A word to the wise.

The fact that we are less than a month away from the publication of over a thousand pages of Pynchon has caused us a certain conflict of interest here at DHAIP, on two levels:

A: It does not behoove us to be enthusiastic about the future, professionally speaking.

B: Advertising is not our game.

Therefore, we officially predict disappointment in the finished product and refuse to link to any site offering copies for sale.

But nothing in our mission statement prevents us, I believe, in mentioning that if there is any living author who has caught, in his writing, some genuine, alarming hint of the dark, vast, insanely complex matrices on which we struggle to live and to perceive what controls us, then that author is currently seventy years of age, and perhaps unlikely to exert himself so thoroughly in our service again. We must, as Italo Calvino suggests, recognize that which, in the midst of Inferno, is not Inferno, and give it room -- perhaps a thousand pages' worth of space will do.

In his touching refusal to allow a single clear picture of himself to be taken for over forty years, Mr. Pynchon has accomplished -- in an era in which the desire for public exposure has been elevated from mere perversion to Darwinian imperative -- an act of modesty tantamount to heroism. It is a barbaric NO, not shouted from the rooftops, but whispered politely from the shadows of an unfrequented barroom.

Thus, we endorse nothing. We only mention.