Contemporary Fiction

[pynchonoid]

In the 60s, I went from 8 to 18 years old and didn't
encounter Pynchon, although I read a lot of books in
high school that weren't assigned.  I found Gravity's
Rainbow in the library at Camp Howze, a US Army
facility 6 km from the DMZ, in the Republic of Korea,
in the summer of 1973, not long after it had been
published and, young daredevil that I was, without
asking anybody for a recommendation on an Internet
email group, I checked it out and read it, and went on
to read the other books Pynchon had published, again
without asking for anybody else's approval.

I've got a few recent novels on the shelves here:  
Heart of Redness, Zakes Mda
Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan
The Crazed, Ha Jin, also War Trash
The Fifth Book of Peace, Maxine Hong Kingston
The Marx Family Saga, Juan Goytisolo
Atomik Azteks, Sseshu Foster (reading it right now,
funny stuff)
Soul Mountain, Gao Xingjian, also One Man's Bible

Otherwise, on the bookshelves next to my desk here,
lots of recent and not-so recent non-fiction,
including two sets of books having to do with two
different projects I'm currently working on. 

Music, I'm up for something new, something old,
classical, pop, rock, eclectic, whatever.  Picked up a
brand new CD just last week in fact, by Tego Calderon,
called El Subestimado/The Underdog.  Fun stuff, some
so-so tracks but a couple that do it for me. Have it
on rotation on the stereo right now with Stephen
Hartke's 2001 Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra
"Landscape with Blues" (2001), and James Booker's CD
(recordings from the 70s),Junco Partner. 



--- Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:

> >So that's a "yes" for Danielwski et al., or ...?
> >
> >--- Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> 
> Imagine, somebody asking you back in the 1960s: So
> that's a 'yeas' for 
> Pynchon et al?

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