how trashy can you get?

[Vaska]

MantaRay sets me straight [or tries to]: 

>No one said he wasn't after cash. The plot was: [snip] 
>If he REALLY wanted publicity, he wouldn't have called. We are debating the
>publicity machine, one which now requires that authors are personalities, as
>well as writers, and must be unearthed. 

Of course he would have called, as he did: personally.  And what a story
that makes, looked at from a PR angle.  Granted that Pynchon does not wish
to give interviews, go on book-signing tours, etc.  But let's also grant him
the intelligence to have known perfectly well that choosing to be a literary
Greta Garbo was a sure way of turning himself into a "personality."  That's
what the Pynchon *myth* is all about and that's what it rests on.  And the
CNN has now made it available to a much larger segment of the public.  The
fact that the CNN guys could tell that same public how the publicity-shy
author had called and requested special treatment made the report all the
more titillating.  

I don't think that Pynchon is a victim of any publicity-machine here, but
then I don't begrudge him the way he's playing the game either.  And he's
doing it like a real pro.   

Vaska, who also has a sister that's driving her up the wall and who fully
sympathizes with MantaRay's predicament