new pynchon new pynchon new pynchon

Thomas Pynchon's new novel BLEEDING EDGE will be published on September 17, deals with Silicon Alley between dotcom boom collapse and 9/11.

lol

not read any neal stephenson yet (cryptonomicon lies in wait) but isn't that his turf

kinda :/ that 9/11 seemingly plays a pivotal part in this (yes, I read Falling Man, no it wasn't very good) but if anyone's gonna extract something profound from it, well...

just seems like so much else he could write about in the contemporary world, hopefully 9/11 will be ghosted beyond, beneath and above much like world war 1 in ATD (and world war 2 in GR)

I don't think they're really comparable (despite what… Charles Shaar Murray maybe?… says on the back of Cryptonomicon about it being like Gravity's Rainbow - that might be one of the wrongest points of comparison I've seen on a blurb).

Makes me a little anxious that he's taking this on, but then it's Pynchon, so pretty sure I will enjoy it at least.

as far as pivotal california moments go, this is a great one to pick.

have they said how many pages it is?

Haven't read Cryptonomicon, because I was afraid it would be like attempted GR Redux--also oh no, not WWII again---but did like Diamond Age, where his developing novelistic sensibility, incl reflections of a citizen of the world and grown-ass man, overtake cyberpunk tropes/cliches.

yeah, that wasn't even meant as a slam on Stephenson (who I run hot & cold on) it's just that he's not really like Pynchon - there's some subject matter/theme overlap, but Stephenson is pulpy, fun, not really a stylist, nowhere near as extreme, just not really in the same zone at all

yeah and can well imagine him wincing when first seeing that blurb on the jacket, invoking comparisons to GR

So this will be the latest period Pynchon has written about ever. Excited for that. Hope it will be a long one.

I mean a number of his novels were contemporary at the time he wrote them...

Oh, of course. But they aren't any more, was my point. There are so many interconnections in his fictions, so many things that he describes the foundation of in his historical fiction, and then shows what happened to it in the sixties in other books. I'm excited to see those threads being taken up to the millenium.

this, really

First page of bleeding edge

http://gothamist.com/2013/04/13/read_the_first_page_of_thomas_pynch.php

I'm excited

that last para is vintage stuff. "Sunlight reflected from apartment windows has begun to show up in blurry patterns on the fronts of the buildings across the street. Two-part buses, new on the routes, creep the crosstown blocks like giant insects. Steel shutters are being rolled up, early trucks are double-parking, guys are out with hoses cleaning off their piece of sidewalk. Unhoused people sleep in doorways, scavengers with huge plastic sacks full of empty beer and soda cans head for the markets to cash them in, work crews wait un front of buildings for the super to show up. Runners are bouncing up and down at the curb waiting for the lights to change."

So many perfect constructions. "new on the routes" -- the aside with the sense of absolute locatedness in time. "unhoused people." the informality of "guys are out," the persistant image of hosing-down time. The building sense of anticipation and movement out of snapshots of static description.

Earlier, the intense present-tense nowness of "This morning, all up and down the streets, what looks like every Callery Pear tree on the Upper West Side has popped overnight into identical white clouds of pear blossoms."

The description (which bears the marks of being written by pynchon) makes me worry this will be a bit slight. But I didn't find IV slight, so maybe I don't have anything to worry about.

I found Inherent Vice slight.....ly hilarious <3

I think of that "yikes, scoob" scene from IV all the time.

froot loops again, i guess.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html

Really, the guy lives on the Upper West Side and we don't have a photo of him?

New book kinda...sucks. Does not live up to Inherent Vice.

on a subtextural level there's a cleverness to it but it takes reading the whole thing and musing for a bit on why it's so disappointing in a traditional sense.

I dreamt I read it last night. And liked it. I couldn't explain why.

flicked through this in a bookshop last night... opening quote from donald e. westlake!

oh man, today's the day. tempted to play hooky from work.

I thought it was today but saw it in Waterstone's on Saturday. 100pp in; I'm really enjoying it so far.

It's got its own thread by the way:

Bleeding Edge, by Thomas Pynchon. Due September 2013

ohhh the cultural references seem like they're going to make me sad

So I re-read GR last week and I was wondering what other reading this lead you to.

I think I have a copy of Scholem's book on the Kaballah, read a good article on the German genocide/occupation in South-West Africa, read some good amount of Rilke, and this makes me want to return to the latter's work. The Erotics of suicide bit was fantastic, echoes of Mishima in a way.

I want something on the Tarot? Is there a guide anywhere?

this may be nuts, and more knowledgable people may be able to point elsewhere (sure AE Waite wrote something that might even pass for scholarly) but I really like The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley.

get a Rider-Waite deck and 'The Complete Guide to the Tarot' by Eden Gray is a good place to start for a newbie.

and Fizzles ain't nuts - 'Book of Thoth' is one of the best books and essential if you get into his deck, but probably too much Crowley for the uninitiated.

Also, if you want to know more about Tarot in Pynchon, be sure to read the chapters of Against the Day where Lew Basnight comes to London. There are some really interesting ideas about characters and the Tarot, which offers a complete way to interpret pretty much all Pynchons books. Though it's obviously just a lark. The parallels between Slothrop and Basnight are really interesting, though.

Been curious abt Crowley in about forever so maybe its time. Thx for all recommends!

at one point I looked around for any other references to the Kirghiz Light and eventually assumed that Pynchon just made it up.

finished a few months back: and LOVED (it took me several years and one complete re-start)

favourite moment = when i suddenly realised the story was unavoidably approaching the tunguska incident

(more in-world overlap with vineland: the traverses are ancestors of frenesi)

Oh, I just got my hope up that a new was on the way :(

Another possible in-world overlap: Lew Basnight is described as The Fool in the Tarot conspiracy, and he seemingly has the ability to move between worlds. Tyrone Slothrop also becomes The Fool and vibrates his way out of this world.

man this thread makes me sad: I don't know whether I could imagine approaching that specific modality of enthusiasm ever again

xp

as i was reading i was often wondering if it was going to intersect more definitively with GR

(there's a throwaway bodine but i don't really count that)

thomp the film fired me up all over again :)

the film of IV i mean, there isn't an ATD film scheduled yet

was loving against the day last time i got halfway through it but then it disappeared; this was a couple years ago but just last week i ordered another copy actually.

honestly was relieved when this revive didn't mean a new one.

have the monk notes from which ATD's epigraph is taken on my wall.

i got halfway through it but then it disappeared

when the weird shift happens in ATD with the Balloon Boys section it is very disorienting, but it eventually gets back on (an alternate reality?) track. I am really looking forward to re-reading this.

Best Name Award goes to Bevis Moistleigh this time, speshly if Bevis is pronounced how I suspect

note. - the name bevis should be pronounced with a short e (the fact there is a richard jefferies ref in atd = awesomeness!)

i really do need to read this through again without the multi-year gap of my first go through.

yeah this book is like the greatest thing

I took dlh to mean his copy literally went missing, hence ordering a new one

this is probably my favourite Pynchon of the four I've read

it might be his best, which puts it somewhere at or near the literary pinnacle. maybe gr is still more mysterious and holistic or w/e but this is a thousand pages of dropped jaw

and no it shouldn't be filmed

gr = ten-hour anime
m&d = hbo series
atd = the point-and-click to end them all

I took dlh to mean his copy literally went missing, hence ordering a new one

yeah this. if it were GR i'd say it disintegrated; won't be sure until reread what the michelson-morley-metaphorical equivalent is.

displaced?