Hilarity ensues when impressionable college start tagging literary references in graffiti across their campus. The underground appeal is part of what makes Thomas Pynchon so powerful to students. There were "muted horns" all over over UCSC when I went to school there.

Quoted: Starting last weekend, police at the University of California at Santa Barbara began receiving reports from around campus of a particularly academic form of graffiti — red spray-painted allusions to the work of the postmodern author Thomas Pynchon, whose 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49 is (in typical fashion) a sprawling admixture of paranoia, counterculture and obscure literary references.

So now it really is official, Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day" is permanently out of the Tournament of Books and has claimed yet another another reading victim. 3 out of 4 of the people assigned to read the book didn't even finish it. That's not exactly a fair shake when you're an author notorious for exploding the form of contemporary fiction. I think the judges need to make it all the way through before they can weigh the books on the merits of their scope of vision and achievement.

At least Pynchon finally "lost" to a good challenger. I really plan on reading that Cormac McCarthy book later this year.

In today's Tournament of Books, Thomas Pynchon's novel was defeated by a reader who chose to go no further than 300 pages. While I'm disappointed in the number of people who are unable to finish any of Thomas Pynchon's novels - I think most people bail on far too many things that they consider difficult - I do at least appreciate Sasha's reasoning.

Quoted: I take no pleasure in being defeated by Pynchon, and I don’t think he’s full of hot air; I just think we have very different pleasure principles.

Alas, the tournament is over for me. I care not a single whit about any of the books left.

Pynchon's "Against the Day" just made it past round 2 of "The Morning News" Tournament of Books. He'll be going to the semi-finals in this completely arbitrary but fun tournament.

Quoted: As for Against the Day, I do intend to finish it, perhaps even by the end of this month. Some of it is kind of boring. Some of it is astonishing. When the narration shifts into heavy scare-quote mode, it can get a tad annoying, and some of the exercises in pastiche (detective novel, adventure tale, scientific journal) work better than others. But Thomas Pynchon is a master and when he is on—by which I mean when his riffs achieve the right balance of the arcane, the modern, the scary, and the hilarious—there is no way the mildly interesting, failed experiment of a younger writer is going to compete. Alentejo Blue is about Monica Ali resisting pigeonholes, sussing out what her voice sounds like now. Against the Day is about many things, including the recurring collision of science, politics, terror, and the imagination in our history. Yes, the book jumps around crazily, the threads seem to disintegrate in thin air. The trick is to consider this its nature, one that affords many other delights, rather than the novel’s flaw. Finally, though there are some flat moments in Against the Day, Pynchon never writes, as Ali does in her much shorter novel: “The sky was so blue it hurt.” At least he hasn’t so far. Check in with me next month.

In The Morning News Tournament of Books, Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day," kicked the hell out of Brian K. Vaughan's and Niko Henrichon's graphic novel, "Pride of Baghdad."

Can I get a "What what?"

Quoted: Look, pretend for a moment you’re an ant. To read The Pride of Baghdad is to take a trip across a leaf. It’s fairly absorbing. There’s lots to see. Your view of the world might be minimally altered once you get across it.

Quoted: To read Against the Day is to spend a boatload of ant-lifetimes exploring a tree with a trunk as big as a beer truck. There are forks and boughs and limbs and twigs and parasitic vines and tens of thousands of shimmering leaves. The tree moves and even seems to grow; you experience it only a centimeter at a time, but as you climb you begin to sense its vast, beyond-baroque architecture, its athletic density, its almost miraculous existence as a self-contained entity, simultaneously highbrow and lowbrow, ironic and heartfelt, campy and genuine.

Quoted: Against the Day is a messy novel, fat as a phone book, foaming over with pop-fiction prose and go-nowhere chatter. It is not built to please, and readers who like their stories tidily put to rights will quickly find their brains pulped. But I am very grateful I had the opportunity to read it.

I finally found a place that had the other Thomas Pynchon appearance from the Simpsons. I'd been looking for this one for a little while. It's pretty funny if you know anything about the reclusive author.

The Tunguska Event figures prominently in the new Thomas Pynchon novel. It occurs while many of the main characters are in Siberia. Mystical cities re-appear for a short time and strange characters walk the earth before fading away again. The fictionalization certainly leaves the cause unanswered but many of the details are subtly explored. It was some of my favorite stuff in the book.

As usual, Wikipedia kicks ass - they even have a link to the evnt being mentioned in fiction, including the one I just read. What an incredible resource.

An awesome collections of "Against the Day " reviews and information. This is the book I am just about to finish after 2.5 months.

Quoted: Thomas Pynchon Webseite zum Roman Against The Day

The first review of the new Pynchon novel has already been published (3 weeks prior to the release date). It's by Publisher's Weekly, you have to be s subscriber to get it, but Amazon got access and posted it to their blog.

It seems like this new Pynchon novel is going to be right up my alley and I've already recruited one intrepid soul to read it with me. If anyone is interested in tacking an 1,120 pg monster over the holidays with Ken (user: redelk2535) and I, let me know. I plan on doing my own review for "The Puget News" when my pre-ordered copy gets here from Amazon.com.

Quoted: Knotty, paunchy, nutty, raunchy, Pynchon's first novel since Mason & Dixon (1997) reads like half a dozen books duking it out for his, and the reader's, attention. Most of them shine with a surreal incandescence, but even Pynchon fans may find their fealty tested now and again. Yet just when his recurring themes threaten to become tics, this perennial Nobel bridesmaid engineers another never-before-seen phrase, or effect, and all but the most churlish resistance collapses.