesome.

I think this would have to be an animated film to work properly.

Also Louis, I would recommend reading it as quickly as possible and not trying to follow it too closely, just enjoy the language and humour, and then re-reading it extensively at your leisure.

the coens could totally do JR by Gaddis--a bunch of people talking over each other for 2+ hours

resurrect altman

lol singing and dancing octopus

question is who plays rocketman?

bill pullman in a surprise cameo

Well already I'm very pleased with the nonchalant approach to the absurd evident in Pynchon's writing-style. I've heard it scales astonishing heights of intense and comic intricacy. Sounds fab. Will get on the case as soon as I get home tomorrow.

I think Roberto Rodriguez would do a fab job, maybe with particularly surreal sections either by Pixar or rotoscope-style (or both!)

pynchon really needs an action director for the most part, and a straight-up genre director in general.

Is this book anything like 'O Lucky Man'?

I have to say the X-Treme enthusiasm for this over the entire history of ILX has made me not want to read it, ever.

Not being funny, but y'know O Lucky Man is a re-working of Candide, right? GR does have elements of them in it, come to think of it. I understand what you mean about being off-put, but I think it's beautiful and like most big beautiful books best approached as a quilty wonderland to get lost in rather than as a code to break or a mountain to climb.

richard kelly

sorry, coen brothers suck. who could be this funny and amazing? no one. leave it as a fucking book for once.

Noodle Vague OTM re "quilty wonderland"

yes! why some things should never be film adapted unless they are something completely different

Could work as an ongoing prime time soap opera style serial though, 30 mins a week in perpetuity. And I still think an animated version might work.

totally, anything serial or genre. animated would be amazing but crazy. graphic novel?

There is some German film based on (bits of) GR. It also features Robert Forster out of the Go Betweens! Trailer is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ046SJpl8E

"as per leslie fiedler there is little difference, generically, between sex porn and horror-porn"

huh well even for leslie fiedler that's cracky

-

i haven't reread this book in like almost two years! this makes me sad.

malcolm mcdowell would be the best of all possible slothrups

leave it as a fucking book for once.

generally, i agree with this sentiment. but i think the narrative of GR is one of the most brilliant and beautifully crafted things i have ever read. i would love to see it in visual form. preferably while pynchon is still alive and is willing to work on it. most likely that will never happen.

there's always the opera, which he technically agreed to

coogan?

x post

He only agreed for the opera if it was entirely scored for kazoo

Banjo, I think.

It is now almost exactly 5 years since I finished this book. I hope it has improved a bit in that time.

Or maybe you have?

I thought it was ukulele; I wonder if the whole story is actually apocryphal.

I am quite impressed that the pinefox finished this book, considering his distaste for it.

more & more I think certain aspects of its reputation are unearned, but also unaimed for � aspects which help it maintain a kind of cachet without helping readers or potential readers read it better, or read anything else

I tend to change my mind twice about whether any novel of P.'s is any good at least twice during the course of a reading. I have decided to reread Against The Day next, but only if I see the American edition somewhere.

Though uke and kazoo are both plausible, according to LA herself it was banjo:

http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/anderson/ander_transcript.html

Well already I'm very pleased with the nonchalant approach to the absurd evident in Pynchon's writing-style. I've heard it scales astonishing heights of intense and comic intricacy. Sounds fab. Will get on the case as soon as I get home tomorrow.

-- Just got offed, Wednesday, 13 August 2008 17:33 (2 weeks ago) Link

robert downey jr gains 40 pounds and plays slothrop, please