Daily Archives: October 3, 2022

One man’s meat is another man’s Poisson (GRAVITY’S RAINBOW)

This is by far the most challenging book review I’ve ever had to write. I wrote it during my extended stint in Paris (1969-74), after requesting the assignment from an editor at The Village Voice. I was already a big Pynchon fan by then, having already reviewed The Crying of Lot 49 for my college newspaper, The Bard Observer. Years later, I would review both Vineland and Against the Day for the Chicago Reader, Mason & Dixon for In These Times, and Inherent Vice for Slate.

 

 

Eventually, after getting assigned to review Gravity’s Rainhow for the Voice in  1973, I received a copy of the bound, uncorrected galleys resembling the one seen below on the right, the marked-up copy of which I still possess today. One significant difference between this version and the published one is the epigraph preceding the fourth and final section, “The Counterforce”. In the published version, which I received shortly before completing my review, this is, “What?” — Richard M. Nixon. In the uncorrected proofs, this is, “She has brought them to her senses, /They have laughed inside her laughter, /Now she rallies her defenses, /For she fears someone will ask her /For eternity — /And she’s so busy being free….” Read more

Notes on the March to Montgomery

Here is my first-person reportage of the last laps of the original event, hurriedly written for the April 2, 1965 issue of the Bard Observer. I’ve only done a little bit of light editing on this text. — J.R.

Notes on the March to Montgomery

By Jonathan Rosenbaum

(Note: because of the haste with which this article was written, and because of its close proximity in time to the event itself, I cannot claim to be attempting anything definitive here, either in terms of impression or opinion. The following reactions are immediate and fragmented ones written only a few days after the march, and as such must suffer the defects of hurried writing and tentative suppositions. –- J.R.)

 

 

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We arrived in Montgomery by Wednesday afternoon, following Highway 80 through the middle of town and heading towards St. Jude. a Catholic hospital complex on the city’s outskirts whose property was being used as a campsite for the marchers. We drove a rented Avis car; the Hertz people in Atlanta, when they overheard what we were up to, had told us that they had no cars available, but being hospitable Southern folk had driven us over to their competitors a few blocks away. Read more