your anonymity

[Jules Siegel]

At 01:43 AM 05/3/97 -0400, jester <jester at snet.net> wrote:
>Jules,
>
>It's curious that Tom has had one, maybe 3 photos published (we've all seen
>the old team photo used to death, and then the Navy photo, then there's the
>shot of his back as he zips down a NYC street -- but, does that really
>count?)  But you've NEVER had a photo published?  How the heck did you
>manage that?!

Not quite true. I've never had a photograph published that wasn't taken by a
Playboy photographer. Oh, gee, I just blew my whole elaborate Military
Intelligence joke back there when. Actually, now that I think of it, I did
have one tiny picture of me on the back of "The Journal of the Absurd" that
Anita took. A few months ago, The Miami Herald's Cancun edition published
another that she took in 1988 in Puerto Morelos. I was on national TV once.
Oh, yes, a shopper in Tacoma published a picture of me taken by a friend I
was visiting there in 1977. I sound like C. Paglia here, except she would
show you each of these instances. I just volunteer the story of my life instead.

I didn't manage it. I am just obscure. No has ever cared enough about me to
come and take my picture, not that I would let them. Also, I've mostly lived
in places where they bring in your luggage on the heads of native bearers or
the equivalent since Chrissie and I originally went to Mexico in 1971.

>So you are the most reclusive writer? 

The Times of London reporter asked the same question. I replied
spontaneously, "I make Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr., look like a manic
extrovert." I think that's why I get so high online. I can interact with
others more or less on my own terms and in my most effective medium, the
written word. But I did live in a commune for almost two years. Maybe that
was an aberration. It sure felt like it, not to speak of all those aberrant
types.

>How do we know you're really not Tom playing an elaborate joke on all of us?

You don't. Well, you can examine the way I write and think about whether or
not he could imitate my style. It's not as easy as it looks to write almost
perfectly grammatical conversational English clearly enough for anyone who
made it to high school junior to understand. I say "almost" because I
sometimes use sentence fragments for effect and I also occasionally make the
I-me, who-whom mistakes. When I write for publication, Anita copy edits
everything carefully and almost always catches that stuff. I don't spell
check e-mail, but I do try to look it over carefully before spending it out.

Arthur Kretchmer, Playboy's editorial director, used to marvel at how well I
type, too. Well, I am a typographer. In the days before word processors I
used to take these gigantic doses of amphetamine and retype each page in one
of my stories if there were a single error on it before going on to the next
page. Explains why I've published so little, really. These days, I drink two
cups of strong coffee a day. Amphetamine had to be the most evil drug known
to man. It was so effective. Just pop a couple of beans and make money. What
a hook! Sure made you crazy, though. Also, it didn't take long for it to
become four, then eight, then the whole bottle.

My addiction to amphetamine was quite rewarding. For many writers it's
self-limiting because after a while they just start writing crazy junk that
makes sense when they write it because they are in some kind of metanoia in
which everything makes too much sense, but doesn't when they come down. It
just made me straighter. When my tolerance got so heavy that it didn't get
me going anymore, I mixed it with LSD. Still wrote straight, but the loops
got longer. I still would remember where I was going and it was even funnier
when I came back to the point of origin and closed the segment with its
corresponding punch line.

Don't try this at home unless you have someone like Chrissie at your side.
Even she would go, "Do you really think you should take that much?" Then she
would make special delicious foods that I could eat when I was terminally
queasy and bring me liquids and make sure that I didn't do things like go
out driving without wearing my glasses. She would talk me through the
paranoias and pump me up in the depressions.

When Faera was born, she no longer had the energy for that. One baby is
enough for any woman to handle at a time. My open cheating drove her to
leave me. She couldn't handle the shame and even though I stopped she could
never believe it would last. When I tried to get her to come back, she said,
"I feel the sweetness coming from you and it terrifies me"--that she would
lose it again.

Anita pretty much pulled me out of hell. When Ron Thal introduced me to her
1977, I was doing a story on the San Francisco vice squad and staying in a
room at the St. Francis at the bottom of an airwell from which you could not
see the sky. In the morning, she said, "You are living in a dungeon." She
pointed to a piece of blue sky reflected like a banner in a window high
above us and said, "I'm going to take you out of here." And she did. Hard to
remain an agnostic when God sends you an angel. Dale is another.

Arthur once said, "I don't understand how you can be so crazy and write so
straight."

"Writing straight has made me crazy," I replied.

>I just think that there's something cool in not being photographed, and at
somehow retaining a sense of anonymity in this age of too much information.

I don't think it's anything more than lack of fame in my case. I will say
that if any paparazzi showed up here, I'd have One-Eyed Louie throw them in
the lagoon, not because I necessarily wish to remain visually anonymous
(although I think it's only prudent in these times), but because I am vain.
Ever notice how *ugly* they make people look in those Time, Inc., stories?

Getting back to your question about the possibility of my being Tom running
an elaborate hoax, do you think he would walk around naked like this in
front of you?

--
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