Full Text of Washington Post Article on Pynchon's New Book

[Tom Stanton]

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The Latest Line On Thomas Pynchon

By David Streitfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 21 1996; Page D01
The Washington Post

Henry Holt is unveiling this week Thomas Pynchon's new novel, at least
to
the extent of giving it a name ("Mason & Dixon") and a month of
publication
(next April). Details surrounding Pynchon's publishing plans are often
as
cloaked in mystery as the writer himself; the last known photograph
dates
from his boot camp yearbook, and he's famously never given an interview.

This much seems clear: He's had "Mason & Dixon" in mind and maybe in
his typewriter ever since "Gravity's Rainbow" came out in 1973.
Newsweek reported 18 years ago that Pynchon was working on a book
about the Mason-Dixon line, the boundary between Pennsylvania and
Maryland drawn shortly before the Revolutionary War.

Holt is planning for a first printing in the neighborhood of 200,000
copies,
which means it believes the work will be a No. 1 bestseller. Even if the
final figure is somewhat lower, the 59-year-old Pynchon is one of very
few
members of the '60s avant-garde who continues to generate anything
close to mass excitement. Kurt Vonnegut and William Burroughs are
more or less in retirement, while John Barth and Joseph Heller no longer
burn up the sales charts.

But Pynchon even has acolytes -- folks who, in their zeal, resemble
Kennedy assassination buffs. A group of them has now published "The
Letters of Wanda Tinasky," a $25 paperback being sold mostly by mail
order from the Anderson Valley Advertiser, a weekly newspaper in the
Northern California town of Boonville. The reason: The letters might
have
been written by Pynchon.

Wanda Tinasky was a faithful writer of letters to the Advertiser during
the
late '80s, a period when Pynchon was writing his 1990 Northern
California
novel, "Vineland." Perhaps he was living in the area, doing on-location
research; perhaps he even was the chatty, zany bag lady that Tinasky
claimed to be. Tinasky, whom no one has ever met, hasn't been heard
from since the speculation began in earnest.

"Well, if it ain't Pynchon, it's someone who has him down cold: his
inimitable literary style, his deep but lightly worn erudition, his
countercultural roots, his leftist/populist politics, his brand of wit
and
humor, his encyclopedic range of reference, his street smarts and
raffish
charm, his immersion in pop culture and sports, and his hatred of all
agents of repression," Pynchon scholar Steven Moore writes in a foreword
to the letters.

Well, maybe. Tinasky's style is not one that everyone will appreciate.
An
extract: "I was in New York trying to find a publisher for various
literary
properties, primarily [for] my memoir, `As God Is My Witness,' but it
seems
like all my contacts are deceased or worse, & I had nothing but trouble.
I
did get an audition for my musical comedy, `Immy Lou,' but right in the
middle of my big number, `Don't Cry for Me, Filipinos,' they threw me
out
on my imperial White Russian ass, & actually the whole damn trip was a
bringdown & I'm not feeling so great even though it is great to be back
under the bridge, & I sort of wish that instead of taking that trip to
Palm
Beach I had saved money & rented a room this winter."

The book of letters is careful to state that Pynchon's wife and agent,
Melanie Jackson, has denied the novelist was Tinasky. But that, as Moore
notes, is precisely the response you would expect.

As for the new book that is unquestionably by Pynchon, "Mason & Dixon"
is a reimagining of the lives of British surveyors Charles Mason and
Jeremiah Dixon. According to one description, it features Native
Americans, frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, erotic and
political
conspiracies, and major caffeine abuse. At over a thousand pages in
manuscript, it's probably about many other things, too.