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In his review of Inherent Vice (“High fidelity”, Culture, 29 January), Philip Kemp writes that “film-makers have so far fought shy” of adapting Thomas Pynchon’s novels. At the risk of pedantry, this is not always solely because of the challenge of the source material. The invisible author has made his own impositions on adaptations. When Laurie Anderson requested permission to write an opera of Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon replied that she could, “as long as it was scored entirely for solo banjo”.

Martin Paul Eve
Lecturer in English literature
University of Lincoln