Hi Everyone-

Hope all is well with you and that your Thanksgiving preparations are going well. I just wanted to take this chance to mention a major literary event happening this very week: the publication on Tuesday of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against the Day.

I have already sung the praises of that other great, hyper-challenging author William Gaddis in this space, and I'd have to say that he and Pynchon form the twin pillars of avant-garde post-war fiction. Pynchon's previous works, V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason and Dixon, have all already reached canonical status, and this new novel--his longest, at a whopping 1,085 pages--is already receiving amazing reviews, including one in this Sunday's Washington Post Book World, by Steven Moore, a leading Pynchon scholar.

I'd love to tell you I'd read it already, but I just got my first look at it today (eleven hundred page galleys are rather expensive to produce, so previews of this novel were in short supply). But I can't wait to start: it's an epic covering dozens of settings during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with many cameos from historical figures, delivered, I'm sure, in Pynchon's signature baroque-slapstick style. A new Pynchon book is always of note, and whether you start it today or put it aside for your next vacation (or broken leg), it's the must-have literary item of the season. It's also on sale, since it's featured in our Holiday Gift Guide (of which more next week!)

Also bear in mind Penguin's new paperback of Gravity's Rainbow, long considered Pynchon's masterpiece. It features a snazzy new cover by comics icon Frank Miller--and French end flaps!

Happy Thanksgiving!
And see you in the stores!

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer