Happy Birthday to Me!

Today is my birthday, and I fielded many texts and emails during the day. One was from my wife and included Norm. Corrie texting me and Norm?

What...what's up? It was a picture of an article she snapped with her phone, with a picture of Pynchon---one of the famous ones when he was young---and her message was "Out October 7th supposedly."

The link was for a new book from Thomas Pynchon, out October 7th. So...at work and down a rabbit hole.

Here's a link about it being real.

After the "Cow Country" shenanigans---when I realized that book had nothing to do with Thomas Pynchon---I found a synopsis about this possibly-real/possibly-fake Pynchon story, and I felt relieved. It sounded like it certainly could be a Pynchon story. The main character is named Hicks McTaggert (snort), and he's a private detective hired to find a Wisconsin cheese heiress (double snort), ends up shanghaied on a boat out of Milwaukee, wakes up in landlocked Hungary, and ends up dealing with Nazis in the years leading up to WWII.

Now that's Pynchonian. 

In all reality, it took the opening paragraph of Cow Country for me to conclude, "Well, this isn't our boy." And, after reading the synopsis on Pynchon's publisher's own website, I mostly concluded, "Well...story checks out."

I was on the socials last night and all the chatter was about the new movie from Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another, loosely based on Pynchon's Vineland. So, on my birthday, the news dropped that a new book from our author is dropping in October. Freaking rad. 

Happy birthday to me!