zeps

wrote a little about pynchon’s shadow ticket, which i enjoyed quite a bit.

to be fair, looking back on an era can sometimes make it easy to connect things that aren’t there. like, i’m fairly convinced at this point that infinite jest was a one-upmanship reaction to vineland being the follow-up to gravity’s rainbow. is there any proof of that? no.

rereading ‘girl with curious hair’ for the first time in about 16 or 17 years and… yikes, the diss track is so harsh. i don’t know how you recover from that other than writing something that embraces its point to position yourself as in on the joke rather than as the subject of it.

eddington was hysterical. great portrayal of right/left hypocrisy and vacuousness. surprising twists and escalations. also very amused by the implication that a certain bogeyman for the right is just an op.

the reveal of the big winner(s) in all that chaos was a nice touch too.

very much enjoying pluribus. ‘the joining’ is a very good analogue to the internet and what it’s done to us.

use candy glass. the news will fix the audio before airing it

reading tom leclair’s ‘in the loop: don delillo and the systems novel’ as a buffer between fiction reads. interesting so far.

used to hate delillo but grew to enjoy his work. even changed my mind on ‘the names,’ which was anathema in my early-20s, rediscovering greece after a decade in the states.

finished shadow ticket last night. got a lot of thoughts, but they’ll take some time to collect.

keep reminding myself that my pappou came from and survived much worse and still outlived all his tyrants. his advice to me during the crisis was simply “it’ll pass.” and yeah it will. tyrants and their movements inevitably all die. but it still sucks in real time, hey.

been working on the long project lately, but that’s probably because i’m in a much darker place. like, these days we’re seeing the swastikas just casually emerging while the white house downplays it all and goes after antifascists. hail hydra shit, man. cap is the bad guy here. sad state of affairs.

by far the best typesetting of all the editions, imo

i recall tarantino or someone compared writing by pen/pencil to having an antenna to god. i don’t believe in a god, but there’s certainly an intimacy to writing entirely by hand. it’s a direct connection to the work

started writing by pen/pencil again. trying to limit what composing is done by computer. have a hunch that automation—spelling, grammar, editing, visualizing the work, ai assistance, etc—is causing a broad creative atrophy. suspect it’s why a lot of newer books seem so undercooked. (anecdotal, sure)

one battle after another is great. i liked it better than inherent vice. i liked parts of it better than vineland itself, though the book is more full. they’re good companion pieces in that way.

love that pynchon was just like “fuck it, i’ma write a noir trilogy that spans a century as my last work”

it reminds me of when i first picked up v., but tonally more mature, with shorter chapters like bleeding edge.

had to sell my soul for the new pynchon novel, but it was worth it.

on that note, season six pierce is my favorite

trumpism is legit like some americans watched community and thought pierce was the main character

Alt text included!

lol as if we don’t have 28+ fascistic/nationalistic parties in europe to coexist with. pvv, national rally, spartiates, afd, vox, fidesz, and so on. like, c’mon

european pioneers of fascism (and appeasement) really out there like “damn that’s so crazy y’all have nazis in america, wow, we’d never”

the media are complicit, whether by intention or incompetence

journalists have one of the most critical roles in society, as platforms and mouthpieces of our communities

to parrot propaganda without criticality is collusion

Welp, it took 48 hours, but I finally finished building my new factory right here in the U S of A. Now to start selling my product to other American firms without any foreign compe-WHAT?

shadow ticket? 🤔

holy fucking shit a new pynchon novel in 2025

very excited about the pta vineland adaptation even though i can already tell it will crash and burn on release weekend because it’s like they made a movie specifically for me and nobody else

i should’ve read an ellroy book or something between those, just to decompress

made the mistake of reading a william gibson novel after back to back delillo and pynchon ventures, and damn… as much as i love gibson books, that experience felt as insubstantive as candy by comparison

tanjiro levels up when he’s fighting demons the exact same way that i do when i’m writing (very tired, body falling apart, heavy backpack, bad at quitting, new techniques unlock out of desperation)

watchmen hasn’t aged well in that rorschach and ozymandias would just be working together in 2025.