Re: pynchon/salinger letters in nytimes article
oconnort@nyu.edu
Sun, 22 Mar 1998 17:07:16 -0500
On Sun, Mar 22, 1998 at 01:36:40PM -0700, WILL HOCHMAN wrote:
> Yesterday, Mel Gussow reported that the morgan library has some juicy
> letters from pynchon but has agreed to sit on them until after pynchon
> croaks...also mentioned were letters jds wrote to Michael Mitchell, the
> book designer of catcher's dust jacket, but the same post mortem rule will
> apply. Do words ever stop dying? will
Mine seem to have begun to. Ceaselessly.
I saw that article and was extremely saddened by it. Not as a scholar
denied primary material (well, maybe a little bit of that, if I dared
label myself a scholar), but by the ghoulish thoughts such news inevitably
call come to mind. I want to read those letters. But at this moment,
I don't want to read them THAT badly. Not badly enough to satisfy the
Morgan's "after-death" rule.
I'd rather both authors lived to see 100 than to satisfy my desire to
visit the library and read.
--tim