The Story Behind the Story Behind “The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy”

The Story Behind the Story Behind “The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy” Markus Krajewski, author of In Thomas Pynchon’s cult classic Gravity’s Rainbow, an immortal lightbulb named Byron runs afoul of a secretive international industrial alliance known as the Phoebus cartel. When the cartel detects that Byron has exceeded his programmed life span, the Committee on Incandescent Anomalies dispatches a hit man to take Byron out. Markus Krajewski, like many readers, found the story both “wild and weird.” And yet, he says, “I knew that Pynchon’s prose style mixes fact and fiction, and so I wondered: Could this be true?” Turns out, many parts of Pynchon’s tale were indeed based on fact: There really was a Phoebus cartel, and it really did target lightbulbs. Krajewski learned that Pynchon had relied on bona fide economic histories in weaving his tale of the cartel, including George W.



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