bals@nutmeg.DEC (Once, accident. Twice, coincidence. Three times is enemy action.) (02/24/86)
>Thomas Pynchon is a rather mysterious figure posing as a respectable >author... >There is a Thomas Pynchon who went to school at Columbia and who was >in the Navy, but no records of him were found (I actually heard some >records were misplaced in a freak break-in accident...) >Newsweek once ran a picture of him (at my school even that specific >3 or 4 year old copy of Newsweek disappeared from the stacks!) >To this day he has been seen by no one but his publisher, and an English >Professor once told me of someone hiring a Private Investigator to >find out who communicated with the publisher and the P.I. found out >even the Publisher's Executive Secretary didn't know who Pynchon was >(and had never heard of the name, presumably due to the >variations in aliases...) Information on Pynchon himself is indeed slim, but not to the extent that the excerpts above make it out to be (my apologies for not including your name with the excerpts, I accidently deleted it). Pynchon is a graduate of Cornell (not Columbia). He was a contemporary of Richard Farina ("Been Down So long It Looks Like Up to Me") "Gravity's Rainbow" is dedicated to Farina. Contrary to the apocryphal story above that "no one has seen Pynchon but his publisher" *many* people have seen/known Pynchon, including such public figures as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Vladimir Nabokov (Pynchon attended his writing class at Cornell). Also, many of Pynchon's "non-public" friends are named in "Gravity's Rainbow." After a stint in the Navy (which he evidently enjoyed, if V is any indication), Pynchon lived in Seattle and worked for Boeing Aircraft. Yoyodyne is at least partially based on Boeing. Pynchon now lives somewhere beteween Seattle and Mexico City. He's believed to spend most of his time in Mexico. There *is* one known photograph of Pynchon, taken when he was at Cornell. He is also known to have enjoyed cold spaghetti for breakfast while at Cornell. When Pynchon was awarded the American Book Award, he sent the comedian, "Professor" Irwin Corey to accept. Corey was introduced as Pynchon at the ceremony, and had most of the crowd convinced that he was indeed Pynchon. There is a good description of, and story about, Pynchon in Farina's posthumous collection, "Long Time Coming ..." The judges for the Pulitzer Prize refused to consider "Gravity's Rainbow" due, they said, to "the book's obscenity and incomprehensibility." Thomas Pynchon is reportedly working on a novel about the Mason-Dixon line. Somehow, that makes sense. Fred Bals (DEC - Merrimack)
phillips@cisden.UUCP (Tom Phillips) (02/25/86)
>Yoyodyne is at least partially based on Boeing. >Fred Bals (DEC - Merrimack) Is this the same Yoyodyne that was in Buckaroo Banzai? Coincidence? Allusion? Dumb question? All the Pynchon discussion has me curious enough to go look him up anyway, and this is even more intriguing.-- Tommy Phillips From the banks of the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees. cisden!phillips
bhayes@glacier.ARPA (Barry Hayes) (02/25/86)
In article <1341@decwrl.DEC.COM> bals@nutmeg.DEC writes: >Thomas Pynchon is reportedly working on a novel about the Mason-Dixon line. >Fred Bals (DEC - Merrimack) The new book is also said to involve Mothra as a major character. -Barry Hayes bhayes@su-glacier.arpa
manderso@sdcsvax.UUCP (Mark Anderson) (02/26/86)
For even more (though not much more) info on Thomas Pynchon see Mathew Winston's "The Quest for Pynchon", Twentieth Century Literature ( Oct 1975 ) pp. 278-87.
wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (02/27/86)
In article <1341@decwrl.DEC.COM> bals@nutmeg.DEC writes: >...*many* people have seen/known Pynchon, including such public >figures as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Vladimir Nabokov (Pynchon attended his >writing class at Cornell). ... Well, supposedly Nabokov didn't really remember Pynchon's being in class but his wife (Vera?) did remember him. Odd for a writer as obsessed with his own memory as Nabokov. You don't suppose it's part of the conspiracy ... :-) -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly
gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith) (03/02/86)
In article <687@rti-sel.UUCP> wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) writes: >In article <1341@decwrl.DEC.COM> bals@nutmeg.DEC writes: > >>...*many* people have seen/known Pynchon, including such public >>figures as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Vladimir Nabokov (Pynchon attended his >>writing class at Cornell). ... > >Well, supposedly Nabokov didn't really remember Pynchon's being in >class but his wife (Vera?) did remember him. Odd for a writer as >obsessed with his own memory as Nabokov. You don't suppose it's part >of the conspiracy ... :-) > > -- Cheers, Bill Ingogly I am a little disturbed that Pynchon is still around, as I had thought he was a fictional creation of Vladimir Nabokov. This made sense, as Nabokov was about twice as good a writer as Pynchon, and Cornell was a good place to invent him. :-). ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 Imagine what the world would be like if football was a worthy ritual performed in stadiums but mathematics was a misunderstood activity ignored by almost all.
nobi@mtuxo.UUCP (m.juliar) (03/04/86)
Re: Pynchon as a creation of Nabokov Now, that makes more sense than anything else I've read on the net during this discussion of Pynchon. Actually, Nabokov is a fictional creation of Vivian Darkbloom. Bringing up Nabokov makes me wonder: What other de facto giants of 20th century literature never received a Nobel prize? Kafka, Joyce, Proust, and Cherdyntsev-Goudonov immediately come to mind. It may be due in some part to the fact that the prize is supposed to go to a "living" author whose writing exemplifies some kind of "humanistic positivism" or something like that. That's why such soft authors as Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck (both enjoyable, but not of the class that grantors of the prize would like them to appear to be) have won. And the fact that all the previously mentioned non-winners are not "living" means that the Nobel committee can't backtrack to make up for sins of omission. Oh, well. C'est la litterature.
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (03/12/86)
The most glaring current example of an author who probably should have received
a Nobel Prize, but hasn't, is Graham Greene. As I understand it, the
present head of the Nobel Literature Committee, which awards the prize,
has a strong antipathy to the works of Greene, and yearly blocks any
effort to give Greene the prize. Since this fellow is supposed to be
rather old, there's a race, of sorts: who'll die first, him or Greene?
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher