Is it Mexico’s usual priggish insensi-tivity, or does he know what he’s saying ? If there is nothing to link the rocket strikes—no reflex arc, no Law of Negative Induction . . . then . . . He goes in to Mexico each morning as to painful surgery. Spooked more and more by the choirboy look, the college pleasantries. But it’s a visit he must make. How can Mexico play, so at his ease, with these symbols of randomness and fright ? Innocent as a child, perhaps unaware—perhaps—that in his play he wrecks the elegant rooms of history, threatens the idea of cause and effect itself. What if Mexico’s whole generation have turned out like this ? Will Postwar be nothing but “events,” newly created one moment to the next ? No links ? Is it the end of history ?

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s rainbow

Derrière la porte du boulevard bourgeois il y a
une abominable odeur de merde humaine.

La Kobo s’apprivoise. Plus agréable pour lire Pynchon (c’est à cause de l’ergonomie).