Saturday 17 November 2012

Excelsior! Day 17 #Nano

"Ever upwards!" 
Although, as Bucky never tired of pointing out, "up" is a local co-ordinate in Universe, you can only usefully say "out" (from the centre) or "in" (towards the centre) - that way, people in UK and Australia can agree...

Ahem.  Avoiding chatting on FB makes me gibber here in the blog, to soak up the nonsense before trying to write a book. 

Actually, I haven't entirely avoided reading, and picked up "Vineland" again the other day, to immediately become absorbed in the story.  For anyone who thinks of Thomas Pynchon as 'difficult' I would recommend Vineland, if you enjoyed The Great Lebowski for instance,  as Zoyd Wheeler seems like a second cousin to The Dude, and equally bewildered by the machinations of those around him.

There are PynchonWiki entries for all his books, but do you really need the cross-references for a hilarious read like Vineland?  Useful for the hard stuff like Gravity's Rainbow, maybe.

And if you have already enjoyed Vineland, I would also recommend Inherent Vice, there's a touch of The Dude in there, too.

Of course, reading a master of the language can prove a bad idea when trying to write your own stuff, but I need a break from my own wordage sometimes.




Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir



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