Thomas Pynchon’s California: Hollywood, Fascism, and Rebellion

Poor Hollywood. Now that Paul Thomas Anderson has adapted Thomas Pynchon’s work not once, but twice — the upcoming One Battle After Another riffs on Pynchon’s 1990 novel, Vineland, with Leo to boot — someone’s assistant might actually have to read Gravity’s Rainbow. (That is, if they can’t get their hands on an advance copy of the author’s much shorter new novel, Shadow Ticket , out next month.)

Pynchon’s daunting masterpiece, a white whale of a Great American Novel, is stuffed with pun-tastic songs, rocket science and World War II-era occultism. It’s the kind of book grad students dare each other to read under the influence of illicit substances. But Hollywood should do its homework. If Pynchon is the high priest of 20th century postmodernism, he’s also proved a prophet of Amer