Inherent Vice

I’m probably behind in finding out about this (stupid grad school), but apparently Pynchon has a new book coming out next year called Inherent Vice.  From the description I found here:

It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.

In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren’t there . . . or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .

Obviously a bit of a switch up from Against the Day, but given the character of Lew Basnight, I can see a certain continuation of theme happening as he goes into a detective novel.

I can’t wait to play spot the Bodine.

A Juxtaposition

In a sampling of the headlines this morning CNN Headline News started with the horrific story from Mumbai where 160 civilians have died in the recent terror attacks.  They followed up with a story about a Wal-Mart worker died after he was knocked down in the rush of shoppers trying to get into the store to take advantage of the Black Friday deals.

There is many things that are deeply wrong with our world and I think that the juxtaposition of these two headlines hits on a lot of them.

Good times, bad times, you know I’ve had my share…

It’s been a rough few weeks and sadly they’ve only gotten a bit worse thanks to a nasty head cold I’m battling.  The first casualty in all of this seems to have been this blog.  It’s not dead yet, though I’m putting it on life support via links.  Maybe someday I’ll come up with real content.

Links: Bill Chuck Bill was a bad roommate.

Cake Wrecks is funny.

And a video:

Apparently the visual for this one is lost, which is why it’s a slide show.  Either way it’s still brilliant.