![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Isn't the sky beautiful tonight?
Sep. 3rd, 2007 08:01 pmPynchon. Why did it take me so long to get round to him? I'm sure I vaguely meant to read The Crying of Lot 49 for the American paper in my third year; instead I read it today, and now I'm wondering if things would have been very different. So rich and vivid and *dense*, I can only imagine what the hefty ones are like (and prepare myself for such an ascent at a later date). Just as I'd expected, somewhere between Don DeLillo and Illuminatus!, though given the dates I suppose it's more that they each specialise in aspects of Pynchon's whole.
(Another recent discovery - Ken MacLeod. You know how it is with SF these days, so many also-rans cluttering the field that I've become very sceptical of any name I don't have good reason to trust. But when he was being recommended by Banks before him and Stross after, those count as good reasons, and it didn't hurt when I realised his future - bizarrely dated as any future conceived in the mid-nineties must now be - was set in my manor. The Haringey parts of which, I only today noticed (inspired by MacLeod and especially Pynchon? Could be) bear as their mark this rather alarming crest - the Wheel of Chaos writ with lightning, and the legend PROGRESS WITH HUMANITY. How many alternate readings of that can you construe?
Speaking of North London, as all good souls should, it saddens me to report that the rumours were true - the hypergentrification of Barnsbury has filleted the Albion, turning one of my favourite London pubs into a soulless mess, aiming for gastro classiness but coming off more like a regional Harvester, and with a kitchen that's closed on Sunday afternoons anyway. Ended up in Nando's for food - a first for me; it's far better for vegetarians than I'd expected.
You know when your needle slips out of the night's groove and suddenly you're just not there anymore? Happened again at Stay Beautiful, why I don't know. But the trip there was still worthwhile, even given that it involved passing up free Jack, simply for the T-Witches. Tribute bands don't normally do it for me, but when you know the members can cut it with their own material too, and when the songs include 'Dandy in the Underworld' - well, then it feels more like channeling than impersonation, more like ritual than Ritzy.
(Another recent discovery - Ken MacLeod. You know how it is with SF these days, so many also-rans cluttering the field that I've become very sceptical of any name I don't have good reason to trust. But when he was being recommended by Banks before him and Stross after, those count as good reasons, and it didn't hurt when I realised his future - bizarrely dated as any future conceived in the mid-nineties must now be - was set in my manor. The Haringey parts of which, I only today noticed (inspired by MacLeod and especially Pynchon? Could be) bear as their mark this rather alarming crest - the Wheel of Chaos writ with lightning, and the legend PROGRESS WITH HUMANITY. How many alternate readings of that can you construe?
Speaking of North London, as all good souls should, it saddens me to report that the rumours were true - the hypergentrification of Barnsbury has filleted the Albion, turning one of my favourite London pubs into a soulless mess, aiming for gastro classiness but coming off more like a regional Harvester, and with a kitchen that's closed on Sunday afternoons anyway. Ended up in Nando's for food - a first for me; it's far better for vegetarians than I'd expected.
You know when your needle slips out of the night's groove and suddenly you're just not there anymore? Happened again at Stay Beautiful, why I don't know. But the trip there was still worthwhile, even given that it involved passing up free Jack, simply for the T-Witches. Tribute bands don't normally do it for me, but when you know the members can cut it with their own material too, and when the songs include 'Dandy in the Underworld' - well, then it feels more like channeling than impersonation, more like ritual than Ritzy.
Tags:
