Pynchon feature for new online mag?

[Joe Allonby]

Do I get extra credit for the Alistair MacLean reference?

On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Y'see? Like that.
>
> ----------------------------------------
>> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2010 10:51:10 -0500
>> Subject: Re: Pynchon feature for new online mag?
>> From: joeallonby
>> To: johncarvill at hotmail.com
>> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>
>> Round about 1980, I was a student at a small East Coast elitist
>> liberal arts university learning to hate America and Jesus. Nearly
>> every waking hour was spent doing drugs or having sex or contemplating
>> either or with myself and others. I was blind. Not literally. It's
>> just a figure of speech. I am partially color blind though. I have
>> trouble with blue and green. Yellow might as well be green. I have no
>> idea what the fuck purple is. I was also left-handed and prone to
>> digression. In some circles it is accepted thought that both of those
>> conditions are ongoing.Hey! It's sunny out! Let's play baseball!
>>
>> I was interning (is that a word?) at Boston's stuffiest publishing
>> house. These people published books and magazines that made the Wall
>> Street Journal read like Alistair MacLean. Even Simon and Schuster
>> wouldn't play with them. They did have a marketing department though.
>> And copywriters. Something called "product managers". And, of course,
>> advertising salesmen, most of whom could be seen emerging from the
>> anus of a giant jackass on any given Friday afternoon holding a
>> pre-loaded martini. Or sneaking down in the freight elevator with the
>> guys from shipping and receiving, one of whom had a brother who lived
>> in Hawaii and grew the world's most outrageous marijuana which he
>> shipped via UPS to his brother in Quincy, reeking and seeping cartons
>> of vulvate sensimilla with punta roja. Friday afternoons were for
>> office parties in Pre-Reagan America. It was all part of the creeping
>> malaise.
>>
>> This was how I discovered Thomas Pynchon. Hiding under a desk in the
>> advertising department during a Friday afternoon office party, lurking
>> in the conversation of bored and stoned young publishing execs who
>> were all not so secretly convinced that they were much, much better
>> than this.
>>
>> I needed to know this book that they were talking about. Why would
>> gravity have a rainbow and who was Roger Mexico? Why was the
>> visitation white and Enzian black? Can you really inject wine?
>> Fermented mare's milk? Isn't Rocketman just a song by a gay English
>> guy in high heels and glasses? WHAT IN GOD'S UNHOLY FUCKING NAME ARE
>> YOU FUCKING PEOPLE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT?
>>
>> The next day one of them dropped the book off at my desk. Three days
>> later, bloodshot-eyed and unsteady on my feet, I gave it back to him.
>>
>> "Couldn't handle it, huh?"
>>
>> "No. I read the whole thing. I've done nothing else. I haven't slept.
>> Give me more."
>>
>>
>
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