Charles Hollander's challenge, Part 2

[JOHN M. KRAFFT]

                                            July 5, 1995
Yo Dude,
     If your mauvaise foi doesn't become terminal before you can get to your
terminal, post this.  Searching for the author of the Wanda Tinasky letters
is like reading a Who Done It. What do we know?  "Wanda" drops a clue: she
worked for Boeing in the dim distant, which makes our suspect population
maybe hundreds of thousands.  "Wanda" also mentions a "novel in process" set
in California's "North Coast."  That limits the suspect list to maybe a few
hundred -- published and unpublished novelists, who worked for Boeing, who
lived on the North Coast.  "Wanda" uses twenty tropes that are found in
Pynchon's credited works, and that limits our suspects to maybe a dozen or so
individuals who might have the skill to do a passable Pynchon imitation.  If
this were a murder mystery, we (readers) have no eye witness account, and we
would have to rely on circumstantial evidence.  We've established that
"Wanda" admits to having the matching background and opportunity, and that
puts her in the North Coast at the same time (1984-90) as the author of
Vineland.  Is there any physical evidence?  To me, the
typewriter used to write the "Wanda" letters looks nearly identical to the
one used to write letters signed by Pynchon during the early eighties, some
of which I've seen close up.  The handwriting, the marginal and interlinear
notes, in the "Wanda" letters looks very similar to the block lettering --
not cursive writing -- of a Pynchon poem. So the number of points in identity
between Wanda and Pynchon are these: both are ex-Boeing, North Coast
novelists with similar rhetoric (sentence structure, diction, and
preoccupations), with nearly identical typewriters, and nearly identical
handwritings (block lettering).  What more would it take to convince you?
Hair fragments?  DNA blood matching?  How many points in identity does one
right triangle have to have before it is judged identical (not merely
similar) to another?  Only two, I think: the ends of the hypotenuse.  We have
way more than that.  We are not here engaged in the disproving of ghosts (for
which there is no evidence): we are attempting to infer from known evidence
who authored the Wanda letters.  I think we can safely say a great deal of
evidence points to Thomas R. Pynchon, Jr., who (like O.J.) remains the only
suspect.  So, there you have it.  Right, then.  The remaining puzzle piece is
motive.  We know Pynchon was something of a hoaxer as a school boy and
university student, that he liked the Dadaists, and that he wrote farcical
columns for his high school newspaper.  Now, with "Wanda" showing dada
tendencies, I think we've narrowed motive as well.  Recall Cliff Mead's
bibliography, the handwriting on the dust jacket, and reread that Juvenilia.
 I'd say, "Wanda" is "The Voice of the Hamster" redux, exhibiting the same
impulse toward mischief-making, similar diction and tropes, obviously more
mature, but obviously similar to "Boscoe."  Then start sauteing some garlic,
butter, mushrooms, and herbs for the cover stock of your Gravity's Rainbow.
 The pages might be better en casserole, with noodles in cream sauce I think,
followed by a single malt to wash your humble pie, dude.  I assume we have a
bet, because silence means assent.
                                            CHUCK


John M. Krafft, English                 | Miami University--Hamilton
Voice:   513-863-8833, ext. 342         | 1601 Peck Boulevard
Fax:     513-863-1655                   | Hamilton, OH  45011-3399
E-mail:  krafftjm at muohio.edu