I am a lifelong Pynchon fan

[Unknown User]

Toby Levy wrote:
> 
> Hello fellow Pynchon lovers.  I have been signed on and reading the
> incredible volume of messages for just over a week.  I was on the
> Pynchon list a long time ago, when days went by without a message being
> posted and a big day was four or five messages.
> 
> My fandom goes back to the days when I was in high school and a copy of
> V. kept staring at me from the paperback rack in the drug store in the
> town I lived in on the south shore of Long Island.  I must have read the
> blurbs at least a dozen times on a dozen trips to the store before I
> bought the book.  Even after I finally broke down and bought it I did
> not read it right away.  I took it with me to college in Utica (in the
> center of New York State) and read it early in my freshman year, 1965.
> Some time after that I was in Manhattan, cruising The Strand book store
> when I asked the clerk if this Pynchon guy had any other books.  The
> clerk told me that The Crying of Lot 49 had been published a few months
> earlier and I bought a copy.  I told him I would really like to write a
> letter to the author and he suggested I call the book company for an
> address.  I went to a pay phone on the street and they gave me the
> address of Candida Donadio's office.  It was less than a mile from there
> so I walked over and got in to see her.  She was incredibly rude!  I
> don't think I ever got over that experience.
> 
> Back in college I continued read and reread Pynchon's two novels.  When
> Secret Integration came out in the Saturday Evening Post I fell in love
> with that too.  I visited a friend at Cornell and cruised the library
> looking at the yearbooks from the years of Pynchon's attendance and
> found references to him but no pictures.   (A couple of years ago I had
> a boss who went to Cornell in the 50s and attended a few classes with
> Pynchon.  All she had to say was that Pynchon was quiet and attentive in
> class.)
> 
> After a couple of extended hiatuses I was a senior at Utica College the
> year Gravity's Rainbow was published.  Months before the news of the
> forthcoming novel was announced I made the bold statement in a lit class
> that Pynchon was the only contemporary author worth studying in that
> class and he wasn't even being taught.  The teacher and the students all
> laughed at me and I wonder what they think now.
> 
> I have loved Pynchon for over 30 years now and continue to adore his
> writing.  I have read the first three novels over a dozen times each
> and have read Vineland a couple-three times.
> 
> I am reading M&D at a leisurely pace.  It is truly a feast for a Pynchon
> fan.  His writing is as wonderful as ever.  Even after reading just a
> bit more than a tenth of the novel, I am certain that it is a worthy
> addition to the canon.  Long live the greatest living American author!
> Long live the Pynchon-list.  I hope I can make a constructive
> contribution to this list.  Everyone, keep up the great conversation.
> 
> Toby Levy
toby, youare a wonderful person. thank you so much for the post. i came
here to find, in part, people like you who respect good writing and who
wish to stay on top of current discussion. i first read crying, fell
absolutely in love (despite the reader-hostile play exegesis), and
recently i read v, which really sunk the hook. this guy is definitely
one of the greats, and i feel forunate to be a sentient adult at the
time of his new publication. i have often fantasized about what it must
have been like to read a long-awaited new pynchon novel, and here i am!
i must admit that i read roughly half of vineland and put it down in
disgust (diversion, diversion! not mine, his!); also, i have not read
more than 100 pages of GR, 'the big one,' though my experience with m&d
(400 pages) has motivated me to take it on. i look forward to your
contribution to this intriguing discussion.
ray