Prestige and Pynchon

Clancy and I saw The Prestige in the worst theater in the world on New Year’s Eve. I had read the considerably more interesting book (how could you eliminate the frame story?) immediately beforehand, and I find it curious that Michael Wood, who’s reviewed both the the film and Against the Day in the LRB didn’t mention the shared fascination with Tesla and the occult properties of electricity seen in both. (Of course, he may in fact have noticed and didn’t see the need to include every observation in his review, which I’m increasingly learning to be able to forgive…)

R. P. Blackmur’s analysis of the Mrs. Luce arsenic story is really quite striking in “The Logos in the Catacomb.”