Wednesday Linkstorm

Happy 76th today to Thomas Pynchon. And happy Pynchon In Public Day to us all. Break out your homemade Tristero shirts, nerdy boys. I won't even say anything about how ratty-looking they are or question why, with any color t-shirt to choose from, you picked brown.Re Pynchon: read this excerpt of his forthcoming novel, The Bleeding Edge, if you haven't yet.Have you guys watched the vid on the Google homepage? It's a tribute to famous movie title sequence designer Saul Bass and it's the coolest thing ever.Also in cool news: how cool is Rachel Kushner in this Times piece? I had a dream the other night--not kidding, this was my actual dream--that some goons were holding me at gunpoint in a warehouse and demanding to know what was on my summer reading list. Me, voice quavering: "Uhhhh The Flamethrowers...and uhhhh...Renata Adler's Speedboat!" And they lowered their guns.Since we're being very cool today, here's a travel piece on Serge Gainsbourg's former house on the Left Bank.Check out this gallery of "what if these books written by men were instead written by gals and given cheesy chicklit covers." Pretty spot on!Speaking of jaw-dropping sexism*...you guys are up on this Wikipedia American Women Novelists thing, right? Basically, Jimmy Wales' army of unpaid dumb-dumbs started moving women from the "American Novelist" category into the "American Women Novelist" category. The Rumpus' Elissa Bassist has a very funny take on it here.*How I start most conversationsChris Ware's Mother's Day New Yorker cover is wonderful, and his explanation is moving. Is Chris Ware our finest human? Certainly a contender.This essay from Vulture on why The Great Gatsby (the book, not the 3D Baz Luhrmann thrill-ride that dramatically concludes with me puking in my tote) is kind of terrible will really have you regretting that Gatsby-themed tattoo you got in college.