Wanda Tinasky

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 16 Jan 1999, Miriam Hardin wrote:


> CNN ran a segment on Pynchon--I think it was in the summer of '97.
> One of the topics the segment addressed was the WT letters, and quoted a
> firm denial from Pynchon, asserting that he did not write the letters and
> was sorry the whole thing had gone as far as it had. . . .

But was he under oath???

Possibly related to the topic of Pynchon watching (or wondering), John
Updike has a piece in the current NYRB called "One Cheer for Literary
Biography" in which he reveals that he keeps such books in his barn
feeling that though they're too valuable to relegate  to the church sale
they don't deserve to take up always-in-short supply space inside the
house. Nevertheless Updike states:

We read, those of us who do, literary biographies for a variety of
reasons, of which the first and perhaps the most worthy is the desire to
prolong and extend our intimacy with the author--to partake again, from
another angle, of the joys we have experienced within the author's
oeuvre, in the presence of a voice and mind we have come to love.

Gives particular attention of biographies of Proust, Joyce, and
Shakespeare but mentions a host of others as well.

			P.