This new book looks really, really bad. I'm going to pick it up the day it comes out and do nothing else until I've finished it--but still, I'm going into it with really low expectations. Going off what I've heard about it so far, that's the only safe choice (and did anytone read that excerpt that was available? that was NOT Pynchon).
That said, I'm still fairly excited. It's not everyday new Pynchon comes out. In the last forty years or so it's happened what... six or seven times? Especially after Against the Day (which was more of a post-Gravity's Rainbow masterpiece than I had ever allowed myself to hope for), I'm willing to forgive him about anything.
It's always possible he might be putting out another book in the next few years. In that big ten-year gap before Vineland, there's no telling how many projects he might have begun. (If Joyce is any indication, the stress if writing a masterpiece can be rather difficult--and Pynchon, of the two, has always been the one more inclined to sloth.) I'm figuring he probably worked most of them into Against the Day, but there might be a few left, right?
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