Yesterday, Dalkey Archive released a new edition of William Gaddis’ postmodern masterpiece, The Recognitions, the book that Jonathan Franzen called “the ur-text of postwar fiction.” The new edition reminded us of our undying love for postmodern literature — the chaotically playful, the metafictional, and the experimental alike — and inspired us to check out a few books missing from our collection, so we’ve put together an essential postmodern reading list for devotees both old and new. Click through to check out some of our favorite works of postmodern lit — and since of course this is only a starter list, and there are many important postmodern works not listed here (we don’t have unlimited reading time, you know), be sure to let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments.
A while back, we surveyed a selection of cinema’s most notoriously “difficult” classics. This week, we got to thinking about literary equivalents, mainly because of the news that to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, 169 artists are creating their own versions of the mysterious illustration that adorns p. 169 of the book’s third volume. We’ve come up with a selection of other novels that have been acclaimed as classics and that we find largely incomprehensible — none of them have been bewildering readers for quite as long as Tristram Shandy has, but they’re doing their best to make up for lost time. We’re big fans of some of these novels, by the way (although not all of them) — but love them or hate them, they’re all confusing as hell.
Because one of America’s greatest living writers is also among its most reclusive, we can’t help finding every new tidbit about Thomas Pynchon’s life fascinating. So it was with great, prurient pleasure that we perused these photos Curbed has posted of the Manhattan Beach, CA apartment the author lived in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and where he is rumored to have written all or part of Gravity’s Rainbow. The duplex that includes Pynchon’s one-time one bedroom, one bathroom is currently up for sale for a cool $1.05 million. Curbed points out that the listing leaves open the possibility that a new owner could demolish the building and construct something new. Given our fondness for kitschy, California beach architecture and respect for literary landmarks, we think that would be a shame. Check out a few photos of Pynchon’s former digs after the jump.
Last week, we set out to write a fun post pairing books with the ideal albums to listen to while reading them. Little did we know we were creating our new favorite parlor game — the topic, we’ve found, can lead to hours of conversation (at least, if you love books and music as much as we do). And it turns out we’re not the only ones fascinated with the subject. Asked to submit their own pairings in the comments section of the original post, Flavorwire readers came through in a big way. We collect their great suggestions after the jump, from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Explosions in the Sky’s The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Pulp’s Different Class.
It’s been a big few weeks for cult novels getting their own film adaptations. A New Yorker profile of Guillermo del Toro earlier this month provided a window into the preparations for the director’s version of the H.P. Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness. Over the weekend, we got out first glimpse at the unintentionally hilarious-looking, Tea Party-approved Atlas Shruggedmovie. And yesterday, the news broke that Michel Gondry is taking on Ubik, one of Philip K. Dick’s weirdest books. All of that got us thinking about some of our favorite cult novels that are dying for big-screen adaptations. Check them out, and add your own, after the jump.
We usually cringe when we hear about film adaptations of great, difficult literary authors’ books. But we were actually intrigued to learn that There Will Be Blood director Paul Thomas Anderson is thinking about bringing Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Inherent Vice, to the big screen. Somehow, Anderson and Pynchon just seem right together. Hell, this just might work! And that got us thinking about other directors who seem born to adapt the work of certain writers. See who we paired up after the jump, and suggest your own matches in the comments.
Back in November 2006, Ian McEwan was accused of plagiarizing details from Lucilla Andrews’ memoir in his 2002 Booker Prize-nominated novel Atonement. While he openly admitted to using Andrews’ autobiography as a source, and frequently spoke of his debt to her in live appearances, the claims would not die. Letters of Note recently posted a copy of reclusive author Thomas Pynchon’s letter in support of McEwan, which was sent to his British publisher.
Our favorite bit: “The worst you can call it is a form of primate behavior.” Click through to view the letter in its entirety.
A few years back, when Denis Johnson refused to do press for his novel Tree of Smoke, which went on to win the National Book Award, it was considered newsworthy. (Note: He has since vowed “to learn how to interact with people.”) But in an age where widespread self-promotion (and in many cases, oversharing) is just 140 characters away, the idea of a reclusive author seems both counter-intuitive and strangely romantic. Inspired by Harper Lee’s recent chocolate-fueled assault by a British tabloid reporter, we decided to examine why a few authors of a certain age chose to shut themselves away from the media, and in some cases, from publication and society, as well.
As recently as a year or two ago, the phrase “book trailer” conjured images of a library in a double-wide. But now the trailer is an essential part of book buzz-building, and Melville House Publishing has recognized this by organizing The 1st Annual Moby Awards to celebrate the best and worst of the medium. Publisher and award organizer Dennis Loy Johnson explains, “For a long time, Big Publishing has been wishing it was either the movie industry or the music industry — first writers needed agents, then they had to be young and beautiful, now they need to be in actual movies. It just all cried out for a spoof.”
Crime sure must have some allure. It’s driven untold numbers of men to mayhem, and a certain score of women to murder. And it’s caused some of our highest-minded literary scribes to take some very low roads. The latest egghead to get all hard-boiled is Robert Coover, who joins Thomas Pynchon, John Banville and Paul Auster in the back alleys of our mind. Okay, so Auster has basically been a hard-boiled egghead from the get; he just found a way to keep himself afloat above the low road. Pynchon and Banville (and now Coover) however all made a conscious decision to leave their airy heights and slum it. And the results are as beautiful and as memorable as a broken nose.
That’s good by the way. Damn good. Especially when you’re talking about pulp fiction. But surely these gentlemen haven’t gone surly simply because they feel like a dust-up. Or have they?
