Comments and Questions re the Promo Video
Let's put some reactions to the video here. We can do better than the (mostly) mindless posts re the video on YouTube. Here are some starters:
So are these scenes from Manhattan Beach, Pynchon's "Gordita Beach"? Any clues from the publisher re how this video got made and uploaded? Could Pynchon have shot and edited this? (No doubt he approved it or it wouldn't have been uploaded, natch.)
And this is definitely Pynchon's voice, "doing" Doc? (Sure sounds different than the high-pitched voice on the Simpsons episode, though.)
Any clues about the music? Something Neil Young did, on request from TP? (Just a wild guess.)
The images emphasize how much "Gordita" has changed for the worse. Just about every space is partitioned, privatized, blocked, barricaded. And check out the black cat just when Doc starts meditating about bad karma. The fog, though, remains the same.
How many other books have been promoted by an "author" video playing with the p o v of one of the characters? Or is Pynchon the first, or one of the first, to catch this new wave? He's a goofyfoot rider, fer sure.
The whole thing's brilliant and funny and sad, right up to the kicker at the end. A "music video" for a novel! But far more than just a simple "promo." Notice how "Doc" is inside and outside of the book's time zone--he both talks about the story as if it's just beginning and he's living it AND as if he's outside of time, looking back, and a little lost, with his completed story residing in this book that some guy named Pynchon has published. --Pschmid1 05:39, 10 August 2009 (PDT)
Another question: if this is current footage, why does he (whoever he is) say '...later this will all be high-rise..' etc.? I take that to imply that Gordita/Manhattan as it was in Doc's/Pynchon's day has been built over? But the footage doesn't look 'old' does it? Hmmm.
--A "bi-location" video? (cf. this concept in Against the Day?) That is, the "time" and "place" the vid represents actually exists in 2 separate worlds, Gordita Beach then/now? Sort of like Doc's own space-time fogs.... Like Firesign Theater? (i.e., their 1969 album How Can You Be in Two Places at Once if You're Not Anywhere at All?" ....)
