Turning Pynchonese
Turning Pynchonese
Plus, Nardwuar's favorite SST record
I’m back from my visit to Canada where I managed to avoid a minor COVID-19 outbreak during International Pynchon Week only to encounter one at home. Nuvia went to Barcelona for work and picked up the virus during her travels. Her symptoms are mild and she hasn’t experienced a loss of taste or smell, so we’re hopeful she’s seen the worst of it. We’ve been confining ourselves to separate rooms and I’ve been spending even more time than usual at our studio. So far I’ve managed to avoid getting COVID a second time so keep your fingers crossed.
I’m hard at work on my piece about Pynchon at the Beach, and I’ll save some of my impressions of the conference and the things I learned there until after the piece runs. One takeaway from the conference is the realization that I’ll be reading and re-reading Pynchon for the rest of my life, but if I had to pick a favorite novel it would be Inherent Vice.
I will tell a couple of Thomas Pynchon stories now because they’re too embarrassing and/or uncharitable to share in the published piece. A long time ago, I freelanced for a magazine called Girls Gone Wild. If you are of a certain age, you will recall the outfit’s ads of boozed up coeds showing their breasts. Well, back when newsstands were still a thing, the Girls Gone Wild braintrust decided to publish a magazine as a distribution vehicle for its DVDs and I occasionally wrote some of the content. It was all fairly PG. Nothing sordid or scandalous. The best thing about the gig was I’d get paid as soon as I turned in the story.
What does this have to do with Thomas Pynchon? Well, one time my editor asked me if I’d be interested in interviewing Thomas Pynchon. I suspected he was pulling my leg, but for a brief moment I considered the perverse logic of Thomas Pynchon granting an interview to a softcore skin mag. My editor had something more nefarious in mind. He wanted me to make the interview up, i.e. pretend as though I’d interviewed the author. After careful consideration, I decided to do it. I imagined a boozy weekend with the writer in the watering holes of Manhattan Beach. If memory serves, my editor rewrote the entire thing, but I still got paid for it. (If I ever get around to writing a sequel to Forest of Fortune, I’m going to have Pemberton working for a Girls Gone Wild-esque operation.)
Speaking of the South Bay, while I was working with Keith Morris on My Damage, we got to talking about Thomas Pynchon. I was curious if he or his father, who knew everyone, had ever bumped into the reclusive author, but no dice. Intrigued, Keith went down to Skylight Books in Los Feliz to buy a copy of Inherent Vice, but the bookseller talked him out of it and coerced him into buying Gravity’s Rainbow instead, which is twice as long and much more complicated. Needless to say, Keith never read it. The book gathered dust on his coffee table and eventually disappeared. I’m still pissed at that snobby bookseller who looked down at his nose at Inherent Vice. Not only is Keith the perfect reader for Inherent Vice, he has the perfect voice. Can you imagine Keith as Doc Sportello?
Vancouver and Victoria
I had a feeling I would like Vancouver, and I did. Before last week, I’d never been to Canada, which is strange considering all the times I’ve been to Mexico. It’s funny when you imagine a place and the reality is nothing like it. I was expecting downtown Vancouver to look like Seattle’s Pioneer Square. I don’t know where that impression came from. Probably from old scene reports in Flipside about punk rock and heroin. It didn’t put me off Vancouver exactly, but I wasn’t expecting the city to be so beautiful. You’re never far from the mountains or the sea in Vancouver. I loved all the coffee shops and bookstores and record stores. I think I ate my weight in fish. One Chinese restaurant was so good, I’d go back to Vancouver just to eat there again.
On the last day of the conference, Sean Carswell and I went to a couple bookstores, including The Book Warehouse, which had several copies of Corporate Rock Sucks that I promptly signed, and Pulp Fiction, a great used bookstore where I scored a couple of Henry Rollins books (One from None and Bang!) We moseyed down to Neptoon Records a few hours before the reading and I had the honor of being interviewed by Nardwuar over the phone on his Twitch channel. Nardwuar is, of course, a legendary interviewer known for his extensive knowledge. There’s a point in every Nardwuar interview where the subject’s mind is blown by something they believe Nardwuar couldn’t possibly know. But know he does. That’s the Nardwuar moment.
So while Nardwuar was speaking to Ben at Neptoon Records about new arrivals at the store, I was rereading my own book, certain that Nardwuar was going to grill me about No Wishes, No Prayers (SST 018) by Vancouver’s Subhumans. And he did. Extensively. For like 45 minutes. “Nardwuar’s interviews always go long,” Ben warned, and he was right. I did, however slip in a question for Nardwuar: “What’s your favorite SST record?” No Wishes, No Prayers, naturally.
The Corporate Rock Sucks event was a smash, especially considering how last minute it was, but a friend of Message from the Underworld (Hi Shaun!) made it happen. Sold a bunch of books and met lots of cool Canadian punks. Couldn’t ask for a more perfect way to wrap up my trip to Vancouver.
But I wasn’t done with Canada yet. Early Saturday morning I checked out of my dorm room at UBC and caught a flight to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, at the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, to visit the writer Terese Svoboda (hi Terese!) and her husband Steve. A few hours later, I was standing at the bow of a boat, skimming across the Salish Sea, searching for humpback whales like in the tales of yore? Like in the books I’m a sucker for? Like it was my destiny?
All of the above, obviously.
That’s how it goes in Canada, apparently: one minute you’re sitting in a lecture hall, discussing Gravity’s Rainbow, and the next you’re cavorting with killer whales.
I learned so much about whales. For instance, did you know that the throat of a humpback whale, one of the largest animals on the planet, is roughly the diameter of a grapefruit? That means all those stories about sailors getting swallowed by whales are total bullshit. Thousands of tales, from Jonah to Geppetto. All bullshit. I was shook, I tell thee.
I could go on about whales, but I want to keep this relatively brief (I know, too late) because today is Anna the Intern’s last piece for Message from the Underworld and her final project for her High Tech High internship. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this essay. The length, the breadth, the emotional vulnerability. I know I wasn’t capable of producing a piece like this when I was a junior in high school. Without further ado…
A Memorable First Show by Anna Lewis
I was 15 when I discovered punk music. My dad played punk for me when I was younger but when I found it my attachment to the music grew. I love music and it’s something my dad and I could bond over. The car is where we listened to the music we both liked. It is also where we would talk about music, the music we loved or that was new to us. He would hear a song and it would remind him of a story or I would hear a song and go off about the band or what the song was about.
My dad and I listen to very different music most of the time. My music taste goes all over the place from bands like Modest Mouse to HALCALI (a Japanese pop-like duo). My dad likes to stick to his favorites, which include Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu, and Tanner. But, that being said, we have a lot of favorites in common.
The first punk show I ever went to was with my dad. It was the Descendents 9th & Walnut Tour. They, along with T.S.O.L. (another one of our favorites), played at SOMA in San Diego on August 20th, 2021. This was like a last little “hurrah” before my summer ended.
The story of 9th & Walnut is so interesting and I’m so glad I got to see the Descendents on this tour. The album, though written years ago, was released in July of 2021. Recording began in The Blasting Room in the early 2000s but Milo didn’t record the vocals until the COVID-19 lockdown.
COVID-19 was not over but things in the world were starting to pick up again. After the show, at the end of August, I would be going back to school, and things would start to head toward the direction of being “normal” again, whatever that means. It was a hard time. I had gotten used to staying at home and working on my own time, but once I headed back to campus I would have to learn how to be in a classroom again. I’m an anxious person, so having to head back to school was scary for me, exciting, but still scary. Getting to see my friends was the only highlight. I was constantly worried about heading back. It was always on my mind. I was headed to 11th grade, 16 years old, a pretty big year. There was a lot on my mind, a majority of that being worry.
It was my first time going to a show like this. Before I had only gone to really small shows and one bigger concert, so this was all new to me. I felt a swarm of emotions while headed to the show. I was excited but nervous (how I feel about most events in my life), it was my first show and in a new environment but I was glad to have my dad there with me. I was glad to have someone with me who was interested and able to enjoy this to the fullest with me.
When going to shows and events, my dad and I gravitate toward the back and to the side, sticking to a wall. I’m not sure why we do this but it has led to me observing. Not only observing the band performing but also the crowd. I saw people young and old. Kids my age flying around in the pit and middle-aged people lurking in the back. And specifically, this one drunk woman who was standing in front of me. She asked me multiple times throughout the night if a man was hitting on her (he was not) and every time I repeated the same response “I don't know, man” along with a shrug.
Being able to watch an estimated 500 people who all have the same interests as you collectively enjoying something is interesting. Seeing how everyone was moving together and creating a flow was fascinating. The overall atmosphere of the venue and the people in it was a really interesting thing to observe.
Getting to see the Descendents, a band that my dad and I love so much, is something I’ll forever be grateful for. I’ll never forget being able to sing along to our favorite songs and how as I walked around my shoes squeaked and stuck to the floor. I was happy and for the first time in a while, I could forget that in a couple of days I would have to head back to school, I could live in the moment and enjoy my time with my dad.
Thanks for reading. The first person to respond “What’s Pemberton up to?” will get a signed copy of Forest of Fortune. Must have a mailing address in the U.S. Sorry, but them’s the breaks.
"What's Pemberton up to?"