Comments on: In Which We Display, Yet Again, Our Ignorance

By: Booksquare

Booksquare — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 04:01:46 +0000

I like the joke (because I presume Rushdie did this intentionally, which makes one wonder if there was something Updike missed in his reading…) even if I don’t get it. I’m always willing to fake like I was in on the game the whole time.

My favorite Pynchon trick is carrying characters from book to book. In a manner of speaking — I haven’t (and likely will never) finished Gravity’s Rainbow yet, so don’t know the full extent of his inside joke. But the one soul I know who has slogged through and lived to tell the tale (swearing it’s a great read after the first 200 or so pages) assures me this is the case.

By: ed

ed — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:19:02 +0000

That’s a good question. Personally, I don’t mind little jokes like that. There are some authors (like Pynchon and G. Sorrentino) who feel the need to name their characters very strange or referential names. I don’t mind this, as I’ve encountered so many folks with names stranger than fiction.

By: Booksquare

Booksquare — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:16:51 +0000

apparently, this news did not reach Lompoc. It’s rough growing up in a city that is arguably the edge of cultural universe. That and I don’t watch many movies. Though, in reading previous Rushdie, one would get a sense of his movie mania.

So with this knowledge, does this make Updike’s comment quite logical or less important?

By: ed

ed — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 16:47:32 +0000

I should point out that Rushdie is a big-time film geek and that Ophuls was arguably one of the most important German filmmakers to come out of the 20th century.