So Soon, Mr. Pynchon?

Thomas Pynchon’s writing was full of blogosphere-style intrigue before there was even a blogosphere. So it was fitting, last week, when rumors began circulating of a new Pynchon novel—“a kind of noir detective story set in the 1960s, with lots of psychedelia as background,” according to critic Steven Moore. The novel, which is slated to publish in August 2009, should come as some as some relief to Pynchon’s fans, who he usually tortures by taking off a decade or two between books. (His last novel, Against the Day, is only two years old.) Perhaps the septuagenarian author is beginning to feel the anxiety of old age?