"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."
THOMAS PYNCHON b. MAY 8TH 1937
"Dying carp biting air
in the damp grass,
River recedes. No matter.
Limp fish sleep in the weeds
The sun dries me as I dance"
GARY SNYDER b. 8TH 1930
we don't have too many masters left. might as well celebrate them while we can. i found an astonishing page by the artist zak smith where he illustrated every page of pynchon's gravity's rainbow. check it out. here's the illustration that goes along w/the opening page.
enjoy.
Does Britannia, when it sleeps, dream? Is America her dream? -- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow'd Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp'd, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of mankind, seen, -- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true, -- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ's Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe till the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur'd and tied back in, back to the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments, -- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.
- Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
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