Tinasky

[Dkipen at aol.com]

Dear Steve (and all other welcome eyes),

Hail and welcome, Steve! I'm just this week in receipt of the prospectus for
The Letters of Wanda Tinasky, copies of which tantalizing prospectus
Alexander Cockburn and Bruce Anderson apparently brought with them to the
recently adjourned ABA concention in Chicago. While supplies last, additional
copies can be procured by dispatching a check for 5 dollars made out to the
Anderson Valley Advertiser. I've mislaid the exact address I used, but  Wanda
evidently got by with just Bruce Anderson, Editor, The Anderson Valley
Advertiser, Boonville, CA 95415. I know that because several but by no means
all of her letters are reproduced in said prospectus, most as they were
published, but a couple in xeroxes of the original typescript. They are
bottomlessly fascinating, and for my money the real thing, though I long to
hear a vigorous debate on the subject in these virtual pages. The only clue I
picked up that all you fellow Pynchonians might not get even faster concerns
the following sentence: "[HG] Wells makes what I still think is the best pun
in the language, when he had a Chinaman say, "I see England is still looled
by mandolins." Aside from this being very much the kind of admiration TRP
might express, look at the syntax. Doesn't TRP (or THP, according to the
"Togetherness" article that Bob was just good enough to send me - thanks,
Bob, mine a-coming) doesn't TRP use almost exactly the same words about
Warlock in the Slow Learner intro? Something like, "what I still think is one
of our best novels"? Not a smoking gun, by any means, but a spent cartidge in
the bushes, at least. I'll have my copy of the prospectus with me at the new
Platt Library in West Hills Saturday from 2-4 (while I staff their used
bookstore and hope for a wayward GR first in dust jacket), if the mails are
too slow for you. 
Best,
David

P(N)S. Less may well be more and more less, but I know of only two kinds of
writers, and they aren't taker-outers and putter-inners. They are the
Psoriatics, like Updike and Dennis Potter and Nicholson Baker; and the
Orthodontics, like Pynchon and Martin Amis. Other nominations welcome. 
PPS (don't mock, Wanda loves multiple PSs, as you'll soon see): I expect to
interview Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary Monday. He went to Cornell in the
late 50s, so if anybody has any details about the milieu they want clarified,
let me know and I'll try to work in a question or two. And who's Ronald
Sukenick? I just tripped over the name in Baxter Hathaway's article about
Cornell writers in the 50s, and I could swear I know it from somewhere.

That's it until about five minutes from now, friends, when I'll reliably
think of something else I should have shoehorned into this InterContinental
Bombastic Missive. (No taker-outer, I.) Till then, then.