Sam Anderson comes out and says he hates Pynchon’s books and then reviews Inherent Vice.
As a disclaimer I have to add that I’m not reading any of the reviews I post at this point. I’m just collecting them to have for after I finish the book. Currently a hundred pages in and enjoying it.
Via Boing Boing
I’ve sadly fallen far behind on things thans to some traveling and a backlog of work. Here’s some new links that have been sent my way while I’ve been gone from the internets.
First the Inherent Vice trailer from Penguin Press:
Of course the question is who did the narration…
Next is a map of Pynchon’s LA from Wired.
More as I get my act together.
[Edit – I lost my mind and forgot to credit Shane and Austin for the links. Sorry.]
From Carolyn Kellogg at the LA Times. I haven’t had time to read it yet. Thoughts later.
This is old, but I wanted to put it down anyway due to its claim of the end of the Postmodern tome. Sure Inherent Vice is under 400 pages and that is a change from Pynchon’s usual MO, but I’m not sure it signals that Pynchon is surrendering to the all mighty power of Twitter to lower our attention spans. Against the Day came out in 2006. We’re getting Inherent Vice less than three years later. The last time Pynchon rolled out two novels in the same decade was the 1960s (V. and Crying of Lot 49). To say that the Internet and Twitter have “driven a stake through the heart of dense fiction” is disingenious at best.
Louis Menand gives us a glimpse into Inherent Vice over at the New Yorker by using Chandler as the base comparitor. Given the history of detectives, and not just the literary one, it’s worth asking if hardboiled and honorable is really the status quo.
The Big Picture gives us a front seat look at the Apollo 11 mission.
Thanks to the Monty Python and the Holy Grail musical I feel as though I should break into song just about now. Despite the long silence here, I’ve managed complete some looming deadlines and return to blogging on something resembling a semi regular basis. Part of this will involve posting my notes on the literary works that I have to read for the exams that I will be taking next year as part of my PhD work. Or maybe I should say the parts of my notes that could concievably be worth reading. The idea is that posting something will provide me with a written record to go back and study as well as force me to put my thoughts down in a coherent and cohesive fashion. Given that I have more time now I’ll still be posting whatever I find interesting, but the notes will likely take. Also anything literary is likely to get shunted over to the Post 45 blog that I’m also administrating.
I suppose I could have just done all of that without rambling about it here. Oh well, what the hell. At least I got another post out of it.
Who is it that really loves Easter?
Via the always intriguing Wooster Collective
Errant Reader 
