12/30/2006

Reading Against the Day, by Thomas Pynchon, who is considered one of the greatest contemporary writers and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize a number of times. The novel is set at the turn of the century and is framed with a 'round the world hot air balloon ride and contains, among other sidelines, the story of an anarchist bomber, killed due to his actions against railroad and mining interests, and avenged by his sons. Here's his blog entry on the book and the wiki entry, too. To come, possibly, another blog site he shares with others who are reading the book. He's only about a fifth of the way through but says it is multi-layered and is filled with numerous cultural and literary references. To name a couple--Alice in Wonderland (though tarot cards instead of playing cards) and Burning Man.

He was planning on going into academia, but in 1993 his house burned down and all of his books in it. His disertation notes, on Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, were destroyed. As over ten years have passed and he was sitting on a sunny bench in Noe Valley, drinking coffee and surrounded by friends, he didn't seem too rattled (though maybe he should have been--his friends were doing "contact improv"). Since the fire he has been trying to buy back the books that were burned. It's not the same, he says, to read books that aren't yours--there aren't the notes in the margins and the blank space makes you aware of memories that have been forgotten. There was one book that survived, if you count the cover--all the pages were burned. It was called, appropriately, Hieroglyphics of Our Time and the author sent him a new copy with an inscription reading: "There is only one thing that can never be burned again and that is fire..."

Though not a career academic, he gets his dose through book clubs, one at Stanford where they read philosophy (most recently Kant's Third Critique) and a non-academic club (which he was involved in a year ago) where they read books on luminality (I'm still not clear on what this is, but I think he expalined it as being in a trance-like state or having to do with metaphysical channeling), led by author of TechGnosis, Erik Davis. From the author's website: [TechGnosis]shows how the language and ideas of the information society have shaped and even transformed many aspects of contemporary spirituality.


His favorite book of all time--Hopscotch, set in France and written by the Argentinian intellectual, Julio Cortázar. It makes you feel, he explains, like you're lying on the beach and everything is going to be okay...and it's filled with scenes of beautiful women smoking. His copy has been loaned to friends and has been all around the world. The author instructs that the book can be read from the beginning to chapter 56, where the book can be considered to end or starting with chapter 73 and then according to a sequence listed in the "Table of Instructions".


I'm a little embarassed by my photography skills--he doesn't really look like this, I just froze an unnatural moment--though not as unnatural as the shots above...