Does Thomas Pynchon have a new book out?
September 11, 2015 9:40 AM   Subscribe

 
No?
posted by chavenet at 9:42 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Maybe?
posted by Gin and Comics at 9:45 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Possibly not, but if we spend enough time and effort acting as if he had, there's no way any late-comers could tell that he hadn't. We just need to be sure to use Pynchony names while doing so.

Yours Sincerely,
Leonard "Lenny" Puffe-Blaeder
posted by benito.strauss at 9:48 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Trystero?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:48 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


A better question: Is Wanda Tinasky now publishing as Adrian Jones Pearson?
posted by OmieWise at 9:49 AM on September 11, 2015 [10 favorites]


What a waste.
posted by I-baLL at 9:51 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I love this, actually. I am reasonably persuaded. And as someone who has spent the last decade or so studying literature, I secretly feel like making a discovery like this that escaped everybody else's notice would be the best way to prove that I am the Best At Reading and nobody else is as Good at Reading as me. In other words, my secret dream.
posted by pretentious illiterate at 10:00 AM on September 11, 2015 [25 favorites]


Is this book Frog Fractions 2?
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:02 AM on September 11, 2015 [8 favorites]


Even if it is not Pynchon, this review has made me interested enough to pick up the book. So there is that.
posted by Hactar at 10:13 AM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


That's like asking if Abe Vigoda is dead.
Or asking ...anything... about J.D. Salinger.


Pynchon would. But did he?
*shrug*
posted by Smedleyman at 10:16 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Well, I am the exact opposite of convinced. Apparently the author said "In fact, we’d probably prefer to read a crap book by well-known writer [sic] than a great book by a writer who may happen to be obscure.” That sounds to me much more like a nobody with a chip on their shoulder than a big name testing themselves with a pseudonym.

If I were to guess an author from the book, I would put a lot more weight on the fact that the book's protagonist is a middle-aged, twice-divorced man working as a mid-level administrator at a rural community college, and that the plot revolves around the local bureaucracy of that college. To me, I would guess the author is not so different from the protagonist. I imagine a failed MFA who found a career in university administration but is now attempting to find purpose in his life by writing a novel. A little like the NSA spy the Intercept wrote about last month.
posted by crazy with stars at 10:16 AM on September 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Does Pig Bodine make an appearance?
posted by lagomorphius at 10:19 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Pynchon is 78. If he's still writing that much and having fun with it, good on him.
posted by gwint at 10:42 AM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I secretly feel like making a discovery like this that escaped everybody else's notice would be the best way to prove that I am the Best At Reading and nobody else is as Good at Reading as me.

It would be cool but it's so cool that it makes the whole thing sound like bullshit. They don't outright admit that this is the case, but I'm pretty sure that the Harpers writer here was convinced it was Pynchon before they ever opened the book.

That doesn't mean I'm not entirely convinced.
posted by The Devil Tesla at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2015


The byline of the article's author:

Art Winslow, an independent critic and former literary and executive editor of the Nation, is at work on a novel.

wait
posted by SmileyChewtrain at 11:08 AM on September 11, 2015 [5 favorites]


Hactar: "Even if it is not Pynchon, this review has made me interested enough to pick up the book. So there is that."

Well there you go, welcome to marketing!
posted by chavenet at 11:13 AM on September 11, 2015 [6 favorites]


I found the idea intriguing enough that I waded through this badly written thumbsucker, only to discover that there was essentially zero evidence. Or, more precisely:
With a magnifying glass, one could look closely and find what seem to be minor instances of Pynchon jokes from earlier novels recycled in Cow Country, tweaked for their new context, perhaps the most specific evidence if one were searching for a smoking gun (“closure”) linking Pearson and Pynchon. But ...
But I'm not going to give you any specific evidence, just some funny names and a "feeling of dislocation"! Verdict: bullshit.
posted by languagehat at 11:21 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


Reminds me of another overreaching Harper's article about Barthelme being responsible for the Dan Rather beating. What's the frequency Thomas?
posted by Lorin at 11:37 AM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


There is a go-to book reviewing thing when dealing with an long offbeat novel that includes silly names, paranoia and overworked puns: call it "Pynchonesque". It's lazy (Fire the Bastards!).
posted by chavenet at 12:07 PM on September 11, 2015


Yeah, no. As much as I would love more Pynchon to wade into, this is not it, as a quick read of Cow Country's Amazon preview pages makes clear. It's sort of sad that Harper's took the bait, though someone clearly went to great lengths to set all this up for potential media mystery and hype.
posted by aught at 12:12 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Rumor has it Thomas Pynchon wrote this metafilter comment. Or did he?
posted by sp160n at 12:21 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


Maybe it's a trap. Not for the foolishly blinkered and name-dazzled audience of Pynchon, nor the lazy and venal literary establishment that promotes Pynchon, but for... Pynchon. Maybe the article and the response to it is just all of them/us playing our role as the trap maker knew we would, and the variable isn't going to be our response, but his.

I mean, I'd read that book.
posted by The Master and Margarita Mix at 12:29 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


I "looked inside" on Amazon, and the prose was pedestrian enough to warrant a very loud "how could anyone think that Pynchon wrote this?"
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:31 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


and what about the pedestrian prose in against the day and inherent vice?

no, we've got it all wrong - pynchon isn't writing as adrian jones pearson - adrian jones pearson has been writing as pynchon
posted by pyramid termite at 12:39 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


and what about the pedestrian prose in against the day and inherent vice?

Wait, what? Against the Day? I think you read a different edition than I did.

And while Inherent Vice may not be rife with historical allusion the way some earlier Pynchon novels are, its prose is a carefully-wrought and self-conscious parody of late 60s / early 70s rhythms, and the dialogue, like that in several TP novels, makes Mamet look measured.
posted by aught at 1:01 PM on September 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


The first line of the book:

"In truth, my first impression of Cow Eye Junction was less of fulfillment or productivity than of desiccation and despair."

Judge for yourselves.
posted by grumpybear69 at 1:05 PM on September 11, 2015


I'm pretty sure that the Harpers writer here was convinced it was Pynchon before they ever opened the book.

Maybe, but more importantly, I'm pretty sure the Harper's writer (and his editor) thought the premise, even if transparently ridiculous, would get a lot of national press. They were right.
posted by aught at 1:07 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]




I don't understand how anyone could read five pages of this book (which you can do on Amazon) and come to the conclusion that it's by Pynchon, unless you think that Pynchon has a patent on satire and silly names. For starters, it's in the first person, and it doesn't display the lyricism that you find ten times on any page of Pynchon. When I read the original article I expected the style to be a hell of a lot closer than this is.
posted by dfan at 2:33 PM on September 11, 2015 [3 favorites]


This is a question that statistical analysis can answer more definitively than any amount of this sorta wimpy pontification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylometry
posted by blue t-shirt at 2:50 PM on September 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ain't me him.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:50 PM on September 11, 2015


Maybe he meant Tom Robbins?
posted by Oyéah at 9:07 PM on September 11, 2015


Wait! It is like that old joke, "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" Adrian Jones Pearson, "Huh?"
posted by Oyéah at 9:12 PM on September 11, 2015


I only read a quarter of the article, but I'm going to comment as if I read the whole thing, much like I've been doing with Gravity's Rainbow since college.
posted by Optamystic at 4:03 AM on September 12, 2015 [6 favorites]


Rumor has it Thomas Pynchon wrote this metafilter comment. Or did he?

If he did, that comment would be a lot longer.

I like Pynchon's writing and could easily imagine him writing under another name, but this looks more like an attempt to create a controversy out of nothing, rather than an actual discovery.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:37 AM on September 12, 2015


Given my user name, I have to comment...

I bought this (in both senses). If this is Pynchon, he has become repetitive and forgotten how to write dialogue. It's moderately entertaining, but it needs a good editor. Great marketing though...
posted by YoungStencil at 9:10 AM on September 12, 2015


This week on the David Foster Wallace mailing list (actually mostly just today, your time):

1. "It could be Evan Dara. Danielewski. Richard Powers. Alexander Theroux. Maybe even Vollmann." (DFW was never in the running.)

2. The Hunt for a Possible Pynchon Novel Leads to a Name
Literary speculation begun by Harper’s Magazine is traced to an author in Hawaii—A.J. Perry

3. "Convincing, but then what about this Twitter burner account?"
posted by sylvanshine at 3:18 PM on September 12, 2015 [3 favorites]


Lorin: "Reminds me of another overreaching Harper's article about Barthelme being responsible for the Dan Rather beating. What's the frequency Thomas?"

Yeah, but they were right about Michel Foucault shooting Kennedy.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:22 PM on September 13, 2015


The chronicle of higher ed weighs in
posted by lalochezia at 7:59 AM on September 14, 2015


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