Thomas Pynchon to release new novel in August

[Mark Kohut]

So many unknowledgeable journalists,---can't be helped; no time-- like most readers, think TRP, like most writers, wrote his novels one after another. John Leonard knew better (and was the reviwer to tell us that).

I do and will wonder when IV was started ON PAPER. (Bet it was in his game plan mind, as he expressed very early about most of the others, for awhile. )


--- On Mon, 7/13/09, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Thomas Pynchon to release new novel in August
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Monday, July 13, 2009, 9:24 AM
> Inside Examiner.com
> Fringe Culture Examiner
> Thomas Pynchon to release new novel in August
> July 11, 5:02 PM
> 
> 
> Thomas Pynchon has been called many things – Pulitzer
> Prize contender,
> anarchist sympathizer, iconoclast, and America’s
> best-known literary
> recluse next to JD Salinger – but prolific is typically
> not one of
> them.  That may be changing now that the author will
> be releasing a
> new novel entitled Inherent Vice via Penguin Press on
> August 4th.
> 
> Pynchon fanatics (who also count fellow “fringe culture
> auteurs” Don
> DeLillo, David Cronenberg, Alan Moore, William Gibson and
> the entire
> writing staff of “The Simpsons” among their ranks)
> previously had to
> wait 17 years for a new release between 1973's National
> Book
> Award-winning Gravity's Rainbow and Vineland, released in
> 1990.  Mason
> & Dixon followed seven years later.
> 
> Then, in 2006, Pynchon dropped Against the Day on his
> unsuspecting
> readership - a 1,085 page (in hardcover!)
> multi-generational saga set
> against a backdrop of a fantastical, steampunk,
> turn-of-the-century
> America.
> 
> Inherent Vice will not only mark Pynchon’s fastest
> turnaround on a
> project in forty years, but also represents his first very
> foray into
> the world of crime fiction (hell, the dust jacket even
> looks like a
> Elmore Leonard book just waiting to happen).  Here’s
> an official
> synopsis from the folks at Penguin:
> 
> 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…
> 
> http://www.examiner.com/x-1551-Fringe-Culture-Examiner~y2009m7d11-Thomas-Pynchon-to-release-new-novel-in-August
> 
>