(I've read The Volcano Lover & In America, which was, what, published in 2001?)

Don't know, Rebecca - I do recall it as quite recent.

Curiously, in the original script he says Thomas Pynchon's novels are pretentious crap, which is a much less defensible position.

I suppose Bret Easton Ellis doesn't pre-date the movie? Damn. Because he would be perfect.

bwahahaha... Ellis graduated from Bennington just a few years before I got there, and the place was all abuzz about him. So I picked up American Psycho.

Boy was that a waste of my time. Maybe it's just as well I didn't get into any writing courses there...

Crash Davis is exactly the kind of man to keep a tattered copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" in his locker.

Great call, Deb. Love Rock and Roll Circus. Marianne looks like a pretty petal there (hard knowing she's on the verge of a heroin addiction that's about to eat fifteen years of her life).

Of course, The Who totally steal that show. At the height of their powers, fucking around and absolutely certain that they're the best rock and roll band on earth. And they're right.

t looks at backlog of natter messages

t looks at Bull Durham DVD

t looks at dishes in the sink

t realizes that one of these things will not happen today

Crash Davis is exactly the kind of man to keep a tattered copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" in his locker.

After I read this conversation, I read a new Spider-Man comic I picked up yesterday. In it, Peter Parker (Spider-Man, for those who might not know) was going through a box of things that belonged to his dead father, who was a big science genius. Among the papers and journals was a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow." I did a big double-take.

heh. How cool is that?

Question, though: I can't do the timing on that in my head. If Spiderman premiered in 1962, and "GR" came out sometime in the early seventies (I remember there was a huge fuss because it won the Pulitzer and the wankers on the committee overturned the judge's decision because they couldn't understand a word of it, and there was no Pulitzer for literature that year) - well, wait. Timing? When did his father die?

Well, the Spider-Man I'm reading is a title called "Ultimate Spider-Man," which is basically a re-working of the entire story -- starting with Peter getting bitten by the spider -- but updated and in a modern setting. It's a genetically altered spider instead of a radioactive one, etc.

Of course, that problem is that the comic paints Peter's aunt and uncle who take him in as old hippies, but they don't really count the flashback chronology well enough, because that would put the height of hippie-dom at about 1993?

There's a little hand-waving going on w/r/t the timeline, methinks.

There's a little hand-waving going on w/r/t the timeline, methinks.

In comics? I'm shocked!