Long Awaited New Work Coming from Pynchon, Postal Service
News has leaked that not one, but two premier artists in their respective fields of pop music and literature, both with Los Angeles-area ties, have new work headed our way, perhaps as early as this Winter.
Ben Gibbard has told MTV that he and his partner, L.A.-based musician Jimmy Tamberello, together known as The Postal Service, have initiated the beginnings of their second LP, the long awaited follow up to 2003’s Give Up.
Meanwhile, Penguin Books has confirmed that Thomas Pynchon is putting the finishing touches on a new novel, due this December.
For Pynchon, who, lived in Manhattan Beach in the early 70’s, where he wrote much of his epic Gravity’s Rainbow (which includes a personal favorite passage about our freeways:
The Santa Monica Freeway is traditionally the scene of every form of automotive folly known to man. It is not white and well-bred like the San Diego, nor as trecherously engineered as the Pasadena, nor as ghetto-suicidal as the Harbor. No, one hesitates to say it, but the Santa Monica is a freeway for freaks, and they are all out today… [p. 882]),
the book marks the first follow up since his 1997 epic Mason & Dixon .
Oddly enough, Pynchon’s 1965 novel The Crying of Lot 49 actually deals heavily with the secret history and internal workings and symbology of (you guessed it) the U.S. postal service! Talk about a coinky-dink!
While we don’t know if Pynchon is a fan of the dancey poptronica stylings of The Postal Service, we do know that he is not adverse to penning the odd CD liner note, as he did for the defunct rock band Lotion back in the 90’s. So… Can you say synergy? You publicists should be paying me for these gems! Seriously–pay up, assholes.
I think TP was in the South Bay in the mid 1960’s-right after he went “underground” a fairly notorious Playboy article had him hanging with the Beach Boys-since this was @ their peak that was a neat trick. As I recall on the John Larroquette Show did an episode where one of the characters were trading tapes with Pynchon-he personally asked the writers to make his favorite band the “13th Floor Elevators”…lastly a guy I knew swore his old bankteller had P in Santa Anita/Arcadia in the mid 1980’s
I think you mean synchronicity, not synergy. Can you say dictionary?
I knew Tom Pynchon very well when he live in his flat on 33rd street in Manhattan Beach (3 years more or less) Odd…seems like light years ago…last I heard he married his agent and lives in New York. I had many a long talks with the man and sat in his flat as he typed, (four fingers)writing Gravities Rainbow. Now that I am older, I am not so…awe-struck by “Thomas Pynchon” but I am glad I met the Tom I knew, the humor and fun he was and kind and considerate young man of 33. He encouaged me (at the time) as a young writer and was respectful at my early attempts at prose and Lord knows I’ll never forget the late afternoon when he paid my rent. If you ever cross his path…send my regards.
Bruce Owens