new pynchon new pynchon new pynchon

wow i'm a little over halfway through against the day and it's killing me how amazing the narrative has become. kit in the mayonnaise factory was a recent favorite.

the part with merle rideout and the photographs coming to life... holy shit

you all saw there's a new pynchon right

yah maybe he'll finally write a good one

I thought this would be about the signed books that hit the market last month:

Well, we have the distinct pleasure to offer four signed books by Pynchon in our April 11 Rare Books Auction #6085, all inscribed to a young man named Michael Urban, who was fighting lymphoma at the time Pynchon signed the books to him in 1986. Urban's mother, Carla, wrote to Pynchon asking him to sign some books, and Pynchon replied that "it would be an honor to help out." We know this because Pynchon's original Typed Letter Signed replying to Carla Urban accompanies the first edition of Gravity's Rainbow, a rare instance of provenance in modern books, and likely the only time a signed book and related letter of provenance of Pynchon's have been sold together.

In this case, the Pynchon TLS is a vital aspect of this book in that it informs a potential buyer that one, Pynchon indeed signed the book himself; and two, the letter tells us WHY Pynchon signed the book: he at one time had a friend with lymphoma, he understood what a struggle it was, and felt the need to help out a boy suffering the same fate.

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I could find only two auction records for a signed copy of Gravity's Rainbow, the Drapkin copy inscribed to Ken Taub, sold at Christie's in 2005 and a copy sold at Swann in 1999. Each of these copies hammered for over $13,000, each an outstanding result, and indicative of the true rarity to be expected of a copy of this title graced by the pen-hand of its author. But neither of these two copies came with an additional letter, much less one signed by Pynchon himself. And neither, as far as I know, was inscribed to a young man battling cancer.

I think this is the premier copy of Gravity's Rainbow in the world, at least the best one so far revealed to the collecting public, and the book will surely be hotly contested over when our live session commences on Wednesday in New York City. A large part of the desirability is its provenance, which proves it to be a unique copy, tells us why it was signed, and also reveals a level of humanity in Mr. Pynchon not often glimpsed by those who don't know him personally.

The other three books inscribed to Michael Urban are also highly-desirable for the Pynchon inscriptions in them. These include first editions of The Crying of Lot 49 and Slow Learner, and a first Perennial Fiction Library edition of V. For Pynchon fans and collectors, this is a rare treat, as has been living with these books for the last two months. May they all find new homes, and go screaming across the sky to other collections.
http://historical.ha.com/c/newsletter.zx?frame=no&id=3709#collector-e

The letter itself is on ebay here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/American-Novelist-Thomas-Pynchon-Typed-Letter-Signed-/170968902943

yah maybe he'll finally write a good one

― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 8 January 2013 01:15 (8 hours ago)

have at ye! maybe ATD turns to shit in the second half, doubt it will though

you all saw there's a new pynchon right

no?

The Bleeding Edge

Apparently the Guardian phoned up Penguin in the UK to get confirmation and they were all "Really? First we've heard of it". But apparently it's been confirmed by the US.

Exciting anyway, I honestly didn't think there'd be another novel.

Me neither. Hope it's a long historical one, hopefully on a period he hasn't covered yet, and not another short 'wasn't the sixties cool?' one.

This is great news. I liked AtD, unwieldy and uneven as it was.

I recently picked up a copy of AtD for a song ($3). Whether I read it is still an open question, given that my last run at GR failed within 200pp.

it is much better and more readable imo, you should give it a shot. Like most Pynchon, it works best if you just wallow around in it and let it envelop you.

It is with joy and no little relief that we announce THOMAS PYNCHON to have last night completed a successful 'mindjack' of ilxor.com user imago, with his novel 'Against The Day'.

Said user was last seen searching for skyborne guardian angels, or at least open-minded peers, to lead this flawed human fabric to a kinder and more Compassionate place, and was also caught wondering about the theological implications of a gender-reversed Immaculate Conception - the fathering-without-issue - Cyprian as Virgin Mary...

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

'mind-jacking' is a v good phrase for AtD.

I just finished Ragtime by Doctorow. Merle Rideout has to be based on Pappi, right? Just, with the daughter, and where they end up, it seemed like a homage. Or a parody. One of the two. Ragtime is really great, btw, same period as AtD. Lots of anarchists and mexican revolutionaries.

hey look its my real name, hi my real name

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.