flâneur

We’re All Living Under Gravity’s Rainbow | WIRED

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Looming apocalypse. Paranoid conspiracies. Rocket-obsessed oligarchs. As Thomas Pynchon’s novel turns 50, its world feels unnervingly present.

Black curtains hang in the windows of a dinky suburban LA apartment, two blocks from the Pacific, blotting out the light. Inside, Thomas Pynchon—early thirties, awkward, with a Zappa ’stache—scribbles on reams of graph paper. The scene is spartan: a cot, some books, a messy pile of correspondence, a collection of chintzy piggy banks. On his desk sits an ad hoc model rocket, jerry-rigged together from a paper clip and an old pencil eraser. A friend of Pynchon's described the vibe in a gentlemen’s magazine as “a monk’s cell decorated by the Salvation Army.” Outside, the world rages on. The…

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