Jerome Weeks complains about Pynchon and writes (even though he admits that he hasn’t read the entirety of Mason & Dixon), “His best work remains The Crying of Lot 49. There’s something to be said for succinctness.”
I couldn’t agree more (on the succint part, that is). Which makes me wonder why Weeks didn’t just type “I hate Pynchon” and hit the Publish button.
Jack Green’s manifesto holds true in the 21st century.
Hear ye! Hear ye! Adept literary connoisseurs and other devoted followers of the Chums of Chance may wish to note that a roundtable, it being an interchangeable variable to be squared in a forthcoming equation, shall begin anew for the thick tome, Against the Day, now making its postal peregrinations to swell and salacious folks scattered across the Republic. Their veritable derring-do will be unearthed upon these pages, where there shall likely be talk of aether, balloons, anarchism, the Great Fair, and, of course, the considerably overlooked Chums of Chance, whose adventures have not met with the grand reception equal to their deeds.
Stay tuned, in as much as your monitor resembles Philo’s discovery, to these pages for more!
First page: epigraph from Thelonious Monk.
Flip.
Next page: Seal.
Flip.
Title page: One. The Light Over the Ranges.
Flip.
“Now single up all lines!”
“Cheerly now…handsomely…very well! Prepare to cast her off!”
“Windy City, here we come!”
“Hurrah! Up we go!”
It was amid such lively exclamation that the hydrogen skyship Inconvenience, its gondola draped with patriotic bunting, carrying a five-lad crew belonging to that celebrated aeronautics club known as the Chums of Chance, ascended briskly into the morning, and soon caught the southerly wind.
1,081 pages to go.
I’ve been informed that Against the Day is now in transit from New York. Reading and reporting will begin IMMEDIATELY upon its arrival.
[UPDATE: Mr. Orthofer has his copy and offers some details.]
According to Marianne Wiggins, one of the fiction judges for this year’s National Book Awards, “As for Pynchon, it was patently obvious it wasn’t a contender.'”