preston@valid.UUCP (Preston Gardner) (03/19/86)
I can't really give much biographical data on Thomas Pynchon, but
I know a few interesting odds and ends: Apparently he was close
friends with Richard Farina, who wrote Been Down So Long, it Seems
Like Up To Me. (The n in Farina has a tilde over it, but my
keyboard won't do that.) Farina wrote this one book c. 1966 -- it
is a sort of hippie-novel -- and then was killed in a motorcycle
accident, I think. He was supposed to have been a genius nipped in
the bud. Farina's style is very much like Pynchon's, or perhaps it's
the other way around, since Farina (sort of) came first.
Richard Farina was married to the singer (?) Mimi Farina, who is Joan
Baez's sister. Thus the Pynchon-Farina-Baez-Dylan connection.
In other news, Pynchon was educated as an electrical engineer, not as
a writer, and allegedly writes his novels on graph paper, one letter
per square. (I don't really believe this latter fact. People like to
make up false facts about mysterious recluses like Pynchon.)
Pynchon must be in his 40's or 50's now. He published his first
story, "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna", in 1957, and then came V, The
Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity's Rainbow. Gravity's Rainbow came out
in 1973. He has not published a novel since then. The book of short
stories, Slow Learner, came out a year or so ago. There is at least
one book of literary criticism published about his work -- I've
forgotten the name. Some other net writer said that Pynchon was
allegedly working on a new novel about the Mason-Dixon line. (??)
Laurie Anderson has a song ("Gravity's Angel") about Thomas Pynchon on
her last album. "He was an ugly guy/ with an ugly face/ an also-ran/
in the human race..." I don't know whether this refers to Pynchon
himself, or to one of his characters. Anybody recognize it?
Preston Gardner