Godzilla Meets Indie Rockers

[Noah M. Williams]

>From the current New Yorker (6/24-7/1) which is the annual fiction
issue and chock full of some mighty interesting other pieces
(Martin Amis, Rushdie, Beckett, snippets of Hemingway, Eliot, etc.):

Last fall, when Thomas Pynchon contributed liner notes to the rock
group Lotion's album "Nobody's Cool," there was concern in the
literary world that the reclusive author of "Gravity's Rainbow"
had turned into a groupie.  Disbelief congealed into dismay when
Pynchon reappeared, in the June issue of Esquire, blithely chatting
with the members of Lotion about Ecstasy and a toilet once used by
Elvis Presley.
  ...The members of Lotion ... are looking after their special
friend as if he were a weird uncle that won't come out of the attic.
  "The word I'd use to describe him is 'goofy,'" Tony said recently...
  "He's not as well spoken as you might expect," adds Bill, the bassist
and chief cerebral.
  "He makes a lot of faces," says Jim, the guitarist.
  "Everything about him is just so casual," explains Rob, the drummer.
   The writer and rockers first met in Cincinnati. Lotion was on its
first tour, playing at a club that doubles as a laundromat. "Halfway
through the set this older guy comes in and sets himself near the
stage," Bill says.
  ...After the show, the older guy, who was wearing a Godzilla shirt
and ill-fitting pants swung by to offer his compliments.  He introduced
himself as Tom. A few months later, ...Tom reappeared.
  ...What followed is a happenstance of such exquisite improbability
that it verges on the metaphysical. [!] It seems that Jim was reading
"Slow Learner," Pynchons's collection of short stories. He'd left his
copy backstage, where Pynchon had been invited to watch the show.
Pynchon saw it and asked, "Who's reading my book?"
  "I said, 'No, that's my book,'" Jim recalls. "It didn't register
until I got onstage." [Which shows that Jim is not the chief cerebral.]
  ..."To this day, we're still not sure if he really is Thomas Pynchon,"
Rob says.
  "For all we know he might be J.D. Salinger," Jim adds. [grimace]
  "He does seem to know everything about everything," Bill says.
  "Every time he picks up the tab, he pays cash," Tony says. "I'm
dying to see his Amex card.  You know -- Thomas Pynchon, card member
since 1978."
------------------

So know we know what to look for: Godzilla shirt, ill-fitting pants,
casual, knows everything but is not well-spoken, and always pays cash.


--Noah Williams (m1nmw00 at frb.gov)