Re: pynchon/salinger letters in nytimes article
AntiUtopia (AntiUtopia@aol.com)
Sun, 22 Mar 1998 20:08:28 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 98-03-22 17:07:45 EST, you write:
> 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
>
I have to admit I understand the feelings. I want to read the letters. I
want Pynchon's privacy maintained. I appreciate the library for witholding
them at least until he's dead.
I really first encountered this issue when I started really studying James
Joyce. Many of his letters had been published before his death, but
selectively, by Richard Ellmann. After Joyce's death Ellmann published All
the letters--even the erotica James wrote to Nora during their early periods
of separation. Much of the content of the letters was pretty embarrassing for
the family. I remember thinking as I was reading some of it, "Did I
**really** need to know that?" I decided I didn't. The hell with
scholarship. I don't need most of Joyce's letters to understand the content
of his fiction, and his is probably more consciously autobiographical than
that of most authors. I don't see how reading Pynchon's letters will lend
insight into _Mason and Dixon_, and if it helps us understand other works like
_V_ or _Vineland_, great, but I think all we'll really discover is where he
got some of his ideas from.
I'd come down on the side of never seeing the letters at all.
Jim