You want to know what’s weird? Turns out the guy with the van who’s coming to coming to move my stuff is called Carlo (not kidding). He’s now an hour late (I think he’s from one of those countries that don’t prize punctuality). So I’ve had a bit of time to read the wiki, while I keep half any eye on my life’s possessions which are out on the sidewalk right now.

Anyway, I feel our novel is beginning to resemble something by Thomas Pynchon, but not quite - or sorry even remotely - as good (sorry). One of our Penguin writers, a sociologist who just wrote this great book about football, told me last time he was in the office that he was reading Pynchon’s Against the Day and that he thought he had finally found a way to understand it. He said (I’m paraphrasing) that it was basically full of randomness, disconnected stories that really led you nowhere. But that this was kind of like life: it’s totally without narrative coherence; it’s a series of things that happen which may or may not be meaningful. I sense this is the direction that you, the writers of amillionpenguins, may be heading in.

I would humbly suggest that you re-think this. Can someone go in and try to unclutter it a bit? Like, for instance, we’ve got Bababooey’s sensei - in the new opening - giving him pearls of wisdom in French. I’m not saying this could never happen, but a) the epithet makes no sense (from what I can tell) and b) why does he have a French (or Quebecois) sensei? Why have a sensei at all? The cultural references here are all over the place. Obviously this reflects the global nature of the project. But we need some continuity, and fast.

Ok, there are some people checking out my stuff and I need to go shoo them away.

Jon

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