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a week early? bastards :(

― tom west (thomp), Friday, 10 November 2006 21:07 (nineteen years ago)

i too was incensed and put out until i decided that he meant monday the 20th. i hope.

― Josh (Josh), Saturday, 11 November 2006 00:33 (nineteen years ago)

'League on league of filth'

― the pinefox (the pinefox), Saturday, 11 November 2006 09:56 (nineteen years ago)

Josh, how ya been, sir?

LA Times review

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 20 November 2006 23:52 (nineteen years ago)

From the reviews I've read it seems like TP has deliberately, almost sadistically, set out to write the novel that would most enrage James Wood - the ne plus ultra of hysterical realism.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 01:04 (nineteen years ago)

man fuck amazon

― Josh (Josh), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 01:43 (nineteen years ago)

Michiko weighs in here. And, uh, she wasn't too happy with it.

― jamesy (SuzyCreemcheese), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 02:16 (nineteen years ago)

i'll wait for the frying of latke 49

― a.b. (alanbanana), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 02:59 (nineteen years ago)

got it and read the first 30 today!

― rems (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 04:04 (nineteen years ago)

man fuck amazon

Sans punctuation, the previous statement can be interpreted in more than one way. I think I interpreted it in a manner different from the original intent. (Kinda a caveman announcing his conquest of a large, war-like woman.)

So why's Amazon decided to bundle Against the Day with Life of Pi, emphasizing that if I purchase both I shall save an additional 5%?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 06:19 (nineteen years ago)

i like the la times review better than the ny times

this is gonna be the best thing since "the english assassin"

― HUNTA-V (vahid), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 07:03 (nineteen years ago)

Man it's fucking heavy.

― VALLEY OF BLIZZARDZ (Mr.Que), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 14:59 (nineteen years ago)

josh otm :(

― tom west (thomp), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 16:23 (nineteen years ago)

Man, it's getting creamed in the reviews.

― Mike Lisk (b_buster), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 20:22 (nineteen years ago)

There was an embargo on review copies though, wasn't there? I wonder how much time/consideration they've been able to put into the doorstop.

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 20:55 (nineteen years ago)

The Louis Menand review in the New Yorker starts out like it's going to be a pan, but ends up making you want to read the book - even considering the ridiculous length.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 21:05 (nineteen years ago)

The link: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/061127crbo_books

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 21:06 (nineteen years ago)

i just bought it and read the first few pages already. its a totally gr8 tom swift parodyish type thing so far. the language is pitch-perfect. i think i'll really like this. this thread needs to live and live and live as we all read and discuss this thing.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 21:31 (nineteen years ago)

ok also all the reviews saying this book is "plotless" are making me think "no grail quest! fantastic!"

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 21:33 (nineteen years ago)

I've just read the first chapter too. I love that register.

― stet (stet), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 22:17 (nineteen years ago)

I'm one chapter from the end of Vineland (my first go-round with Pynchon) as discussed in another thread. I love it!, and was ready to dive into GR next, but all of this enthusiasm for ATD has me thinkin' I'll pick it up tomorrow and join Sterling in hoping we can keep the thread going, discussing as we go. My guess is this book will not give rise to many critical 'spoiler' opportunities, by nature?

― Docpacey (docpacey), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 00:05 (nineteen years ago)

no grail quest? the review above sez it's got about a dozen of them

man FUCK amazon, i ordered new headphones on the weekend and they already showed up in my mailbox today!

― Josh (Josh), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 00:15 (nineteen years ago)

Proverbs 21:31 - The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD.

Any other potential referents for the title?

― hearditonthexico (rogermexico), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 00:23 (nineteen years ago)

Just finished Ch. 1, and having reread Mason and Dixon a few months ago I gotta ask:

AGAIN with the talking dog?

― It's the lazy and immoral way to become super hip. (Austin, Still), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 00:44 (nineteen years ago)

more potential refs (thanx google!):

faulkner: "We speak now against the day when our Southern people who will resist to the last these inevitable changes in social relations, will, when they have been forced to accept what they at one time might have accepted with dignity and goodwill, will say: 'Why didn't someone tell us this before? Tell us this in time?'"

book of peter: "But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."

tyndale (a 16th cent translator of the bible): "I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches, might be given me."

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 01:10 (nineteen years ago)

in any case, certainly biblical and apocalyptical in connotations

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 01:11 (nineteen years ago)

AGAIN with the talking dog?

Like you can have too many? Wait til you get to the runcible spoon fight in chapt... oh, but I've said too much already...

― hearditonthexico (rogermexico), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 01:37 (nineteen years ago)

Page 4, line 13: a screaming comes across the sky!

― hearditonthexico (rogermexico), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 08:16 (nineteen years ago)

He's more of a reading dog this time, isn't he?

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 09:23 (nineteen years ago)

I think it might be fruitful to compare Pynchon's way with boy's own yarns with Kenneth Koch's 'The Red Robins' (I know that Barthelme was a big fan).

Ezra Tessler gives a summary:

the most striking example of Koch’s literary inventiveness is ‘The Red Robins’ (1975), the longest piece in the collection and perhaps the most well known of Koch’s relatively unacknowledged fiction. This dizzying 56 chapter, 150 page novel-like epic explodes into free-form prose, poetry, drama, and countless other incarnations of literary expression. Resiliently difficult to summarize, Koch’s hyperkinetic tale loosely follows the adventures of a group of pilots led by a morally ambiguous figure named Santa Claus as they swoop in and around Asia. The Red Robins inhabit—as if at random—jungles, cities, beaches, and clouds, while the story’s fantastical whims burst in and out of narrative, dialogue, list, rhyme, unconnected to specific time or event. There are no ‘characters’ in the traditional sense of robust personage. Instead, the reader meets a barrage of people, things, and places, some of which appear multiple times, most of which only momentarily. Together they get heaped in a spontaneous whirlwind so schizophrenic and bawdy as to rival the likes of Rabelais, Sterne, and Burroughs.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 09:30 (nineteen years ago)

The fact, btw, that the dog is reading Henry James makes me think that TP really does have it in for James Wood in this book and that this isn't merely a whim of mine. The fact that the book contains a sect with the acronym TWIT might also speak to Wood's disparagement of Zadie Smith's KEVIN in 'White Teeth'...

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 09:35 (nineteen years ago)

the campus bookstore said the british release date is 5th dec :(

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 13:37 (nineteen years ago)

They were loads of copies all over London yesterday!

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 13:40 (nineteen years ago)

and glasgow!

― stet (stet), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 13:58 (nineteen years ago)

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 14:02 (nineteen years ago)

Enough with the ridiculous James Wood theory, Jerry. You're almost being as ridiculous as TP. Wood knows crap when he sees it and White Teeth was pure crap.

― Mike Lisk (b_buster), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 15:24 (nineteen years ago)

I think you've got the wrong end of a whole tree of sticks there, Mike.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 16:36 (nineteen years ago)

"almost as ridiculous as Thomas Pynchon" is a fine thing to live up to, in writing as in life

― tom west (thomp), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

Linking a 10 min discussion on Radio 3's Nightwaves, where some of the subjects in the novel are talked about. This includes some stuff on cricket!

(click on 'tuesday' and fast fwd to 35 mins and available for a week)

― xyzzzz__ (jdesouza), Wednesday, 22 November 2006 23:34 (nineteen years ago)

My favourite Pynchonpassage is GR's evensong "Gorgeous singing mingles with the warm smells of candle smoke and melting wax, of smothered farting, of hair tonic, of the burning oil itself, folding the other odours in a maternal way, more closely belonging to Earth, to deep strata, other times..." And I think by page 50 I've got my first hint of that:

"squints from needlework carried past the borderlands of sleep in clockless bad light, women in headscarves, crocheted fascinators, extravagantly flowered hats, no hats at all, women just looking to put their feet up after too many hours of lifting, fetching, walking the jobless avenues, bearing the insults of the day..."

I also enjoyed Frankie Ferdinand saying " 'st los Hund?".

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Thursday, 23 November 2006 00:35 (nineteen years ago)

"Fascinators"?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 23 November 2006 00:54 (nineteen years ago)

100+ pages in and yeah around page 50 or so, right in the section where it creeps over to the first Webb stuff, the language hits that intimate pynchon register, warm and knowing and creepy and sympathetic all at once. the webb sequence built around flashbacks while setting up the bridge is excellent -- feels tres dos passos actually. he might be a good referrant for lots of the novel so far.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Thursday, 23 November 2006 01:25 (nineteen years ago)

three months pass...

Wood's review is in:

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070305&s=wood030507

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 02:02 (nineteen years ago)

The speed reading class paid off!

― Casuistry, Wednesday, 14 March 2007 17:41 (nineteen years ago)

can someone paste the full thing here?

― jed_, Thursday, 15 March 2007 23:10 (nineteen years ago)

Just tried, but there's a limit to how much text you can paste in nu ILx and I can't be arsed to do it in multiple chunks. Does this link work? http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070305&s=wood030507

Sad to report I pretty much agree with Wood. I used to think that Pynchon was my favourite living novelist, but now I have to conclude that I only really *really* like 'Gravity's Rainbow'.

― Stevie T, Friday, 16 March 2007 14:02 (nineteen years ago)

I pretty much agree with Wood as well, in fact as a very broad generalisation I tend to like much the same sort of novels as he does for much the same sort of reasons. Where I part company with him is in his messianic conviction that people who have different tastes from him (us) have somehow got it all wrong. Reading a book this long by Pynchon would be unbearable tedium for me, but if other people enjoy reading it, as this thread proves that they do, that's absolutely fine by me. (I do agree with Wood that Pynchon, among others, has been a malign influence on Zadie Smith; and that its a great pity because Smith is potentially an astonishing talent; but it's hardly Pynchon's fault that Smith is dazzled by him.)

― frankiemachine, Friday, 16 March 2007 20:52 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.powells.com/review/2007_03_01.html

― s.clover, Saturday, 17 March 2007 19:26 (nineteen years ago)

well written but typical of the point-missing, i think, plus it seems to switch arguments midstream a few times too often.

― s.clover, Sunday, 18 March 2007 06:59 (nineteen years ago)

the "easy to like politically" thing seems like a jibe in the review at vagueness, then maybe a positive quality, then a jibe again, and what the lists have to do with the complaints v/v sketchy characters is beyond me, not to mention the ishe/isn'the pointless digression on imagination vs. research and then the ishe/isn'the on pomo which is beyond dull coz ok the early thesis about the two forms of novels is sort of fine -- the exterior and the interior except its also not because there are plenty of interior novels told thru exterior methods for example + the point about the latent classicism of pomo is both more ancient than he acknowledges plus more interesting than he concedes + anyway the big gripe is the utterly false "pynchon can't write characters" trope which really seems to stem from critics not bothering to pay attention to the careful arc that does structure all the central characters in the book, none of whom really are puppetlike in any fashion.

also the passages he lists are similar in that they involve lists of interesting things, and i suppose he's conceded that he doesn't see much point in dwelling on the actual contents of the lists, but for anyone who does (which i assume includes the p-man himself) then the lists actually seem awfully different. and the whole projecting a pomo that ain't on to the description of e.g., new orleans, is particularly dumb and seems just to be a projection of jw's fear of thick, rich, exterior description.

― s.clover, Sunday, 18 March 2007 07:07 (nineteen years ago)

Skipping 152 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

On the 50th anniversary of Gravity’s Rainbow’s publication, it’s worth remembering that Laurie Anderson once asked Thomas Pynchon if she could stage it as an opera. His answer? Yes, as long as the whole thing was scored solely for banjo pic.twitter.com/jh0REahy0O
— David Hering (@hering_david) February 28, 2023

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 1 March 2023 10:26 (three years ago)

Paging Bela Fleck…

― o. nate, Wednesday, 1 March 2023 14:38 (three years ago)

Lol

― Wile E. Galore (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, 1 March 2023 14:52 (three years ago)

Part of the attraction to Wendell "Mucho" Maas ("Mucho baby," as she addresses him at one point, indicating that he may well have mucho sex appeal)

"Mucho" means "Lot." Oedipa is Lot's wife.

― alimosina, Wednesday, 1 March 2023 15:09 (three years ago)

two years pass...

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316427/shadow-ticket-by-thomas-pynchon/

― alimosina, Wednesday, 9 April 2025 14:09 (one year ago)

More discussion on ILE

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 9 April 2025 21:40 (one year ago)

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