Pynchon Nods: Proust in Gravity's Rainbow, a new paper at The Modern Word

[Bleakhaus]

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_proust.html

New paper up at TMW: Proust in Gravity's Rainbow, by Erik Ketzan. Anyone well-acquinted with GR, do you think the thesis holds water?

I'm also working to get some more updates to you soon.

[Porphry]

I have only read GR once and cannot remember the Marcel character at all, but I did find the (your?) essay intruiging; likely bet (you've convinced me) is that the character is a composite, some of whose characteristics are taken from Proust.

[oneofmurphysbiscuits]

composite's good if you think about the robot riff, because i was about t say (re gutting or disgorging, the innards of Asimov's robots for instance) Pynchon seems obsessed or at least heavily preocccupied with narratives, source materials etc that he guts or deploys playyfully in order to subvert or put on display, for which purpose and because he can, a bit here, a bit there, composit seems apposite. This is how i read Pynchon and most especially Mason & Dixon

[I Am Not Hamlet]

Having just read the essay:
Puzzled the entire way through:
Why not Marcel DuChamp?
I mean, for an essay about a "Marcel" in a book, you miss one of the most important other Marcels that could have very easily fit the description. Consider: He too was a genius, and reading his writing, he too was often longwinded, and with his work, often too examined every part of an idea. He also fit the physical description of "very serious-looking French refugee kid, funny haircut with the ears perfectly outlined in hair that starts abruptly a quarter-inch strip of bare plastic skin away, black patent-shiny hair, hornrim glasses…”... Furthermore, Duchamp was also an excellent Chess player, and also not too far from Proust's birth date. And it just seems more to Pynchon's scientific and parady-tilt that it would be Duchamp over Proust in interest?
Strikes me as wierd not to even consider it in the essay, is all.