Chapter 21

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page numbers refer to editions with 369 pages, where the story begins on page 1. Not sure if there are other editions with variant pagination. Please let us know otherwise.

Page 364

. . . the Lakers would lose Game 7 of the finals to the Knicks
Friday, May 8, 1970. The final score was Knicks 113, Lakers 99.

Pages 368/369

Gordita Beach Exit

On the last two pages of IV, Doc Sportello is on the Santa Monica freeway which then merges onto the San Diego, heading south:

Doc figured if he missed the Gordita Beach exit he'd take the first one whose sign he could read and work his way back on surface streets. He knew that at Rosecrans the freeway began to dogleg east, and at some point, Hawthorne Boulevard or Artesia, he'd lose the fog.

This series of street names and off-ramps points to Manhattan Beach where it is believed Pynchon wrote much of Gravity's Rainbow while living in a tiny beach apartment in the north end of the city around 1969 or 1970. The Manhattan Beach Boulevard exit Is between the Rosecrans exit and the Hawthorne exit. The Artesia exit is after Hawthorne. Google Maps; Much more about Pynchon in Manhattan Beach...