I hope the new design attracts scores of new visitors

Well, "scores" is probably optimistic.
Maybe "dozens" is more realistic.
I'd hope for at least a dizaine of new visitors after taking the afternoon to brighten up a design that had been done all in black since it was created in the dark days of early November 2004 when we had lost all hope in the American electorate and the motto at the head of this new blog was "helping save america from the dark side, one state at a time." And what was going to save those deep red states in the thrall of torturers? Why, t-shirts of course! You laugh. But who's our President now?

Maybe the new page design will even prompt me to write here on a more regular basis. Or maybe not.

The Rumors of the Death of Free TV Have Been (Slightly) Exaggerated.

The Countdown to the Death of Free TV is over and the switches have been thrown.

My television on the fringes of the New York viewing area is, surprisingly, not totally dead. With my converter box in place and with quite a bit of fiddling with the antenna, I am able to get WABC channels 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3! Or at least get them sometimes; they do tend to break up into soundless pixels from time to time. So I'll be able to watch the NBA finals tonight (maybe), but Dave Letterman and Conan O'Brien can forget about lobbying for my support, because NBC and CBS have disappeared (as have Fox, PBS, and whichever networks are associated with channels 9 and 11 -- the WB? CW?).

So last night when there was nothing on Disney's ABC except a Disney movie about Disneyworld's Haunted Mansion attraction, I had to read (finishing Rabbit Redux by Updike and starting The Women by T.C. Boyle) and listen to music (Thelonious Monk's Criss-Cross and Underground and Angela Hewitt's interpretations of Francois Couperin's keyboard music). It's hard to argue that the loss of free television isn't an overall plus.

Possible Origins of Inherent Vice , and a belated recognition of The Recognitions

Where does Inherent Vice come from?
"Well," you might answer, "if it's 'inherent,' it doesn't come from anywhere; it's just there."
But I'm not asking about the vice itself, but about the title of Thomas Pynchon's upcoming novel. The title of his last novel, Against the Day, has a full page dedicated to its possible origins and meanings on the PynchonWiki, so I thought I'd put my thoughts about the possible origins of the next novel's title on the record before I get a chance to flip open its cover for the first time. Before anyone beats me to it.

When I first heard the title, my immediate thought was that its sound and rhythm were an obvious tribute to the major work of a younger artist who wrote in Pynchon's shadow, Infinite Jest by the late David Foster Wallace. That tribute may still be part of the title's origin, but over the last month I've had the pleasure of reading a novel (that had been on my list forever) by an older writer who helped pave the way for Pynchon, The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis. The phrase "inherent vice" appears throughout the book (eight times on four pages: 182, 234, 355, & 949) and the arguments about inherent vice are at the heart of the book's examination of originality and forgery.

"But of course no one will insure against inherent vice." (234)
"As you've told me, one cannot insure against inherent vice." (355)
"We cannot insure against inherent vice." (949)

So, did Pynchon read, and was he influenced by, The Recognitions? Is he recognizing its importance in the title of his upcoming novel? For me, the evidence was there and indisputable as soon as I saw the poem at the heart of Gravity's Rainbow, Rilke's "The Duino Elegies", quoted directly on page 277 of The Recognitions and become an important plot point later in the book (see pages 299, 622, 746). Even this could still be simply a coincidental regard for a great poem, but there's no coincidence that could account for the fact that the first sentence of Gravity's Rainbow is a famous echo of the beginning of the Elegies and that The Recognitions ends with a paraphrase of their ending (see the last note, 956.25, on this last page of "A Reader's Guide to The Recognitions").

I may start reading Inherent Vice on the day that it comes out in August and decide that I'm full of shit about the title, but right now I'm sure of my theory of the title's origin. Maybe this little blog entry will even find itself linked to on one of the many Pynchon fan sites one day. What an ambition!

And even if I'm not sure where the title on the cover comes from, I am sure where the cover art originated: Cruiser Art in Hawai'i. But don't ask me why (yet).


(I've also become an apostle for The Recognitions. Read it! Its rewards are tremendous and it's not as hard as its reputation suggests -- especially if you're a fan of Pynchon's -- but I do suggest that you bookmark WilliamGaddis.org and the Reader's Guide on that site before you start reading. I didn't discover it until I was about 500 pages into the book and starting to get the vast cast of characters confused. The Guide is a great online resource, if only for its translations of the foreign passages.)

2009 Is Going to Be a Great Year (Part Three)

Thomas Pynchon and Bob Dylan seem to be working in concert lately, and picking up speed, as they continue their creative careers. I couldn't help thinking that it seems like just yesterday that Pynchon's Against the Day and Dylan's "Modern Times" were released, and now here we are (or at least here I am) anxiously awaiting their new creations.

But their parallel paths go back much further than 2006, or even 1997. In every year that Thomas Pynchon published a novel, Bob Dylan has given us a new studio album!

2009 -- TP's Inherent Vice // BD's "Together Through Life"
2006 -- TP's Against the Day // BD's "Modern Times"
1997 -- TP's Mason & Dixon // BD's "Time Out of Mind"
1990 -- TP's Vineland // BD's "Under the Red Sky"
1973 -- TP's Gravity's Rainbow // BD's "Dylan" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid"
1966 -- TP's The Crying of Lot 49 // BD's "Blonde on Blonde"
1963 -- TP's V. // BD's "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan"

The only year that seems a little off is 1973, where even two Dylan albums weren't enough to balance the scales. The cover versions on "Dylan" and the extended single of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" that is "P.G. & B.t.K." are no match for the weight of Gravity's Rainbow (GR would have been balanced by "Blood on the Tracks" in a more perfect world), but all the other years seem to reach a sort of equilibrium. I'm surprised that I never noticed this coincidence between two of my favorite artists before, but I'm sure that someone else has.

(I had hoped that these magical creative years might give us some financial guidance as well in these turbulent economic times, but there's no such luck: 1963, 1997, and 2006 were up years for the Dow, but 1966, 1973, and 1990 saw declines.)

Gone but Not Forgotten

What a great Bushism I found from our ex-President in Slate today, the first one since he helicoptered out of town on January 20:

"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened."

—On what he hopes to accomplish with his memoir, as reported by the Associated Press, Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009 [http://www.slate.com/id/2214256/]

If they let him write those presidential memoirs without a ghost, maybe I’ll have to read it just for the comic authorial (or is that authoritarian? or authoritative? or some conscious Joycean mélange of the three?) voice. It could be another Autumn of the Patriarch if his publisher has the genius to tell him, “Editor? You don’t need no friggin’ editor! It’s perfect just as it is Mr. President.”

2009 Is Going to Be a Great Year (Part 2)

I'll be doing my bit for the economy in 2009, giving money to Penguin for a new book in August and to Columbia for a new record on April 28th. You can check BobDylan.com for details, read about it on RollingStone.com here, and read an interview by Bill Flanagan with Bob Dylan talking about "Together Through Life" by clicking here.

Here's a sample:

[...]Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up.

And if that's not clear, Bob explains his imagism better with the follow-up question:

In what way?
Well for instance, if there are shadows and flowers and swampy ledges in a composition, that’s what they are in their essence. There’s no mystification. That’s one way I can explain it.
Like a locomotive, a pair of boots, a kiss or the rain?
Right. All those things are what they are. Or pieces of what they are. It’s the way you move them around that makes it work.

Keep those images moving Bob!

2009 has already given us President Obama, and promises to give us a new studio album from Bob Dylan and a new novel from Thomas Pynchon. Quit your fucking whining America! These are the best years of our lives!

2009 is Going to Be a Great Year

So, by this August your 13-inch rabbit-eared television will be dead, your total 401K retirement account balance will be less than your average monthly grocery bill, your house will be worth less than your 15-year-old Jetta, and the Chinese will have bought the brand names "Chevrolet" and "Cadillac" for 200 euros each, but on August 4, 2009 we will also be given the opportunity to shell out a mere $27.95 for a relatively short (416-page) new novel by Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice.
Here's the tag line from the Penguin catalog:

" Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon—private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog "

The first descriptions and excerpts in the catalog sound like a cross between Vineland and The Crying of Lot 49 with a dash of Raymond Chandler's style, but I'm sure that Tom will have some surprises in store for us that are brand new.

Free Analog TV Refuses to Die!

And the countdown clock has been updated.

Get this widget!

I was hoping that I would have more enforced reading and music time starting on February 17th, but that damn box will continue to sing its siren song until June 12, because the Republicans in Congress obviously were starting to picture senior citizens with pitchforks at the gates of their marble citadel.

No need to reset the countdown clock yet, or Bye Bye Miss American Idol!

Thanks to Republicans in the House of Representatives this afternoon, it seems that the death of broadcast TV in my fringy reception area is going to continue on schedule. The Senate passed a four-month delay earlier this week, but the House has refused to give fuzzy analog reception an extended life beyond February 17th.
Now I won't have to change the settings on my Death of Free TV Countdown Clock. And, barring an appeal to the Supreme Court by Howie Mandel and the cast of The View, those of us who are too cheap to subscribe to cable, and too far from New York's transmission towers to pick up the weaker digital signals, will finally be free of the boob tube's siren song in less than three weeks!!

So, What Is Funny Now That Dubya Has Skedaddled Back to the Wasteland??

Now that both WhiteHouse.Org and Get Your War On have gone on hiatus, and the Bumbler in Chief has left us, what's left to laugh at every morning?

How about a blog where cute animals get told what's what?