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| | Thomas Pynchon’s evocation of London in Gravity’s Rainbow--Literary London conference--Gary Thompson |
 | | Not much in the opening is specific to London, but the atmosphere is highly referential, with evacuation, total flout, steam engines and coal smells, the movement through old wood smells and tarry ropes into an underground much like those used during the Blitz. |
 | | Even the railways move underground, into more dirty and brown and industrialized sections of the city, stopping “under the final arch.” World War II-era propaganda films stress pulling together to defy Hitler, but it is entirely plausible, a generation later, to entertain (via a willing suspension of disbelief) the narrator’s conjecture of paranoia. |
 | | The most significant use of London, then, is as the starting point for the literal and symbolic use of the city as the most significant of human technological creations, set against the natural world in a postmodern pastoral which is employed for both literary and rhetorical purposes. |
| www.svsu.edu /~glt/LitLondon.html (2226 words) |
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