Rinse & Repeat. 2020 article on the prescience of VINELAND.

[O G]

I may have not understood any part of that Boston Review.  I'm not sure I
had ever read a book review before, so I'm going to blame it on that.  I
was thinking earlier that if Pynchon wrote a book about 9/11, then surely
it must have been prescient about the Summer of 2020 too, but I don't
recall the article mentioning Edge.  But I see now, the article was
specifically about Vineland, and the Summer of 2020, not 9/11 and Edge.  If
that was a book review, an article about a book.  Something I would never
think to read, but it popped up and I was in the right mood I guess.  I
read a book about 9/11 last Fall that I got excited about for a few days,
and I hadn't thought about it until the article started talking about the
events of the Summer 2020, which I don't recall him identifying, but I'm
going to say must have been the Sit In on Wall Street.  And I am almost
certain that I have read Edge, even more than once.

It's the numbers.  They make me more ridiculous than usual.  I can't get
past the title of Lot49.  I'm never going to be able to make my host week,
I'll still be on 49.  Then the article got me wondering about 9/11, jesus
christ, That number must mean something.  Since the groupread of Lot49 was
announced, I have discovered that my relatively new bank account number
ends in 49.  And I have in fact been crying a lot over it.  That's why I
got the new bank account, in desperation I thought somehow, that would
help.  Well, I got 49, that's all it did.

If you go onto a Pynchon site and you say somebody oughtta write something
Pynchonic, likely that's what you'll get.  Been done.  But that's not what
I meant, come on.  I wasn't talking about Edge, or Pynchon, I was talking
about me.  After waking late, and a number of fast coffees and other meds,
I was thinking it was a real good idea.  I don't even know what Pynchonic
is.  But I have gotten so worked up about this 49 business that when this
9/11 thing hit me, out of Boston of all places, then the coffee and meds
hit, forgettaboutit, I'll just write a goddam book about it.  Tonite, eh,
it was a great idea this morning.  I would either laugh myself or cry
myself to death writing it.  I always figure if you're going to write
anything, even texts, you may as well have fun writing it.


On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 3:22 PM O G <octogonalyoyo at gmail.com> wrote:

> all right I'm willing to believe you and I'm wondering if we should notify
> the Boston Review writer
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 2:32 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> plot and a major section in the middle where NYC shuts down are even
>> better.
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 1:53 PM O G <octogonalyoyo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Well sure.  Page 445 and 446 are good.  "...souls coming across the
>>> bridge, dust-covered..."  And  "...a pile of wreckage reaching ten or
>>> twelve stories high," that's good, makes the tourists on the viewing
>>> platform believe once the whole square lot was piled ten stories high with
>>> wreckage.  "Sorrowful."
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 1:06 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Pynchon did 9/11 in Bleeding Edge...with his usual originality....
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 12:42 PM O G <octogonalyoyo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This article assumes I recall the Summer of 2020, or any of its
>>>>> contents.  The real humdinger of an event is, and I was a touch
>>>>> disappointed when the article got around to almost parenthetical and
>>>>> apologetical mentions, nine eleven.  It is crying out for supernovelizing,
>>>>> a right angled Pynchonic transdimensional Tristmegistgasmic carnival.  Not
>>>>> something where you spend 90 pages becoming emotional about a baseball.  No
>>>>> doubt a topic brandied aboot in these auctionrooms.  9by11, if memory
>>>>> serves (it never speaks), is the dimension of the Giza perimeter.  Roughly
>>>>> 264by216, 528by432.  If you are going to vaporize a couple big buildings,
>>>>> you are going to choose your day.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 2:30 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/peter-coviello-pynchon-and-coming-police-state/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e953732ba5-reading_list_4_21_2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-e953732ba5-41319524&mc_cid=e953732ba5&mc_eid=7a560898f8
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>