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A Stray Thought
I was reading Kent Johnson’s post on John Latta’s Isola di Rifiuti blog this morning when a stray thought zapped flylike through a small tear in the screen of my concentration. The post continues a debate between Johnson and Tony Towle over a famous poem ascribed to Frank O’Hara, but which Johnson speculates may in fact have been an imitation of O’Hara written in homage to the deceased poet by his friend Kenneth Koch.Read More
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For Against the Day
Herewith one of the most insightful commentaries on one of the GBs (no, you Rachel Ray fans, not “garbage bowls”) of the past half century*, Thomas Pynchon‘s Against the Day. By whom? By someone from whom I did not expect it.Read More
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Inherent Vice
I just finished Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Inherent Vice. It may well be his weakest book, but still a wonderful summer experience for old farts like me, and any other Jim Crumley fans out there. A genre mystery set in L.A., 1970, it’s soft- not hard-boiled due to the diminished mental capacity of the dopers whose lives Pynchon offers up with (dare I say it?) hallucinatory clarity. Among these folks, of course, such clarity amounts to a blur tinged with quasi-mystical insights gleaned from Gilligan’s Island reruns and surfer band tunes.Read More