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The wiki is already up (with a link to Pynchon's own promotional video (!) for the book). My favorite lines so far: "[Y]ou're one dumb white motherfucker." "How do you know?" "I counted."

And one more, as Sauncho, a maritime lawyer (and source of the arcane legal principle that gives the novel its title), freaks out to Doc, our hero: "'It's all supposed to be so innocent, upwardly mobile snob, designer shades, beret, desperate to show he's got good taste, except he's also dyslexic so he gets "good taste" mixed up with "taste good," but it's worse than that! Far, far worse! Charlie really has this, obsessive death wish! Yes! he, he wants to be caught, processed, put in a can, not just any can, you dig, it has to be a StarKist! suicidal brand loyalty, man, deep parable of consumer capitalism, they won't be happy with anything less than drift-netting us all, chopping us up and stacking us on the shelves of Supermarket Amerika, and subconsciously the horrible thing is, is we want them to do it. . . .' 'Saunch, wow, that's . . .' 'It's been on my mind. And another thing. Why is there Chicken of the Sea but no Tuna of the Farm?' 'Um . . . ' Doc actually beginning to think about this.

" 'And don't forget,' Sauncho went on to remind him darkly, 'that Charles Manson and the Vietcong are also named Charlie.' "

I finished the novel tonight. If you've put off reading Pynchon, or been put off--as I was in the 1970's by Gravity's Rainbow--this is a great place to start. It even has a happy ending, of sorts. Rumor has it Pynchon timed the release to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders.

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