Nov­el­ist Thomas Pyn­chon does not, as his read­ers well know, do pub­lic­i­ty. But does he need to? When a man has writ­ten books like V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Grav­i­ty’s Rain­bow, does­n’t the appear­ance of a new one pub­li­cize itself, in some sense? Pyn­chon’s eighth nov­el Bleed­ing Edge, a seem­ing­ly hard-boiled yet char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly askew and para­noia-fla­vored tale of post-tech-bub­ble but pre‑9/11 New York, comes out on Sep­tem­ber 17th, and a cer­tain class of fan has no doubt spent hours scru­ti­niz­ing the excerpt its pub­lish­er Pen­guin has already released. A cer­tain oth­er class of fan, the sort who spent long dorm-room hours with the ear­ly books but who some­how nev­er sum­moned the will for the more recent ones, will at least have felt their curios­i­ty piqued. To anoth­er class of fan entire­ly, those who feel like they could get into Pyn­chon but can’t quite deter­mine why or how, we offer the doc­u­men­tary above, Fos­co and Donatel­lo Dubini’s A Jour­ney into the Mind of P.

“I think of Pyn­chon as a cryp­togram,” says one read­er inter­viewed in the film. “We are almost, in a sense, code­break­ers. He presents a puz­zle that we are try­ing to crack.” That, as well as any­thing, sums up my own find­ings from talk­ing to Pyn­chon die-hards about their enthu­si­asm for their author of choice. A Jour­ney into the Mind of P actu­al­ly exam­ines two minds at once: the mind of Pyn­chon the writer, and the mind of the Pyn­chon fan, which seeks not only to grasp the cul­tur­al­ly sweep­ing, infor­ma­tion-dense height­ened real­i­ty of the nov­els, but also to con­struct a coher­ent image of the man who cre­ates that real­i­ty. Thus far, these read­ers have had to draw this image from only the nov­els them­selves (though, in sev­er­al cas­es, large and labyrinthine ones), and for the fore­see­able future they must con­tin­ue to do so. At least Bleed­ing Edge, what­ev­er its recep­tion, will add almost 500 more pages to their body of avail­able evi­dence. Best of luck, Pyn­chon exegetes with copies on pre-order. Per­haps the rest of you would rather start with the book trail­er just above. A new Pyn­chon nov­el may always make a splash, but Pen­guin’s pub­lic­i­ty depart­ment isn’t tak­ing any chances.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read the First Page of Thomas Pynchon’s New Nov­el, Bleed­ing Edge

New Pyn­chon Book [Inher­ent Vice] Out Today: Watch the Trail­er

Thomas Pyn­chon Nov­els Com­ing to eBook, at Long Last

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

http://vimeo.com/66169135?r44b=no

Librar­i­ans are break­ing the mold late­ly and flirt­ing with the world of hip hop and punk. Cour­tesy of The New York Pub­lic Library Tum­blr, we have Chica­go librar­i­ans pay­ing homage to The Beast­ie Boys’s 1994 video, “Sab­o­tage,” direct­ed by Spike Jonze. Of course, the orig­i­nal 1994 video paid comedic trib­ute to TV crime shows of the 1970s, shows like Hawaii Five‑O and Starsky and Hutch. So what we have above is a trib­ute to a trib­ute.

In oth­er librar­i­an news, The Cal­i­for­nia Library Asso­ci­a­tion recent­ly announced that Hen­ry Rollins, the for­mer front­man of the punk band Black Flag (see vin­tage per­for­mance here), will be the keynote speak­er at its con­fer­ence in Novem­ber. If you’re a reg­u­lar Open Cul­ture read­er, you might not be entire­ly sur­prised. These days, Rollins has been pitch­ing edu­ca­tion as the key to reviv­ing our with­er­ing democ­ra­cy and also explain­ing why tenac­i­ty, dis­ci­pline and hard work can take young­sters a long way. He also has 15 books to his cred­it. You can sam­ple his writ­ing by pick­ing up a copy of The Portable Hen­ry Rollins.

via Media Bistro and Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fight For Your Right Revis­it­ed: Adam Yauch’s 2011 Film Com­mem­o­rates the Beast­ie Boys’ Leg­endary Music Video

Hen­ry Rollins Pitch­es Edu­ca­tion as the Key to Restor­ing Democ­ra­cy

‘Beast­ie Boys on Being Stu­pid’: An Ani­mat­ed Inter­view From 1985