Goodnight, Doug.

[Jules Siegel]

At 06:55 PM 07/7/97 -0800, millison at online-journalist.com (Doug Millison) wrote:
>I simply don't believe you've had the impact on Pynchon's writing that you
claim....[snip] Don't you see that you're the one who keeps making the
explicit links between Chrissie and characters in Pynchon's fiction,
connections we wouldn't otherwise be able to make?

I'm not at all pissed off about any of it. I don't like a lot of what I see
about my time in Vineland and my ex-wife in Gravity's Rainbow, but I'm not
angry about it. These are esthetic and personal responses. I'm a little
pissed off at you because you act like a paranoid psychotic prosecutor
instead of a scholar or reader interested in the man and his work and his
circle.

Because I've been attacked for having revealed some harmless personal
glimpses of Thomas Pynchon, I am offering these items as examples of his
invasion of our privacy. You know, do unto others.... I am also saying that
these contacts are evidence that we do know quite a bit more about the man
than any of you do and that, in some places, enables us to see his work from
a different perspective that many of you might find interesting and provocative.

I don't think that I am in any way exaggerating my influence or Chrissie's
influence on him or his work. You keep making a big thing about these very
minor chords because if they were your own to claim they would be very big
in your life and career. Pynchon was never a big deal in my career, although
he did make himself very much a big deal in my marriage. I quoted his
letters to me from time to time in articles about other subjects. I wrote
one memoir about the triangle. I had some fun online here and got a nifty
little book out of it that's more about me and Chrissie than about him.

Chrissie did have a big thing with him. It was important enough for him to
have used as material that appears in many places in Gravity's Rainbow. When
you keep raising the same doubts about her credibility, you just go ahead
and shit on her over and over again, don't you? You repeat the same tired
points about conjecture and motives and you fail to look at the very clear
and simple things that are being said.

I'm not going to reply to your comments any more because it just keeps you
going in circles biting your own tail. Meanwhile, did you pay for your copy
of Lineland or was it a review copy? If it's a review copy, go ahead and do
this in print or wherever you get published and I'll write a letter to the
editor correcting your misinterpretations. At least I'll sell a few books
that way -- if anyone except me actually takes your opinions seriously
enough to want to read a rebuttal, that is.


--Jules Siegel Apdo 1764 Cancun QR 77501
http://www.yucatanweb.com/siegel/jsiegel.htm