The Globe and Mail article: In Search of Thomas Pynchon

[Vaska]

By Bruce Gulp,  Special to The Globe and Mail, New York, Saturday, July 26, 1997

A grainy photograph of a man and a boy on this city's Upper West Side
appeared in a section front of the Saturday Magazine of "The Times" in
London on June 14. It ended a 40-year mystery in the world of books: Thomas
Ruggles Pynchon Jr., who has concealed his identity from the public since
the mid-sixties, had been outed.

The 3,000-word article that wrapped around the photograph was also by New
York-based Times reporter James Bone, who has been pursuing Mr. Pynchon ever
since his latest novel, _Mason & Dixon_, hit the bookstores this spring.
Though not a dyed-in-the-wool Pynchon devotee, he says he has always loved
he author's work, especially _Gravity's Rainbow_.  At the same time he felt
there was something "silly" abut a grown man staging such an enormous
charade all these years.

"I think he realized an author will be more popular if readers can project
any fantasy they like on his real persona." says Mr. Bone, who works for The
Times, covering byzantine goings-on at the United Nations.  "By being so
elusive, he created the game and I played the role assigned by him -- almost
as if I was a character in one of his novels."  From the start, Mr. Bone
approached the assignment as a metaphysical battle of wits.

[several short paragraphs giving the basic bio facts, Pynchon's famous 1963
escape from a Time magazine reporter in Mexico, and a sprinkle of sentences
about the novels]

What is known, however, is that he is now married to his literary agent,
Melanie Jackson, and they have a young son named Jackson.  Surprisingly,
given that so little is known about him, he regularly mingles with the New
York literary crowd, though he avoids the public eye.

With these facts in hand, Mr. Bone's odyssey began.  His first break came at
the "Pynchon Imitators Competition" at KGB, an East Village literary salon.
At a launch party for _Mason & Dixon_, guests were encouraged to assume the
Pynchon identity.  Mr. Bone showed up (though not disguised as Mr. Pynchon).
He took photos of everyone.  His hope, of course, was that Mr. Pynchon might
make a surprise appearance disguised as himself.

He didn't.  But the reporter ran into someone who put him in touch with Mr.
Pynchon's former lover in the mid-West.  After exchanging several phone
calls, the woman agreed to verify any photos he retrieved during his search
for the author.  She confirmed what he suspected: that Mr. Pynchon hadn't
shown up at his own book launch.

Another lead was provided by New York Magazine.  It ran a short item saying
that Mr. Pynchon was living in the Upper West Side (though no address was
given).  Through Lexis-Nexis, an on-line service that sells personal public
information to credit agencies and newspapers, Mr. Bone found his man -- a
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.

He made the assumption that Mr. Pynchon, like many novelists, wrote in the
morning, and decided to stake out the street in the afternoon.

It was a gorgeous day.  Students trundled home from private school,
accompanied by Irish au pairs and stay-at-home moms.

At about 3:05, through the moving crowd, Mr. Bone spotted the man he knew
must be Thomas Pynchon.  He looked to be about 60, and he had a young boy in
tow.

He had a snaggle of teeth under a bushy mustache.  His glasses, bug-eyed and
goggling, reflected the June sun.  The reporter recalls looking at the
novelist and some "angular, aristocratic but somehow clownish."

"He wore a black (Army surplus?) anorak with the hood up despite the
sunshine," he continued.  "In that way he really did resemble the police
sketch of the Wanted poster for the Unabomber."  [....]

Mr. Pynchon, quickly sussing that he was in the crosshairs, pivoted away
from Mr. Bone, his nemesis.  The author tried to put an arm across his face.
But it was too late.  The shutter of Mr. Bone's $30 camera closed.  Just
once, but it was all it took.

Pynchon uttered his first public words in years.  "Get your fucking hand
away from me," Mr. Bone recalls him screaming, as he burrowed deeper under
his hood. Then the author bolted for open air, dragging his son behind him.

A few weeks later, Mr. Bone's piece -- and his photo of Mr. Pynchon -- hit
the newsstands.

[a paragraph about the CNN videotape]

So far, the major news magazines have stayed away.  But this week, Mr.
Bone's New York agents refused to sell the reprint rights on the photo.
Rumour has it that an as-yet-undetermined news agency has bought up all the
rights.

Predictably, some feel that Mr. Pynchon's privacy has been invaded.  Most
outraged is his publisher, Henry Holt.  Mr. Bone heard from Holt lawyers
within days.  "Pynchon does not allow his or his son's photograph to be
taken in any public context whatsoever," wrote Michael Baroni, director of
legal affairs for Holt.  The letter ordered the destruction of all
negatives.  "Holt requires all publicity requests for its authors to be
submitted to ... our publicity department."

Mr. Bone didn't blink.  He is a reporter who has used his Olympus to record
stark images of Mujahedin rebels fighting Soviet forces in the foothills of
Afghanistan.  He is used to tight situations.

Holt's efforts to suppress the photograph will fail, since any photograph
captured on a public street in New York State is lawful.  But its threats
were so, well, Pynchonian, in their spirit of melodrama, that The New Yorker
featured the bun fight as a Talk of the Town piece in its July 14 issue.

Mr. Bone, whose shock of curly chestnut hair gives his owlish appearance a
hint of school-boy innocence, manages an impish grin when recalling the
recent dispute.  He adopts a tone of mock indignation typical of the UN
diplomats he covers, and says, "To attempt to suppress a newsworthy
photograph, indeed a historic photograph -- that clearly benefits from First
Amendment protection -- is shameful," he says, adding, "Holt has aligned
itself with the book burners."