That's How It Happened

I haven't posted for a couple of days, because the internet has been too boring. The internet in 1996 had a popular perception as a being a sprawling fascinating collection of freaks and weirdos; BDSM fetishists rubbing alongside techno-hippies. I think that's changed now. The more people get online and start contributing content, the more we seem to be drifting towards a single reactionary mid-Atlantic voice, with mid-Atlantic politics, and an over fondness for everything nerdy. In the last few days I haven't seen one link that hasn't been round the meme whirlpool before, and haven't read one post with a genuinely fresh voice. That is, until I saw what Thomas Pynchon wrote on Amazon about his new book:

"...the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck."

I was 19 when Mason & Dixon came out in 1997; it seems like a whole lifetime ago, when I was a different person. I'm taking the forthcoming publication as a hint to go back and finally finish Gravity's Rainbow. I started it while I was working in paperback fiction at Hatchards, during the 95/96 christmas holidays. My lunchbreaks were never long enough for me to finish it, and the employee discount not large enough for me to buy it. It feels great to be really interested in something again, after a barren intellectual week. Even better is that there's a new Penguin edition of 'Rainbow, with a fancy cover by Frank Miller.

Tags: pynchon