Genghis Cohen letter

[Steven Maas (CUTR)]

On Fri, 21 Mar 1997 Mark_Bell at maid.com wrote:
>   Seeing as he wrote the letter in the sixties I think he must have got
>   over the 'small insults' problem by now, otherwise he'd have replied to
>   the Pulitzer Prize committees description of GR as 'unreadable and
>   obscene'. 

Romain Gary's assertion amounts to an accusation of plagiarism.  I don't
doubt for a minute that Pynchon would respond today to a similar
accusation.  The statement by the small-minded Pulitzer committee members
is indeed a small insult and Pynchon not surprisingly ignored it. 

	Steve Maas

>From the NY Times Book Review, July 17, 1966, pp. 22 & 24:
To the Editor:
In a recent letter to the editor, Romain Gary asserts that I took the name
"Genghis Cohen" from a novel of his to use in a novel of mine, The Crying
of Lot 49. Mr. Gary is totally in error. I have never read, skimmed, or
otherwise seen any of his novels. I took the name Genghis Cohen from the
name of Genghis Khan (1167-1227), the well-known Mongol warrior and
statesman.  If Mr. Gary really believes himself to be the only writer at
present able to arrive at a play on words this trivial, that is another
problem entirely, perhaps more psychiatric than literary, and I certainly
hope he works it out. 

Thomas Pynchon