A screaming comes across the sky. . . .
Bookforum has an essay in its summer issue from book publisher Gerald Howard about the publication of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow plus appreciations by Don DeLillo, Richard Powers and others:
One Friday in summer 2004, I spent a memorable afternoon in the half-deserted offices of Viking Penguin going through the thick editorial file for Gravity's Rainbow. There was in this experience the poignance of office technologies past (carbons, telegrams, memos typed on manual typewriters) and the names of the distinguished departed—from Malcolm Cowley, Viking's longtime literary adviser, to other colleagues, mentors, and friends. But there was also the sheer fascination of peering behind the curtain like Dorothy to discover how the levers had been pulled to launch one of the most consequential novels of the twentieth century.