new pynchon new pynchon new pynchon

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?

omg it happened again

Would totally play the shit out of a point-and-click Against The Day.

From the wiki:

According to Robert Bramkamp's docudrama about the V2 and Gravity's Rainbow, entitled Prüfstand VII, the BBC initiated a project to produce a film adaptation of Gravity's Rainbow between 1994 and 1997. Some unfinished footage is included in Bramkamp's film.[18] The Bramkamp movie includes other dramatized sequences from the novel as well, while the main focus is on Peenemünde and the V2.

Saw this, its ok, like lots of the footage, but its marred by a quirkyness that doesn't quite fit. However it was good to see an European take on GR

Someone should do a Pynchon inspired conspiracy/alt-history/anthology tv-show like Fargo called P.

I am in the middle of a second reading of GR (ten years since the last one) and one thought i keep having is that while it would be totally fun to see someone attempt to film it i just dont see how it wouldnt be a total disaster.

oh and the 10 year gap means that i am only slightly less lost than the first time, but i remember a unusually high number of set pieces and scenes, if in a disjointed fashion.

yeah kinda tantalizing xp cuz it lends itself to cinema better than yr average giant unfilmable novel -- frames of film as integral slices a key part of the image system; movie genre pastiches; musical sequences etc

laurie anderson says that she took his conditions for a GR musical adaptation (ukes only) as "a polite no" but why

I think a "free" -ish adaptation is the only way a film of GR might work.

Alex Ross Perry did do a very free version of it, though I haven't seen it. I haven't seen Inherent Vice either. And Pynchon is by far my favorite writer, I don't know what's wrong with me.

Inherent Vice is good but i feel like the distinctive qualities of Pynchon's voice only emerge intermittently.

gr = ten-hour anime

― imago, Sunday, August 14, 2016 3:48 AM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is exactly right: Studio Gainax or bust

ukes only = polite no
kazoos = yes do it

ows - the ten-hour anime of GR is one of the worst ideas ever and it pains me to see you subscribe to it, even if jokingly.

it's cute that someone's still hazing me in 2016

where would yous situate gravity's rainbow - in terms of difficulty - with reference to the rest of Pynchon's ooooeuvre? liked it but found it hard-going