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chavenet (2)

A list of pothead novels.
posted by stinkycheese on Jan 28, 2012 - 61 comments

The September 11 attacks spelt the end of the 'systems novel' and the rise of a more diverse and meaningful literary landscape. The systems novel has been put to the test here and although it predicted the world we would live in, it cannot be used to capture it today. This end of the systems novel is, however, not such a bad thing; it marks a necessary end to a fiction about a kind of fiction. ... it bears repeating: the end of the systems novel is a good thing because it is a chance to remind American readers that the most interesting things often happen at the margin. In this case the margin would be at the fringes of American power. [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Sep 10, 2011 - 22 comments

Thomas Pynchon is one of the great unheard lyricists. His award-winning novel, Gravity's Rainbow, is full of song lyrics. Depending on how you count, there are around 100 in the book. Over the course of a year, the Thomas Pynchon Fake Book managed to set twenty-eight of them to music. [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Oct 14, 2010 - 65 comments

"What I loved, as I sped through the rest of Pynchon’s oeuvre, was that unravelling prose. Lines like the following got me through those long books, their difficult sections, the vertiginous moments when I was no longer sure what was happening (let alone to whom) ... Perhaps it made us feel that we were more than pale and pitiful creatures who worshipped the books of a man we would never see, let alone meet, about whom we knew almost nothing," Nick Holdstock on attending International Pynchon Week in Poland. [more inside]
posted by geoff. on Aug 23, 2010 - 63 comments

Is It Okay to Be a Luddite? Thomas Pynchon wants to know. In an essay from 1984, Pynchon responds to the 25th Anniversary of C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." [more inside]
posted by outlandishmarxist on Aug 17, 2010 - 38 comments

"Pynchon, postmodern author, is commonly said to have a non-linear narrative style. No one seems to have taken seriously the possibility, to be explored in this essay, that his narrative style might in fact be quadratic." Number theorist Michael Harris on Pynchon and conic sections.
posted by escabeche on Oct 25, 2009 - 60 comments

Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel Inherent Vice, is causing quite a stir, and not just because all his novels cause a stir. It seems the author of epic novels of giant adenoids and invisible clockwork ducks has written a-gasp-detective novel, which weighs in at an astoundingly reasonable 384 pages. Some have noted confusion among Pynchon aficionados at the author’s choice to work in such a genre. One writer has used the opportunity to examine why supposed “literary” writers have turned to the crime genre with varying degrees of success, and at least one critic seems genuinely put out by Pynchon’s creative choice.
posted by dortmunder on Aug 3, 2009 - 97 comments

A new genre of literary wikis is in the works. Pynchon fans can find as well as contribute answers to questions about his works at the Thomas Pynchon Wiki. The site currently offers sections on The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Against the Day. Each offers spoiler-free page-by-page annotations, alphabetic search and a compilation of reviews. The Pynchon wikis were created by Tim Ware, "curator" of ThomasPynchon.com. Elsewhere, literary wikis have been started for James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and the works of Shakespeare.
posted by beagle on Mar 18, 2007 - 37 comments

Thomas Pynchon Paper Dolls Something light because, yes, it's the run-up to the November 21st release of Against the Day, the new 1000 page doorstop from Thomas Pynchon. The Modern Word is using the time to update their already vast Pynchon site. Good luck. (A whole lot of other paper dolls previously.)
posted by OmieWise on Oct 27, 2006 - 37 comments

So I illustrated Gravity's Rainbow -- nobody asked me to, but I did it anyway. Previous Thomas Pynchon/Gravity's Rainbow related post.
posted by arse_hat on May 1, 2005 - 30 comments

Professor Irwin Corey, the world's foremost expert on EVERYTHING, has quite a good website. Special highlight for lit geeks: the text of his acceptance speech on behalf of Thomas Pynchon when Gravity's Rainbow received a National Book Award citation, and an audio extract thereof.
posted by PinkStainlessTail on Nov 28, 2004 - 4 comments

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.

Holden Caulfield in Catcher In The Rye

J.D. Salinger did not quite agree but then, if you can't hang out with his secretive self, or any other chosen literary icon, you can build her or him a fitting shrine or two or three. It's not quite Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon but...
posted by y2karl on Mar 26, 2004 - 13 comments

"Orwellian, Dude!" Elusive, legendary author Thomas Pynchon resurfaces to intoduce a new edition of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four with a critical eye on the present. And finds optimism in the appendix.
posted by Bletch on May 3, 2003 - 17 comments