TMW Contest: Imaginary Book Review (3.4% Pynchon relevance)

[The Great Quail]

Pynchon Listers -- 

If I may be excused for possibly abusing this forum, again, to touch upon a
Web site I run... I thought this might interest some of you, not only for
one of the prize items -- the new "1984" -- but because, well, it's the kind
of thing some of you would like. Basically, The Modern Word has started
running quarterly "contests," with the prize being -- naturally -- free
books.

Here's the first contest! Please send it along to anyone who might be
interested. 

http://www.TheModernWord.com/contests/contest001.html

TMW  Contest #1: The Imaginary Book Review

Borges famously wrote: "The composition of vast books is a laborious and
impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an
idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better
course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then
to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more
indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books."

The Modern Word is hosting the following contest, open until July 15, 2003:

In the spirit of Borges' remark, write a book review of an imaginary book.
The book may be from any time period, it may be fiction or non-fiction, and
its author may be either an invention or an actual writer.

The review should be between 500 and 1000 words, and must be submitted
electronically to The Modern Word at the following email address:
editor at libyrinth.com. Entries should be submitted as a Microsoft Word
attachment, or as text in the body of the email itself.

The five most creative and well-written reviews will be gathered together
and posted permanently on the site. Three reviews will be selected as First,
Second and Third Place by The Modern Word's staff. The First Place winner
will receive a package of five books as a prize: D.B. Weiss' "Lucky Wander
Boy," Tom Carson's "Gilligan's Wake," Matthew Derby's "Super Flat Times,"
Jim Knipfel's "The Buzzing," and the new centennial edition of George
Orwell's "1984," with a foreword by Thomas Pynchon. (Courtesy of Plume,
Picador, Back Bay, Vintage, and Plume, respectively.) Second and Third Place
winners will receive copies of "The Buzzing," courtesy of Vintage.

Contest updates will be available through the "Spiral-Bound" Newsletter:

http://www.TheModernWord.com/spiral-bound.html

Although you do not have to be a Spiral-Bound subscriber to enter or win,
the winners will first be announced in the August edition of "Spiral-Bound."

Submitting a review to The Modern Word authorizes the site to have
non-exclusive rights to the review for all eternity and a day. The contest
closes July 15, and winners will be announced by August 1, 2003.


--Quail