Anyone bought the new Thomas Pynchon book yet?

[Istvan diVega]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Never actually had anyone force their holiday stories on me that I can recall.

Lucky, lucky you. I have several horrible memories from the age of the slide projector. Minutes feeling like eons and a long-lived ache in my cheeks and jaw from keeping up a polite and interested smile.

[Dr. Drib]

The excerpt that doubleshuffle used is a wonderful example of the fluidity and beauty of Pynchon's writing.

Thanks!




Don

[doubleshuffle]

I've got a new favourite one, which is thrice as long , but I'm not going to post it because it would be kind of spoilerish.

Fortunately it isn't condescending in any way, so I feel a lot more comfortable consciencewise having that as my favourite sentence now.

[doubleshuffle]

How did I miss the hilarious trailer?




Oh, and here's another sentence I really like.

A serial line jumper has been making his way forward along the turkey line, a large white alpha male whose social skills, if any, are still in beta, intimidating people one by one out of his way.

[pynch]

It’s him! It’s him! Finally!

—

Still very curious about your new favourite sentence. In spoiler code, perhaps? With a huge warning? Prettyplease?

[doubleshuffle]

OK, on popular demand: my new favourite sentence. And on second thoughts it doesn't really contain spoilers. A little context may be needed: It's early September 2001, and the sentence describes the end of a nostalgic party where lots of IT folks from New York's "Silicon Alley" celebrated "like it's 1999", i.e. like it was before the dotcom bubble had burst.

Spoiler:

Faces already under silent assault, as if by something ahead, some Y2K of the workweek that no one is quite imagining, the crowds drifting slowly out into the little legendary streets, the highs beginning to dissipate, out into the casting-off of veils before the luminosities of dawn, a sea of T-shirts nobody’s reading, a clamor of messages nobody’s getting, as if it’s the true text history of nights in the Alley, outcries to be attended to and not be lost, the 3:00 A.M. kozmo deliveries to code sessions and all-night shredding parties, the bedfellows who came and went, the bands in the clubs, the songs whose hooks still wait to ambush an idle hour, the day jobs with meetings about meetings and bosses without clue, the unreal strings of zeros, the business models changing one minute to the next, the start-up parties every night of the week and more on Thursdays than you could keep track of, which of these faces so claimed by the time, the epoch whose end they’ve been celebrating all night—which of them can see ahead, among the microclimates of binary, tracking earthwide everywhere through dark fiber and twisted pairs and nowadays wirelessly through spaces private and public, anywhere among cybersweat-shop needles flashing and never still, in that unquiet vastly stitched and unstitched tapestry they have all at some time sat growing crippled in the service of—to the shape of the day imminent, a procedure waiting execution, about to be revealed, a search result with no instructions on how to look for it?

[pynch]

Fantastic! Why write a whole chapter if it all fits into one sentence?

[kennyc]

I just put a hold on it at the library. .... probably next year before I get it, but I'm not furious for him as others are.

[pynch]

Next year? How can you wait, we will have quoted all the best sentences here until then ...

Here’s one of my sillier favourites:

»I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers.«

[medard]

Really? Well, that is some kind of my favourite quote of one of my favourite authors.

Spoiler:

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by pynch

Next year? How can you wait, we will have quoted all the best sentences here until then ...

Here’s one of my sillier favourites:

»I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers.«

I'm not reading.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I just put a hold on it at the library. .... probably next year before I get it, but I'm not furious for him as others are.

I went ahead and bought it, but I'm going to finish one or two more light reads before dipping seriously into this new one.

I've been perusing it though, because I can't resist, reading bits and pieces to see how it compares to his masterpiece "Gravity's Rainbow." On the surface it seems to be written in a more accessible style, but I hope he hasn't dummied it down for those lazy readers who may happen by. (On the flip side, I wouldn't put it past him to attempt to attract those types of readers and use them as a kind of bait for his conspiracy theories. That would certainly be hilarious.)

I'm always interested in the area of critical analyses pertaining to Pynchon's works. While working on my Ph.D in Literature [not completed] there was a resident Pynchon scholar at my university, a person well-respected in his area of Pynchonian studies. Too, (as you may know, Kenny) there is a considerable body of literary criticism already extant on his oeuvre, with assuredly more dissertations and literary scholarship to follow with the publication of Pychon's current novel. All this to say that Pynchon is as unique as William Gaddis, William Vollmann, Don Delillo and other postmodernists who write dense, entertaining novels that are both challenging and fun to read.

Here's a link to a premier site for Pynchon scholarship:

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon...t_general.html




Don

[doubleshuffle]

Thanks for that link, Don.

The Pynchonwiki is also quite useful.

Regarding Bleeding Edge, I finished it yesterday, and I think it is absolutely wonderful. It isn't Gravity's Rainbow, it is certainly more accessible, but I still wouldn't say it's "dummied down". What I think Pynchon is getting better and better at, is a certain kind of heartbreaking melancholy; or perhaps I'm getting more receptive to it...

[pynch]

Dummying it down—would he even know how to? (Although I still hope that he will publish all those adventure novels about the Chums of Chance some day, preferably from the perspective of the dog.)

And wasn’t everything else written in a more accessible style than GR? As far as I remember, he rarely mentioned who he was talking about at the start of the chapters, something he hasn’t repeated afterwards.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by pynch

The New York Times: “Pynchonopolis” by Jonatham Lethem

The New York Times: “A Calamity Tailor-Made for Internet Conspiracy Theories” by Michiko Kakutani

Just read those two. Lethem gets it. Kakutani doesn't.