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