Thomas Not Tom

[Steelhead]

After closely scrutinizing the photo of Thomas (not Tom) Pynchon in
this month's issue of New York magazine, I am more convinced than ever
that the artist who painted the cover portrait for Joseph (not Joe) Slade's
early--an sadly discounted by the pomo's--work "Thomas Pynchon" must have
been an intimate acquaintance. Don't you?

And, say, what about all those P-listers getting quoted in an otherwise
dismal article? There was my buddy John Kraft confessing that he has little
or no knowledge of Pynchon's reason's for joining the  Navy--though he is
willing to drop a couple possibilities--and surely most of us have reason
to believe that the endlessly resource Kraft has at least talked with
Thomas ne'e Tom's recruiter and probably has a poor though barely legible
copy of his Navy personel record tucked away somewhere in his musty stack
of Pynchonian artifacts.

Then there's that delightfully shameless self-promoter Jules Siegel, who
did more to construct the myth of Pynchon's personal bouts with paranoia
than Tom--I mean--Thomas himself. Siegel's a funny guy. He likes to quote
himself a lot. I don't know what that's a sign of. But in an odd way it's
kind of quaint and endearing.

How 'bout the brillant Charles Hollander, weighing in with a riff on
Pynchon's all-too reasonable fear that his deeply coded writings have made
him the target for various assassination teams, from the CIA to the
Feminist Liberation Front, ie., the Weathergals. Then there is a lot of
useful insight from perhaps the best amatuer reader of Pynchon on the west
coast, Steve Tomaske--who may or may not be a distant relative of former
Village Voice columnist Michael Tomasky, who happens to have written the
cover story in this very same issue of the lamentable New York Magazine,
which may or may not explain why Tomaske was given more space than anyone
else.

In the end, though, Pynchon was well served by the P-listers who all spoke
on the record and, despite a heavy word count, revealed basically nothing
about the Master, unlike the cowardly "one magazine writer," and "another
writer," another "another writer" and "a literary agent" who say they
variously went on a picnic with Thomas and Jackson, saw him at a Sag Harbor
"literary party" (what the hell is that? Can you imagine TRP going to a
literary party? Did Pig show up? Did he dress as Fitzgerald or perhaps,this
time, with that grey beard he could've passed for an elongated Hemingway);
at a dinner party with the smug Susan Sontag (what were they serving?
Menstrual Minestrone?); and at an outdoor lunch with--of all people--Don
DeLillo, who was research Mao III. There's also a lot of blather from that
asshole Harold Bloom, who certainly should be assassinated for his various
crimes against literary criticism. And the pathetic hack Steve Erickson,
who used to be a promising novelist, and now suggests that his close friend
Tom--I mean THomas--might be showing up at a Barnes and Nobles near you on
a book tour to promote the forthcoming M&D.

The worst insult of all: "A publicity director's" assertion that he/she
could see writing recluse "doing a radio interview--maybe Fresh Air with
Terry Gross." Terry Gross, the Larry King of NPR. Christ. If the book's
getting this much advanced hype, I fear it might be worse than Vineland.
Guess we should have seen this coming when the old man married that
hovering witch Melanie Jackson.

Steelhead