Just a short post today because I’m hyped — two of my all-time favorite authors have books dropping soon.
First up is Tom’s Crossing by Mark Danielewski. I’ve already started reading it digitally, but I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy (I’m more of an analog reader at heart). I’ll share more complete thoughts after a reread, but for now: I’m just so grateful that one of my favorite writers has something new out and I’m loving it so far.
t’s a massive book, over 1,200 pages, and if you’ve read Danielewski before, you know to expect the unexpected. It’s a western — not typically my genre but like Lonesome Dove and Blood Meridian somehow sneak on to my best of the best shelf. It’s already hitting me hard. It’s emotionally rich, expansive, and surprisingly smooth to read, a bit different from the baroque density you might expect from him, but no less rewarding. The vibes are off the charts.
Even this early on, it feels like it could become one of my favorite novels ever, right up there with House of Leaves, which is firmly in my top ten.
It officially drops at the end of October, and I think people are going to love it.
The other book I’m anticipating (and seriously wish I already had) is Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, due out the first week of October. It’s his tenth novel and his first in over a decade.
This is coming out the first week of October and is Pynchon’s tenth novel and his first in a dozen years. I don’t think such titles exist and if they did how useful they are in the arts but if somebody were to ask me who the greatest living writer is I’d probably say it’s Thomas Pynchon.
I don’t have the book so I have very little to say about it but in a world where people are logging books they read on Goodreads or social media and just crushing through books in large numbers I just wanted to take a second an appreciate two of my favorite authors having books coming out in the same year who don’t put out books unless they got one of them ones ready to for us.
There is no contracted series, there is no having to strike while you’re hot, it’s two one-of-one writers who only drop when they have a gem for us.
As a bit of aside I wanted to talk about one more thing coming out soon in a different medium, but no less a must have. From Criterion we are getting a 4k of House Party.
I don’t pick up every Criterion release, usually just stuff I love or things I’ve been meaning to see that deserve that Criterion treatment. This one is the former. I’m just getting old enough now that things from my early childhood are starting to age into that deserved patina of importance. And yeah, everyone probably feels this about their own era, but culturally, I really think we were killing it — music, film, games, comics, fashion (well, some of it – can keep a lot of it), all hitting hard. Now? It’s starting to feel like we’ve stumbled into some soft version of idiocracy, and I’m not really here for it.
But House Party? That’s good times that I can’t wait to revisit it.