Suggestions for further reading

Stumbling around the Internet like a clueless Pynchon protagonist, I have come across some great blogs from others making headway through Against the Day, in notes rich with interesting observations, helpful pointers, and just some wild stuff.

Madison Guy in his Jan 4 post to Letter From Here looks over some reviews of the book, and recommends a perceptive and encouraging one by Luc Sante in NYRB. This writer is a welcome discovery for me, and I was glad to follow the other Sante link in the post to learn more.

One of my long-time favorite authors and commentators, Ron Rosenbaum, has some Pynchon views and anecdotes in his Nov 19 post about the NYC “Against the Day” release party (including an answer to the question, why no Rosenbaum review?) I’m sorry I missed the party, but glad I found these notes!

the bedside crow , a London bookseller (all these people make me feel quite pedestrian), is proceeding at a page a day. Like me, he enjoys the “town of Thick Bush” (some things are just universal, alas!) and has rocketing good commentary.

The amazing blog Gravity 7 by Adrian Chan is as deeply-textured and allusive as Pynchon himself, and partakes of the same cracked humor. If I may give a taste of a passage that stopped me dead,

…connected by lines drawn by families, as threads of a narrative, arcs of a plot, or roped together like the drum kit badly beaten by John Bonham of Led Zeppelin (himself a balloonist and ungainly Chum of Chance whose Chance was ended when he choked on his own chum), Against the Day itself blurs the line between fact and fiction.

As did Mellville, I thought, cold mad father. Chum (noun and verb) is bait at sea.

And John Latta's Pynchon Notes on his blog Isola di Rifiuti are just gorgeous, alive with Art and poetry and insight. If Pynchon didn’t exist we would have to invent him, and the great thing I’m learning as I page through these ship’s (b)logs is that collectively we would be up to that task.