combine your abilities on the fly!
11.
well I sincerely cannot think of a way that the holidays, as we know them, have anything to do with art. except for the ways we are tested.
Lucy Corin
78. Soth takes photos worth eye-meat.
14. Christmas Eve flash (scroll down–it involves a ham) by Pamela Painter.
22. Hey, pick me up that Thomas Pynchon first edition for $51,000.
00. What are the best books that fit in a stocking? I’m going Big World, but you?
Pynchon Kubrick Mashup
Weird ass overlaps between Pynchon and Kubrick: V. follows the exploits of discharged sailor Benny Profane and his “Whole Sick Crew” of pseudo-bohemian artists, similar to A Clockwork Orange‘s directionless misanthropy. In both Eyes Wide Shut and The Crying Lot of 49, a secret underworld is unwittingly uncovered, where nightmares, daydreams, and dreams lose their footing. Dr. Strangelove and Gravity Rainbow‘s dystopian protagonists are both missile-dick happy in these re-imaginings of war. Barry Lyndon and Mason & Dixon, both historical period pieces, recount the travels and adventures of ye olde English whacks, a la Merchant Ivory on acid. Thank god for pot, and hot pockets. Get high, netflix, and have fun this weekend.
Matthew Simmons—
“Published in the future.” (“A screaming comes across the sky,” translated 56 times. Here.) Also, hey. I’m reading Against the Day.
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Blake Butler—
Derek White is selling some amazing rubbings/collages he made while in Rome, herein administered among ruminations on the city and Thomas Pynchon’s V..
Blake Butler—
Some say Thomas Pynchon got nabbed of the 1974 Pulitzer for Gravity’s Rainbow due to a majority of the presiding panel’s distaste for his scene where our hero eats feces out of the ass of a prostitute (not to mention a very particular description of what sort of whose anatomy the protruding waste reminds our hero of). Indeed, it’s a pretty hard scene to shake after reading. What are some of the scenes in books that are most indelibly in your mind, and what do you think it is about them that makes them stick there?
Michael Schaub—
Mark Feeney starts off this piece on Thomas Pynchon and music with this sentence: “Music hasn’t really mattered much in American fiction.” Is that even remotely true? I suspect it’s not, but you guys are all smart well-read rock stars. Is Feeney right? Do I just wish music mattered more in American fiction? Will anyone come to the debut show of my band, The Very Special Episodes? Even though my band doesn’t technically exist?
“Inherent Vice” by Thomas Pynchon
Is Thomas Pynchon not cool anymore? Is literary relevance chronologically sensitive — meaning, certain things lose their importance depending on when they are published? Do interesting things become boring over time, or is the reading public simply fickle? I ask these questions because nobody seems that interested in Pynchon’s forthcoming (August 2009) Inherent Vice — kinda has a loopy-hippie Vineland feel to it. I must admit I fanned through his latest novel Against the Day like a telephone book with no one to call, sighed, and put it down; and Pynchon is one of my all time favorites.
