The Reluctant Tries to Remain Impartial Too, But…
The BBC has banned its journalists from writing newspaper and magazine columns pertaining to current affairs. The m.o.? “Impartiality.” The ban extends to both staff and freelancers. There is at least...
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Thanks to computers, professor Floyd Horowitz has uncovered 24 stories likely to have been authored by Henry James. Using common phrases, themes and pen names (the same methodology used to track down...
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Primer: Winner of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The film was made for $7,000, doesn’t appear to have a distribution deal yet, but somehow manages to involve time travel...
View ArticleMore Fun with Amazon
Amazon has recently instituted “text stats,” which measures a book by Fleish-Kincaid index (the higher you go, the more difficult it is to read), percentage of complex words and words per dollar. Now...
View ArticleNew Pynchon Book?
From Scott comes this rumor that Pynchon has a new book out in December from Viking, set in 1897 Chicago. There is nothing currently listed at the Amazon site, nor on the Penguin site, but the...
View ArticlePynchon Description
From Pynchonoid (via the Rake), a description for Pynchon’s next novel from the main man himself: Spanning the period between the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this...
View ArticleNew Pynchon Novel Gets a Name
Associated Press: The book is called Against the Day. Penguin publicist Tracy Locke has also confirmed that Pynchon wrote the blurb.
View ArticleImagine If All Those Energies Went to Deconstructing the Text Instead of...
If you think litbloggers have too much spare time, check out this obsessive video, whereby a bunch of Pynchon freaks dissect a shadowy two-second video image of Pynchon walking down the streets of New...
View ArticleThe Prying Into Lot 49
Ron Silliman has an excellent post up about the documentary Thomas Pynchon — A Journey Into the Mind of P. and auctorial anonymity.
View ArticlePynchon Date Moved Up
Chris Sweet observes that Amazon has bumped Against the Day‘s release date up to November 21.
View ArticlePynchon Galleys Personalized
John Freeman observes that the galleys of Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day are now being circulated, with the recipient’s name on the galley. I just sent the following email to Paul Slovak: Paul:...
View ArticleNew Thomas Pynchon a Terry Malloy?
According to Marianne Wiggins, one of the fiction judges for this year’s National Book Awards, “As for Pynchon, it was patently obvious it wasn’t a contender.'”
View ArticlePynchon Red Alert
I’ve been informed that Against the Day is now in transit from New York. Reading and reporting will begin IMMEDIATELY upon its arrival. [UPDATE: Mr. Orthofer has his copy and offers some details.]
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Occupied
First page: epigraph from Thelonious Monk. Flip. Next page: Seal. Flip. Title page: One. The Light Over the Ranges. Flip. “Now single up all lines!” “Cheerly now…handsomely…very well! Prepare to cast...
View ArticlePynchon Roundtable Forthcoming
Hear ye! Hear ye! Adept literary connoisseurs and other devoted followers of the Chums of Chance may wish to note that a roundtable, it being an interchangeable variable to be squared in a forthcoming...
View ArticleJerome Weeks Embraces Blog Form More Adroitly Than Expected
Jerome Weeks complains about Pynchon and writes (even though he admits that he hasn’t read the entirety of Mason & Dixon), “His best work remains The Crying of Lot 49. There’s something to be said...
View ArticleMore Takes on Pynchon
Christopher Sorrentino Ian Rankin (!) Carlin Romano Donna Liquori insists that girls don’t like Pynchon. (Huh? I’m sure that Pynchon tattoo-donning Carolyn would disagree.) Steven Moore Malcolm Jones...
View ArticleAdd Another Chick Who Reads Pynchon to the List
Laura Miller weighs in. She doesn’t like it.
View ArticleAgainst the Fray
Thomas Pynchon may not have been susceptible to the Rake’s $49 check (and neither apparently is Dave Eggers), but the Ian McEwan flap has had Pynchon issuing a letter in support of McEwan. Then again,...
View ArticleDue to Recent Legal Threats, This Blog Will Now Be Known as “Blog Posts...
Georgie Lewis of Tin House writes in with the following news: The highly anticipated publication of artist/provocateur Zak Smith’s visual homage to Thomas Pynchon’s seminal novel Gravity’s Rainbow took...
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“Against the Day” Roundtable, Part One
[NOTE: The discussion can also be followed at Metaxucafe. Previous installments: Part Two (Carolyn) and Part Three (Megan).] It was with great fortitude and due diligence that the New Chums of Chance,...
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“Against the Day” Roundtable, Part Two
[VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: In case it wasn’t clear, the Quite Balding Moderator wishes to note that this post came from the mordant wit of Carolyn Kellogg and not from his dunder-soaked head.] [IMPORTANT...
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“Against the Day” Roundtable, Part Three
[NOTE: The discussion can also be followed at Metaxucafe. Previous installments: Part One (Max) and Part Two (Carolyn).] The New Chums of Chance rose further into the sky, wondering if Pynchon’s opus...
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“Against the Day” Roundtable, Part Four
[NOTE: The discussion can also be followed at Metaxucafe. Previous installments: Part One (Max), Part Two (Carolyn) and Part Three (Megan).] The New Chums of Chance, aided by associative penchant and a...
View ArticlePynchon and Protestantism
American Prospect: “It’s easy to mistake Pynchon’s jittery, inventive monologues and his resentment of social order for the ramblings of a stoner hippie. But if Pynchon is a hippie he also drank his...
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Review: Taking Woodstock (2009)
The realities were already fixed; the illness was understood to be terminal, and the energies of The Movement were long since dissipated by the rush to self-preservation. — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear...
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