Joe, did we reference this in our literary scatological greatest hits?

Most unforgettably, there is the immortal scene in which Slothrop, hooked up to a sodium Amytal drip, hallucinates dropping his harmonica down the toilet of the Roseland Ballroom, a nightclub where Red, aka Malcolm X, sells gage while Charlie Parker is onstage laying down some very advanced changes on "Cherokee." Down the shitter Slothrop goes, into the murky, fecal depths of white America's racial imagination, in an inward journey that reads like a cutting session with Ralph Ellison, James Joyce, Sigmund Freud, and Leslie Fiedler. Astounding.

I bought Illinois ! I figured for someone who loves novelty value, I needed the banned cover. Plus, all my favorite Sufjan songs were off it anyway. I am listening to it now. I hope all I haven't heard is as good as what I have.

OK, that's actually fairly lame, now that I've written it out.

No, it isn't. I'll stick a copy in the mail. Seems like I had something to send to you or maybe the youngun. Course that's gonna require remembering what it was or plowing through the many piles at home & office.

("It does, however, have the best horse-fucking scene I've ever read," he deadpanned memorably about a novel at one sales conference).

Memo
To: TP
From: Cork
Subject: Horse-fucking

No one's a bigger fan of horse-fucking than I: doing, watching, you name it. But there are limits to what one can expect one's readership to accept. And I speak to credibility, not sensibilities. Albino alligators in Manhattan sewers? Fine. An army commander engaging a prostitute for coprophagy? Brilliant symbolism. But when it comes to horse-fucking, the horse can pitch, the horse can catch, the non-whinnying pitcher can stand on a ladder, use an arm, a baseball bat, a zucchini, his girlfriend's cat that he's always hated (think of it as a tip o' the cap to Rabelais) - doesn't matter, but... and I can't stress this enough, if the horse is fucking, not getting fucked, the catcher had damn well better be another horse or Catherine the Great or maybe a Tijuana sideshow performer. No one is going to believe a bit of Silver on Lone Ranger action. Even WD40 wouldn't help. Love the book, but work on that chapter, my friend.

P-Cow, I think you'll find the whole work worthy. Incidentally listen to what your buddy Lorrie Moore has to say about Pynchon:

Pynchon's mind is the steel trap of American literature: Nothing, large or small, has ever escaped it. Each "novel of ideas"—because Pynchon is arguably our brainiest novelist, this anemic and offputting label gets slapped on his books like an award sticker—is built detail upon detail, painstakingly, by a man with a tireless eye and appetite for the world. The narrative mosaic that emerges is strong and dazzling as a mirror, depthlessly reflective as a mirror, and, not unlike a house of mirrors, each novel manages to ensnare an entire era, its facts and wandering energies enticed and held captive there, though rarely without mercy. Delicious peanuts are tossed in to amuse and feed; for in art, even a mirror is a living creature.

Pynchon has a historian's sense of story (front and back), a musician's sense of line, a philosopher's sense of truth and woe, a hip vaudevillian's wit. His books keep unearthing a hidden America and reinventing the language in which we think and speak of it—or might think and speak of it, or will soon think and speak of it. His novels leap and trespass; they even violate the oft-repeated advice not to begin a story with a character waking up (Gravity's Rainbow; Vineland) and can be found to have applicable political currency when quoted virtually at random: "It is a universal sin among the false-animate or unimaginative to refuse to let well enough alone" (V.). Or, "‘Why fire at Sideling Hill?' Dixon all innocence. ‘Not at the Hill,' chuckles Capt. Shelby, ‘—at what's coming over the Hill'" (Mason & Dixon).

Pynchon's work is fearless, funny, questing, teeming with all manner of originality and surprise.

I haven't gotten around to reading Pynchon yet.

Joe, did we reference this in our literary scatological greatest hits?

Don't think so. I didn't see Trainspotting (nor read it), but whenever I saw the trailer with the guy diving into the toilet I'd think about Slothrop. Left out Brigadier Pudding's shit-eating from GR, too. People, or at least one person, got huffy about Gargantua and Leo Bloom, so Pynchon might have caused actual bloodshed.

I found the horse incident in Nerve's scanner feature. Thought about mentioning my other favorites -- Alan Cumming's parody of the Sophie Dahl Opium ad (not work safe), and especially hobosexual.com ("For lovers of old tramps and railroad men": "Are you the same people that do Bum Fights? Hay-ell no. Anyone with half a brain can see were about making love, not war.") -- but the horse story seemed to traumatize many Natterers. Btw, I'm not linking to my other favorites; I don't want to enable your preeversions & then hear, "Ahh, my eyes! Why did you link that?" You'll have to work for it if you want to see the weirdness.

And speaking of Nerve, here's a Sufjan Stevens interview. Work-safe, although a lot of places block the domain.

Sufjan fans ya gotta track down the latest Mojo which has a fab picture of him leaping about in a Fighting Illini Cheerleader uniform.

Speaking of the Mojo, lisah, I've got that Chess burn ready for you as soon as I get your address.

As a UofI alum, I think I need that mojo. . . perhaps I'll take a little jaunt out to Borders tomorrow.

I saw 'em open for the Replacements in 1990, and they were pretty good then.

If you haven't heard any of their stuff since, I'd highly recommend Frosting on the Beater. It's poppy as all heck but it's punctuated by moments of, I don't know, desperate sadness. The way the songs undercut themselves, it's like watching someone put a brave face on while they fall apart.

And speaking of Nerve, here's a Sufjan Stevens interview.

What considered responses. Makes me feel much better about spending 20 quid I don't have on Illinois.

IAMRaS: To quote someone, just put a > in front of the quoted text like so --

I saw 'em open for the Replacements in 1990, and they were pretty good then.

will appear as

I saw 'em open for the Replacements in 1990, and they were pretty good then.

The font size="-1" thing you did doesn't distinguish itself well in some browsers.