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8288. alistairconnor - 8/17/2006 10:55:07 AM Talk of the devil, Wonk...
Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after the First World War, Against the Day moves from the labour troubles in Colorado, to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, to Venice and Vienna, to the Balkans and Central Asia, to Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tungska event, to Mexico during the revolution, Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.
With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
The sizeable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi and Groucho Marx.
As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it is their lives that pursue them.
Meanwhile, 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's 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.
Synopsis, by the author, of a novel about to be published...
Guess who? 8289. wonkers2 - 8/17/2006 12:38:13 PM Interesting. Pynchon and I were college contemporaries. I knew some people who knew him but never met Pynchon. He was known as the leading campus creative writer, a bit of a legend among English majors along with Richard Farina. Pynchon turned out to be much better than Farina who was killed in a motorcycle accident before he reached thirty. I did know him and thought he was a bit phony. Pynchon's books are hard to get through. It's been said that he writes for English professors. 8290. wonkers2 - 8/17/2006 12:39:45 PM A good book for trying Pynchon is "The Crying of Lot 49." It's only 150 pages or so. 8291. alistairconnor - 8/17/2006 3:26:15 PM I enjoyed Mason/Dixon and Lot 49. I venerate Gravity's Rainbow. I've never read V. 8292. alistairconnor - 8/17/2006 3:30:10 PM This guy sounds like a character from Pynchon...
Adolf's rascal nephew William Hitler. I never knew he existed. 8293. jexster - 8/19/2006 1:52:27 PM Comcast Culture Commerical
With Mr. T
Geek in shower singing "Born to be Wild"
Get your motor running
Get it on the highway
Searchin for a monkey
Searchin in the highway....
Mr. T breaks thru wall
"Don't be a culture fool....get comcast with ondemand" 8294. wonkers2 - 8/23/2006 1:37:50 AM Cap'n Dirty sez, "Check out these tomaters!" 8295. uzmakk - 8/29/2006 4:25:32 PM I heard a strange movie title floated the other day, Cellar Door: The Boy. 8296. wonkers2 - 8/29/2006 4:47:29 PM Whatever happened to clrdr? He was one of our few actual luminaries. As I recall he had published at least one book. 8297. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/29/2006 6:10:08 PM A Motie insulted him–beyond his capacities to forgive. 8298. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/29/2006 6:25:40 PM 
8299. alistairConnor - 8/29/2006 7:14:04 PM Oho! So you're an official artist now?
Can we expect a "neocon realism" period? 8300. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/29/2006 8:07:17 PM If the powers that be only knew! 8301. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 8/29/2006 8:08:32 PM 
8302. wonkers2 - 8/31/2006 3:53:19 PM Django's ghost reappears in Detroit. 8303. wonkers2 - 8/31/2006 4:20:27 PM Django Reinhardt Lives in Detroit! 8304. Ulgine Barrows - 9/4/2006 10:39:24 AM well, I forget where I am supposed to post about music I've just discovered
I have the key in my hand
All I have to find is the lock
8305. wabbit - 10/13/2006 12:54:42 AM Spamland!
8306. thoughtful - 10/27/2006 7:38:43 PM I had an opportunity to visit the corcoran gallery recently. I'm not one much for modern art. This despite the fact that my threshold for calling it art is pretty low....it should look like something that required more effort and talent than a 3-yr old would put forth. Granted, that eliminates a lot of art.
I find it most frustrating when looking at a piece of 'art' for which i have not a clue as to what the artist could possibly be thinking only to find it's labeled, "Untitled". Thanks.
Of course, that may be more sensible than the one labeled "rectangle" on which there wasn't a single right angle, let alone a 'rectangle'...unless the artist was punning me "wreck tangle", I've not a clue.
To me art should trigger more than just an emotion or sense in me...it should help communicate something of what's on the artist's mind. But I find a lot of contemporary art fails to do that.
So after walking the gallery and finding a few pieces that were at least colorful or clever or very creative, I decided that the only way to approach it is with a sense of humor....the laugh being on the gallery who shelled out $$$ for this crap.
Always remember the time john & yoko put a store-bought apple on display in an art gallery as commentary on the whole thing.... 8307. wonkers2 - 11/2/2006 3:21:34 AM R.I.P. William Styron
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