Thomas Pynchon joins Bowie as the second returning recluse of the week

Alice Jones' Arts Diary

It’s been quite a week for returning recluses. Joining David Bowie is Thomas Pynchon, the revered cult author of Gravity’s Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49 who is apparently preparing to release a new novel.

The Bleeding Edge will be published by Penguin in America; no date has been set.

In the UK, Vintage, the publishers of Pynchon’s last novel, Inherent Vice, in 2009, remain tight-lipped: “We do not currently have this under contract so no more information at this stage”, I’m told.

Since Vintage is part of Random House, it could be that the long-awaited novel is one of the first out of the new Penguin Random House stable.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Daily News, Pynchon is also collaborating on a film adaptation of Inherent Vice with the director Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master; There Will be Blood). Robert Downey Jr and Charlize Theron are already being mooted as potential stars.

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