The Moviegoer (was Rachel's hand jive)

[Carvill, John]

<< Thanks for bringing this up.  I haven't read The Moviegoer yet, but
now I'll put it at the top of my list. >>

I do very strongly recommend it, the writing is wonderful, the language incredibly rich and idiosyncratic. Also, I'm sure you will enjoy the sense of place.

<< BTW, Percy was the one John Kennedy Toole's mother showed the
manuscript for The Confedracy of Dunces, and he made sure it got
published. >>

Oh yes, and I loved 'Dunces' too. A very different book, though. 

As well as 'The Moviegoer', and the already mentioned, quite Pynchon-relevant 'The Day of the Locust', I also read Roth's 'Patrimony' - and wondered yet again just what more an American author has to do to wake those Nobel committee pricks up - and Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'. I'm gonna go back and trawl the archives re. 'The Road' since I know it was covered here, but again, what a great book, and what deceptively rich language. Here's one review which I thought did a good job of summing up the appeal of 'The Road':

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/nov/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview4

"Set piece after set piece, you will read on, absolutely convinced, thrilled, mesmerised with disgust and the fascinating novelty of it all: breathtakingly lucky escapes; a complete train, abandoned and alone on an embankment; a sudden liberating, joyous discovery or a cellar of incarcerated amputees being slowly eaten. And everywhere the mummified dead, "shrivelled and drawn like latterday bogfolk, their faces of boiled sheeting, the yellowed palings of their teeth".

Cheers
J