As President Nixon was drowning in the cesspool of Watergate, Professor Irwin Corey accepted the National Book Award in 1973 at Carnegie Hall on behalf of reclusive Gravity’s Rainbow author Thomas Pynchon.

The opening of Gravity’s Rainbow rivals that of A Tale of Two Cities and Anna Karenina:

“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it’s all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No lights anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it’s night. He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall–soon–it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light only great invisible crashing.”