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Newo
~ Abstract Brain ~
Spain
2674 Posts |
 Posted - 07/27/2006 : 09:49:02
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December launch for Thomas Pynchon's latest novel
Staff and agencies - Friday July 21, 2006 - Guardian Unlimited
Article URL: The Guardian UK
The long wait could be over for Thomas Pynchon fans. His first novel in nearly a decade is coming out in the US on December 5.
But the release, as with so much else about the elusive author of contemporary classics such as The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, is shrouded in mystery. Since the 1997 release of Mason & Dixon, a characteristically broad novel which followed the travails of two 18th-century astronomers charting the disputed borderline between Pennsylvania and Maryland, new writings by Pynchon have been limited to the occasional review or essay, such as his introduction for a reissue of George Orwell's 1984. He has, of course, continued to shun the media and avoid photographers, though he has turned up twice on The Simpsons, appearing in one episode with a bag over his head.
This much is known about the new book: it's called Against the Day and will be published by Penguin Press. It will run to at least 900 pages.
The author will not be going on a promotional tour.
"That will not be happening, no," Penguin publicist Tracy Locke told the Associated Press on Thursday.
Like JD Salinger (who at one point Pynchon was rumoured to be), the 69-year-old Pynchon is that rare sort of author who inspires fascination by not talking to the press. Alleged Pynchon sightings, like so many UFOs, have been common over the years - his new book has inspired another round of Pynchon-ology on Slate and other Internet sites.
A description of the book - apparently written by Pynchon himself - has been posted on Amazon.com. It offers a tantalising glimpse of the coming work.
Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.
As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.
Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.
Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.
The description was at first removed from the site, with Penguin denying any knowledge of its appearance, and subsequently re-posted. According to Amazon spokesman Sean Sundwall, Penguin requested the posting's removal "due to a late change in scheduling on their part".
Locke declined to comment on why the description was taken down, but did reluctantly confirm two details provided by Sundwall, that the book is called Against the Day (no title is listed on Amazon) and that Pynchon indeed wrote the blurb, which warns of more confusion to come.
"Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur," Pynchon writes. "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."
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Gravy boat! Stay in the now! |
Edited by - Newo on 07/27/2006 09:55:51 |
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apl4eris
~ Abstract Brain ~
USA
4800 Posts |
Posted - 07/27/2006 : 10:08:03
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woohoo indeed! Thanks for the tip, newo!
by the way, not sure if you like or know Laurie Anderson's work, but in her latest performance, "The End of the Moon", she talks about her attempt to get Pynchon's permission to let her score a sort of "opera" of "Gravity's Rainbow". Amazingly, he called her back, and agreed to her request, with one stipulation:
that any composer who wants to make an opera out of his novels must score them for solo banjo...
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Homers_pet_monkey
= Official forum monkey =
United Kingdom
17125 Posts |
Posted - 07/27/2006 : 10:40:17
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Sounds interesting, I might have to check him out.
A new band I like have a song called Gravity's Rainbow, so I may start with that one. Good place to start?
 I'd walk her everyday, into a shady place
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starmekitten
-= Forum Pistolera =-
United Kingdom
6370 Posts |
Posted - 07/27/2006 : 10:55:37
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I'd start with the crying of lot 49 myself but that's me.
"You're not too big to go over my knee young man" |
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Newo
~ Abstract Brain ~
Spain
2674 Posts |
Posted - 07/28/2006 : 09:26:50
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I heard Pynchon makes a point of asking people not to perform the songs in his books, parently he got his lawyer to halt Robert Palmer (the critic) playing some from V. I can´t resist, me and my band have put melodies to the Parisian 3/4 one in Gravity´s Rainbow sung by the German witch with the balalaika, and tomorrow night got a concert going to air out a new one with a couple of verses from the I´m A Cop from Vineland translated into Spanish.
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Gravy boat! Stay in the now! |
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woo-hoo
