Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day

Thomas Pynchon's first new novel in nine years, Against the Day, came out just a few days ago, on November 21st. I love Thomas Pynchon. When I was in college I read everything he wrote: Gravity's Rainbow and Mason and Dixon remain my two favorite novels.

But my life has changed in the last nine years -- I now have bills, and a better social life, and a lot of different interests (including this blog), whereas, once, all I did was read books. I like poetry and music and TV and movies and comics, in part, I realized, because they are bite size -- two-and-a-half hours is brushing the maximum length I want an aesthetic experience to last in a single sitting these days, and even then it better be Kill Bill volume 2.

I just stood in the bookstore, holding this nearly 1100 page novel (which got a bad review in the New Yorker, by the way) and thinking to myself incredulously (and paraphrasing George Costanza at the bank trying to get a jar of change turned into bills and being told he has to roll them himself before the bank will accept them) should I quit my job?

Have I become a philistine?

Comics Out 29 November 2006

Two small books out this week:

1. The new issue of X-Men: I only get because Chris Bachalo is my favorite comic book artist. I have no idea if the book is any good; I am just mesmerized by the pictures. If I ever write a comic book this is the guy I want drawing it. Every day I wish there were more issues of Steampunk.

2. The Immortal Iron Fist, written by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction. Obviously, my obsession with Casanova has me picking up everything with Fraction's name near it; like the Punisher, this one just snuck up on me. I don't know what to expect.

Brubaker, I know almost nothing about except that his Sleeper was very dull (using Alan Moore's brilliant Tao from Wildcats was a bad idea -- if you can't write for a genius, don't have one as a character); I thought about getting his Authority run, but flipping through it in the store -- hoping I would see something that would make me make up my mind -- I read a bit where the Midnighter is ruler of a harsh future distopia where small offences like littering are punishable by death: that is boring, and I put it back.

I will review one or both of these in more detail tonight in the comments.

Nothing in the news jumped out at me this week. Review, Recommend, Discuss.

Ron Padgett's "Haiku" and "Nothing in that Drawer" (Commonplace Book)

"Haiku"

First: five syllables
Second: seven syllables
Third: five syllables

"Nothing in that Drawer"

[What follows is Ron Padgett's fourteen line poem, not a typo]:

Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.
Nothing in that drawer.

Casanova review at Guttergeek

Ping got me to read Casanova a while back and the only articulate thing I said was that it was the best comic book ever. People around here have asked me to clarify, and I have put them off because I was waiting for a my review of the series to go up on another site. Now it is up at a place called Guttergeek.com. Here is the first paragraph: click on it to go to the review (This paragraph only appears on the main Guttergeek page and not on the review page, where the link will take you, so you might want to read the paragraph before you click on it).

Casanova is written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Gabriel Bá. It is a book in the Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. mode, sci-fi meets James Bond. At the time of this writing, only five issues have been published. Each is done in only three colours: black, white and sage green. Each issue has sixteen pages of story, with no advertisements, followed by five pages of “DVD-extra”-style notes in a loose essay format. Each issue, after the first, uses the inside cover for a helpful “Previously in Casanova” section. The covers are stylish and simple; the back cover gives a preview of next month’s cover. The first four issues were so much fun to read I fell down on my knees and denounced God.

Brad counselled me not to use this blog to just link to stuff I wrote elsewhere without adding something new, so let me say three quick things about issues 5, which have further solidified me in the thought that this is the best comic book ever.

(1) How did Grant Morrison fail to come up with the fantastic phrase "Bongload of evolution"?

(2) Casanova 5 has my new favorite example of synaesthesia: "Listen to how the light strikes [his mind]. Its tempo is solely its own." (Synaesthesia is a poetic device, used famously by Wordsworth in "Tintern Abbey", where terms for one kind of sense impression are used to describe another, for example "sharp sound" or "loud colors").

(3) There is also a weird little Robert Frost allusion, when Casanova's captor says of his futuristic prison "You're in a space that isn't really a space." Frost's "Directive" (his best and most tricky poem) reads

There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost...

The allusion is important because Frost is leading the reader to a goblet of which you can "Drink and be whole again beyond confusion," which is something like what Casanova is up to; its insanely convoluted plot "only has at heart your getting lost."

I will save a discussion of issue 6 for a future blog.

Free Form Comments

Random comments -- anything you want to say, including shameless self promotion (feel free to advertise your blog here), go.