Subject: RE: Pynchon
From: Malcolm Lawrence (Malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Date: Tue Jun 03 1997 - 17:27:21 GMT
>He did not even object to the holding of a "Thomas Pynchon lookalike
>contest" to mark the publication of the book on April 30.
Yeah, I loved those old Hugo, Dickens, and Proust look-alike contests!
Ahem. :)
Just found this article whilst going through some old boxes and I thought
I'd share it, since we're on the subject of Pynchon again. This was written
for the Seattle Times some eight years, meaning it probably appeared about
the time that "Vineland" was released.
Enjoy.
Malcs
-----------------------
A genius among us - for a while
By Donn Fry
Seattle Times book editor
Thomas Pynchon is a slippery character. For nearly 30 years, he has
maintained a life so private that even that other fabled literary recluse,
JD Salinger, seems positively gregarious.
Although Pynchon is now 52, only two photographs of him have ever been
published - one from his high-school yearbook, the other taken a few years
later. The trail of the elusive author turned cold in 1963, not long after
he left, of all places, Seattle.
I was surprised to learn recently that Pynchon had lived here in the early
60s; indeed, city directories from those years say that a Thomas R. Pynchon
("Pyncheon" in one listing) lived at 4709? Ninth Ave. N.E., in the
University District. (For those not familiar with the Seattle area, this is
only a stone's throw from the infamous Blue Moon tavern, where Kerouac was
also known to hoist a few pints in his time. -- Malcolm)
Today, that apartment at the back end of a larger home is a squalid,
uninhabited wreck, closed by the city until a host of "inadequacies" - from
ventilation and sanitation to the electrical system and heating - is
remedied.
But do you suppose that the ratty purple-velveteen couch, now a sodden heap
in the front room, is the very spot where Pynchon dreamed up the baroque
complexities of his first novel, "V."? He was writing it during his Seattle
years, and it was published not long after he left. I first discovered that
wonderful book in 1965, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer living in
Tanzania; the extravagant adventures of Benny Profane, Herbert Stencil and
the unforgettable Pig Bodine enlivened many a long African night. I didn't
want "V." to end.
Back in this country in 1967, I remember sending a copy of Pynchon's second
novel, "The Crying of Lot 49," to a girlfriend still in Tanzania. "If you
want to know what's really going on in America today," I declared in the
letter, "THIS is the book to read." The novel drew upon every ounce of
pop-culture energy in the late 60s; but Pynchon himself had disappeared
into the era's frenzied maw, reportedly to a peripatetic life among
friends, traveling incognito.
Actually, a fair amount is known about Pynchon's early years: His birth in
1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, to a Republican family whose American
history stretches back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony; his graduation, at
barely 16, from Oyster Bay (N.Y.) High School, the class salutatorian; his
study - interrupted by two years in the Navy - at Cornell (B.A., 1959),
where he excelled in everything from physics to English; even his close
college friendship with Richard Farina, the folk singer and writer who was
killed in a motorcycle accident not long after marrying Joan Baez's sister,
Mimi.
The 22-year-old Pynchon was already writing "V." when he accepted a job as
a technical writer for Boeing and moved to Seattle. He worked there from
Feb. 22, 1960, to Sept. 13, 1962, and a few former employees have vivid
memories of a young man whose brilliance was matched by an eccentricity
that was rare within Boeing's strait-laced confines.
"He was a very self-contained individual, and he didn't associate much with
his fellow workers," recalled Boeing retiree Walker Bailey, who worked in
the same section and who developed a fleeting friendship after Pynchon
responded to a literary allusion Bailey used in a memo: "He was taken
aback. He seemed surprised that anyone in the office would know anything
like that."
Bailey confirmed another story I heard: Pynchon would sometimes avoid the
office hubbub by covering his desk - and himself - with a huge sheet of
paper used for technical drawings. Apparently it was an effort to
concentrate.
Kenneth Calkins, once a writer for Boeing magazine, remembers a tall young
man with jeans, long hair and a "kind of Wyatt Earp-type handlebar
mustache." He met Pynchon after complimenting him on an article he had
written for another Boeing publication.
"He did a story on the soldering of electronic circuitry, which I have
absolutely no interest in," Calkins recalled. "But I thought, my gosh, how
can a guy make a story about THIS so interesting?"
Pynchon was just practicing, I suspect - taking a break from "V." and
warming up for "Gravity's Rainbow."
-
To remove yourself from the bananafish list, send the command:
unsubscribe bananafish
in the body of a message to "Majordomo@mass-usr.com".
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Oct 09 2000 - 15:02:02 GMT