Conversational Reading

Why Is Everyone Reviewing HHhH?
With the James Wood review in this week's New Yorker, it's official: everyone has reviewed HHhH by Lauren Binet. And, well, the... »
Are People Starting to Tire of the Franz?
The new book isn't getting very good reviews. And this review even started out with a meta-critique of Franzen the media... »
On the Importance of Not Making People Loathe Literature
Maybe this is why I've generally found Simon Critchley's philosophy quite rewarding, whereas many others in his genre are dull... »
Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
Here is the schedule for the summer read of A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava. The dates correspond to the first day of... »
See Attacks, Vicious
Douglas Messerli on Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard. In Thomas Bernhard’s 1984 fiction, Holzfällen, moreover, we... »
Review of Varamo
The next installment in the great Aira invasion of the North American continent is upon us: Varamo. My review has just... »
Explanation
AO Scott on Patience (After Sebald): So “Patience (After Sebald)” may not, in the end, offer much in the way of... »
I Wouldn’t Have Guessed That
Lev Grossman talking about reviewing books is a little like that 50 Shades of Grey person talking about bring an author. Here,... »
More on Bolano’s Journalist
The LARB has a sharp review of The Femicide Machine, plus an interview with author Sergio González Rodríguez. This caught... »
Someone Save Criticism from The Atlantic
It's amazing that in 2012 The Atlantic can still publish something so clueless as this. Titled "Could the Internet Save Book... »

Jeff Waxman: Not only do I not think HHhH is bad, I think it's pretty dam
vfrancone: I am halfway through HHhH right now and I don't think it is
Richard: I have become a big fan of Simon Critchley, and of Tom McCar
James: I've had the original edition standing by for just such an o
Edward Champion: This can never be overstated. George RR Martin blurbed Lev.
Sawn: This is a similar theme to the Atlantic article about all th
Travis Godsoe: That's a great review, Scott. It brought back the mysterious

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus March 5, 2012
With his second novel, The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus has diverged from the path he trod while becoming one of America’s best-known experimental fiction writers. He’s written a plague fantasy told in first-person by a middle-aged, Jewish husband and father living in the suburbs. It is cold and coherent in its execution, with one narrator and a clear plot, an […]
War Diary by Ingeborg Bachmann March 5, 2012
Bachmann famously described the entry of Hitler's troops into Klagenfurt as the end of her childhood. From these pages, though, it isn't clear what immediately followed. Here she seems to exist in a liminal zone between self-determination and powerlessness: she has worked out tactics of flight, but not full resistance or solidarity with others. Thi […]
Us by Michael Kimball March 5, 2012
Michael Kimball’s novella Us originally appeared in the U.K. under the title How Much of Us There Was. Tyrant Books has now brought it out in the United States, where Kimball was born and lives, and his website lists the widespread praise that the book has received. Here are but two of the many accolades: “disarmingly simple, gorgeously structured, and as ac […]
The Beautiful and the Damned by Siddhartha Deb March 5, 2012
Since embracing economic reforms in the early 1990s, India has undergone swift and wrenching changes that are remaking the country from the ground up. As village and farmland give way to tech companies, call centers, factories, and malls, these new landscapes are increasingly peopled by new archetypal characters, much as the similarly radical transformation […]
The Letter Killers Club by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky March 5, 2012
The first English-language publication of Krzhizhanovsky’s fiction would not follow until 2006, three quarters of a century after its conception. His extensive repertory consists principally of short stories, of which there are more than one hundred, as well as five novels. The first of these novels selected for English translation (by Joanne Turnbull) and p […]
Zona by Geoff Dyer March 5, 2012
Now we have Zona, Dyer’s book-length explication of the film that he has been mulling over in print for more than a decade. Like the film’s journeying hero, who devises his route by randomly tossing bolt nuts and trudging after them, he’s taken his time getting to the point. But the end result is revealing; despite its critical trappings, Zona reads like a p […]
Remaking the Short Story: Four Untranslated Authors from Spain March 5, 2012
Authors of what’s called the New Spanish Short Story have had a great burst of creativity that began in the early 1980s and flowered during the 1990s and 2000s (the few stories that have been translated have been relegated to obscure editions unavailable in the United States). From the stories of the fantastic by Cristina Fernádez Cubas to the structural inv […]
Dogma by Lars Iyer March 5, 2012
A lecturer in philosophy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Iyer is the author of Spurious—which won The Guardian’s “Not the Booker Prize” last year—and, now, Dogma, a sequel to the previous work. Both books are novels in name only—bookstores require these convenient taxonomies. In reality Iyer has written scabrous philosophical comedies about two men […]
Mercè Rodoreda and the Style of Innocence March 5, 2012
The Autonomous Republic of Catalonia now holds up Mercè Rodoreda as a national treasure. Barcelona offers commemorative sculptures, libraries, gardens in her name; government-supported institutes sponsor conferences and translations; a yearlong festival marked her 2008 centennial. Her international champions include Gabriel García Márquez. Apart from two rec […]
The Clarice Lispector Roundtable March 5, 2012
Barbara Epler: The whole Lispector re-launching began innocently enough: our plan had been to bring out a new edition of The Hour of the Star in the old Pontiero translation with an ardent Colm Tóibín preface. (With a backlist of our size—about 1,100 titles from 75 years of publishing—we are always trying to repackage classic backlist to reach more readers.) […]

What Is Pynchon’s Greatest Setting?

Wartime London? Post-war Germany? Fifties NYC?

Wired thinks it's LA, and they've got an interactive map (with San Narcisco!) to prove it.

It's a Wiki, so you're welcome to add your own locations as you re-read Vineland and Lot 49 and dive into Inherent Vice for the first time.

Inherent Vice Reviews

A roundup of some early Inherent Vice reviews (all UK for some reason).

The coverage this far hasn't been terribly great; I'm especially referring to Tim Martin's review in The Telegraph. We'll have our own review in TQC's fall issue, upcoming in September.

Will Inherent Vice Be Filmable?

With the possible exception of The Crying of Lot 49, Inherent Vice might just be Thomas Pynchon's first filmable novel. PW reports that the book is circulating through Hollywood:

Though a rep from CAA would not comment about it, we hear Bob Bookman at the agency is shopping the film rights to Thomas Pynchon's August-dropping new novel from Penguin, Inherent Vice. The notoriously reclusive Pynchon, whose biggest flirtation with Hollywood was his pixelated cameo in The Simpsons (complete with bag-over-head), has never had any of his complex postmodern prose turned into a film, so who . . . continue reading, and add your comments

Pynchon-Inspired Album

Orchestral group Land of Kush has recorded a five-track CD entitled "Against the Day" and reportedly inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name.

Inspired by and named after the Thomas Pynchon’s novel Against the Day, the music is broken into five sections, named for the book’s chapters. The three primary movements are centred around solo vocalists (Jason Grimmer, Molly Sweeney, Radwan Moumneh) who composed their own lyrics for the piece. In between vocal performances, Shalabi gives the orchestra ample opportunity to strut its stuff, including solos and long instrumental passages that display Sam’s unique balance of . . . continue reading, and add your comments

A Screaming Comes Across the Sky

Best acceptance speech ever.

Obviously the only sane thing to do is give Pynchon the award in ’09 for Inherent Vice and see if he comes out to play.

Inherent Vice’s Cover

If you’re at all like me, when you saw the cover of Thomas Pynchon’s forthcoming novel you cringed, and then reminded yourself that dust jackets were made to be removed.

Well, it seems that Pynchon himself is to blame for this image. ThomasPynchon.com has the details:

The cover illustration is by Maui artist Darshan Zenith. The piece is called "Cadillac Hearse" or, perhaps, "Eternal Summer" — "A ‘Retired’ Caddy Hearse Greets Daybreak at a Beach Surf Shop" — and is one of many prints available on his Cruiser Art website. . . . continue reading, and add your comments

New Pynchon Details–Inherent Vice

Penguin has posted its Summer ’09 catalog online (PDF format), and it includes some details as to Pynchon’s new novel.

The title will be Inherent Vice, and it deals with a private eye in ’60s Los Angeles. From the catalog:

It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” . . . continue reading, and add your comments

The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)

DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.

The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)

The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.

Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)

Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.

Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)

Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.

The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)

A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.

Lady Chatterley’s Brother

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