Friday Links: Hell Is For Christopher Columbus Edition
“What was 'walking on water,' if it wasn’t Bible talk for surfing?” - Thomas Pynchon, 'Inherent Vice'
But first, your weekly Vine: plagues week rages on! Thursday was Chapter 60: “The Plague of Skinks.” Today is Chapter 61: “The Plague of Darkness.” The podcast continues in the face of pestilence! Next week is the last week of Vine—more plagues coming—so catch up while you can!
Holidays mean everything and nothing to me. I am grateful for the any excuse to get together with my loved ones and eat a ton of good food, but I feel weird logging on to the internet to say I’m excited about Thanksgiving. We must reflect, though—be grateful for our loved ones, and remember the narrative of this holiday is bullshit. This Thanksgiving, work to kill the colonizer in your head.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Noir week is moving out of the 1930s-40s and into territory I, a person who unashamed claims The Big Lebowski as his favorite movie, am thrilled about. But this isn’t hippies in the 90s wandering aimlessly through speeches about Kuwait. No, we’re going to the belly of the beast—a post-Charles Manson, Nixon-in-office, Knicks-winning-championships dark era for the United States. Do drugs and get paranoid, this week, we’re reading Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon.
I’ve never read Pynchon before—I’ve got Crying Of Lot 49 on the shelf, please don’t recommend me Pynchon—but man I really enjoyed this novel. Do I want more Pynchon or do I want more paranoid stoner narrators? It’s such a tricky narrator to pull off. This book should be read in a group or class—I know the analysis I can provide zipping through this thing during Thanksgiving break is going to be shallow. You’re not quite sure what’s going on, and you’re not quite sure it matters. It’s a lot like Chandler that way, except Doc Sportello is having acid flashbacks on top of daily marijuana use on top of untreated concussion symptoms on top of—and this becomes important when Doc eats a whole chocolate cream pie for the dinner—the diet of the 70s. It’s not Sam Spade eating pickled pigs feet with a police detective, though, so maybe things do improve through the generations.
The book made me laugh a good deal. It’s also got loads and loads of very descriptive sex in it, so maybe I’m not recommending for my parents’ book club. But I love it for L.A. reasons, especially L.A. in the 70s reasons, and the breezy, unreliable, and confused journey the narration takes you on. I read fast and didn’t think about it much, and it feels like I missed out, but also feels like that’s what the book wanted me to do. Also, totally killer last line.
LINKS!
Something to listen to? I made a mistake for the last five years and forgot Minus The Bear existed. My favorite track of theirs is “Secret Country,” which might be a weird choice, but whatever.
Hey, the humbly gorgeous lit mag I work for got ranked somewhere! Bretch de Poorere has Cotton Xenomorph #257 out of 1000, which honestly—rips. I mean, I think ranking anything in art is inherently about as serious as promises made at last call. But we’re all floating in an attenion economy ocean, doing our best, and it’s nice to be noticed as one of the octopi.
Apparently, my beloved hometown of Murfreesboro ranks high among the most haunted places in Tennessee. Now see, this is a ranking I could’ve used. I just spent two-plus years writing a horror novel and set it in East Tennessee, thinking the mystical magic of the mountains a more appropriate setting for witches and demons and shapeshifters than the humble rolling hills of Middle Tennessee. Well.
Always love to link to The Daily Zeitgeist when X’unei Lance Twitchell, Professor of Alaska Native Languages at University of Alaska Southeast, is on. He’s such a sharp guest, and every time he’s on, I feel like I see the world a little bit differently. Last time he was a guest, X’unei turned me on to trying to move away from “western/indigenous” terminology in favor of “colonizer/anti-colonial,” because those terms more accurately reflect attitudes and practices. This time—and I put this here mainly for my parents/aunt and former pastor—X’unei talks about a Presbyterian Church-sponsored boarding school (not great!) where, decades later, the Church actually came out, issued a public apology for their role in colonialism, and pledged something like $1 million to the community there. See, acknowledging wrongdoing and doing the bare minimum isn’t so hard!
Apparently, we have to re-litigate this: Ace of Base is a Nazi band. Their founder, Ulf Ekberg, got his start in Nazi punk bands. “I Saw The Sign” is about getting redpilled. “All That She Wants” is about a welfare queen, that pesky myth. Ace of Base are Nazis. Shoutout to
for pointing this out originally, at Cracked.Finally, more to add to the ol’ TBR list: E.G. Condé over at Shepherd on the five best Indigenous futurism books. Got some anthologies, got a novella, even got a graphic novel! Christmas is coming up, buy your loved ones books.
That’s it for this week. What’re you still doing here? Go read Vine! It’s almost over!
If you’re in the service industry, I wish you the wittiness of Doc Sportello if you need to tell off a customer. Also, may you clean up in tips this weekend.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
Speaking of 70s LA detectives, you ever watch Altman's The Long Goodbye? That's a Marlow that fits right in with The Dude and Doc.