Thomas Not Tom

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Ah Steely, such dulcet tones!  I publically avow that if Tommy does "Fresh Air" 
and actually anwsers questions put to him by that smug walking 
Main-Line-cum-Urban- Outfitters clothes dummy, so accurately named, I will quit 
this list forever (a-and write Tomaso a nasty letter to boot!)
I still say he's laughing up that beard of his.  Yes, maybe allowing Them a little 
thrill in return for those priivate school tuition payments (MacArthurs don't la
st 
forever), but not about to destroy decades of hard-earned uniqueness, and to spill a 
nasty something over the pages of his works . . . Hey, Thomas, say it ain't so!

john m





>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
>
>
>