Here’s a quick one; I couldn’t let the month of fifty years since Gravity’s Rainbow‘s detonation into the world fly past uncelebrated!

Back to the Casino Hermann Goering, just post the Veuve and the vulgar song, where Slothrop’s a bit out of it, his drunken dissolution presaging perhaps his later existential dissolution, and the waiters are switching to the cheap Champagne:

He looks across at Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck, who is still miraculously upright though with a glaze about the eyes. Aha, right, s’posed to be counter-conspiring here, yes yes uh, now . . . he gets involved watching another pyramidal fountain, this time of sweet Taittinger with no date on the label.

Gravity’s Rainbow, p. 213.

Sadly I had too much counter-conspiring to be getting on with here to manage the full Champagne pyramid, but we have at least poured a couple of glasses.

Cheers to 50 years under Gravity’s Rainbow! May corks fly parabolic from bottles the world over!