Cute

[David Elliott]

 From the article: Ishmael Reed: I don’t know why “Against the Day” hasn’t been banned. In one of the most remarkable scenes penned by an American writer, Pynchon cites events that the anti-woke crowd would want deleted. Referring to the Blacks and Filipinos, Mexicans and hillbillies who are present in that scene, the character Lew Basnight “gradually understood that what everybody here had in common was having survived some cataclysm none of them spoke about directly — a bombing, a massacre perhaps at the behest of the U.S. government.” Those with prominent media megaphones today are denying that such cataclysms took place.
>From an interview with Ishmael published in 2022:GS [ George Salis]: I wanted to switch gears a little bit. Your work has been influential on Thomas Pynchon and he even mentions you in Gravity’s Rainbow. Have you read Gravity’s Rainbow?
IR: Ah, yes.
GS: And what did you think?
IR: Well, I’m always looking for originality and I found that to be original because most novels read the same way.
GS: Exactly.
IR: And so I’m always looking for writers who are, uh, you know…I think he’s actually more successful than other white experimental writers. I know a lot of them and they’re not found to be marketable.
GS: Yeah, he’s certainly an exception in that case.
IR: Yeah.
GS: Have you been keeping up with his novels since then?
IR: No, I haven’t.
I guess he's read "Against the Day" since the interview.
Read the interview here:https://thecollidescope.com/2022/05/20/superbowl-insurrection-a-conversation-with-ishmael-reed/



    On Saturday, October 18, 2025 at 11:23:59 AM EDT, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/books/review/thomas-pynchon-the-simpsons-william-gibson.html

With the famously private novelist enjoying a (private) moment in the sun,
we reached out to die-hard fans who’ve tuned in to the zaniness all along.
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Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l