Pynchon is incredible. I only wish he was more prolific. I too just finished Vineland, and it has me aching to get ahold of more Pynchon. I have yet to read Mason Dixon, and I'd love to get ahold of a copy... but its too damned expensive to have books sent here, and the local English bookstore refused to order me books last time I was there. "No orders till thursday." in the grand tradition of the classic Russian fuck you sign, "Closed for 15 minutes" (while I smoke and read).

I found this quote in Vineland, and I thought some here might find it interesting.

"If patterns of ones and zeros were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and deaths? It would have to be up one level at least - an angel, a minor god, something in a UFO. It would take eight human lives and deaths just to form one character in this being's name -its complete dossier might take up a considerable piece of the history of the world. We are digits in God's computer, she not so much thought as hummed to herself to a sort of standard gospel tune, And the only thing we're good for, to be dead or to be living, is the only thing He sees. What we cry, what we contend for, in our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of the hacker we call God." --Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

RE: Reading -- February 2003