You, Never? Did the Kenosha Kid?

I don't believe in God. I might believe in something, but the whole conscious-force-which-controls-destiny-and-runs-the-world thing, nah, not for me. But every so often, something will happen that makes me wonder...

Like today- I'm rereading Gravity's Rainbow, which is my favoritest book in the world, for the third time, and since I'm not really connected with an literary circles (despite being a brilliant unpublished novelist, there's a certain tragic irony here which I shall wait for another, more appropriate time to properly illuminate), and I'm always curious if writers I like are publishing new work, I pointed my browser to Amazon.com to see if they had any new listings.

Where lo and behold, I discovered I had been automatically subscribed to their blog service (because I'd bought a Gaddis novel a while back), and the first two damn posts on the were about a new Pynchon novel.

Here's the Amazon page, and here's a description from the man himself (there was some question at first if it really was him, but it's been confirmed):

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

I am so happy right now that I am mildly concerned my head will explode.