Thomas Pynchon and Inherent Vice

A fascination with the hot cars of their day.
Writer Thomas Pynchon is fascinating, and not just because we grew up on opposite shores of Long Island. He was a North Shore beat guy, me a South Shore clamdigger a few years younger, but with aspirations. His writing tends towards offbeat themes: oddball names, sophomoric humor, illicit drug use and paranoia.

Pynchon in a rare photo from his younger days.
He was Hunter Thompson before Rolling Stone was a magazine. And he was gonzo before Charles Giuliano coined the word. He holds the same fascination for me as did Jean Shepherd whose storytelling abilities are almost cinematic. The ability to draw word pictures and conjure up mental images is a special gift that not every writer masters. Pynchon does this with a sparing use of words, not volumes of them.

His latest book, released this past summer is Inherent Vice and the video below gives you a good taste of his work. The voice over is allegedly done by the reclusive Pynchon himself.

Former Brandeis Art Student Details History of Rose Art Museum

Image by Larry Murray
Much has been written about Brandeis and the Rose Art Museum, but it takes a former student who has become an artist and critic himself to make it feel like the tragedy it is. In the style of a New Yorker magazine article with many twists and turns, my colleague at Berkshire Fine Arts, Charles Giuliano does more than simply report on the Rose. He details his very personal history with it, with the artists whose works are in it and the people whose generosity has now been betrayed.

It stands not only as a credible report, but also as a very personal remembrance.

"Brandeis Plunders Its Rose Art Museum"
Read it and weep.

Charles as a student.

"It is ironic that in taking this action, Brandeis University, a paradigm of radical liberal education, has set a precedent that may spread to other hard pressed institutions."

Charles Giuliano today.

"Rush and the Rose staff, whose jobs will be terminated at the end of June, are in the midst of editing a catalog of the collection which will go ahead with publication in September. Instead of a celebration and document as originally intended it will serve as a marketing tool for the sale of works When that happens there will be no curators on site to handle the inventory. Brandeis will have to hire scabs for this task."