Pynchon-Tinasky

[jbor]

The other real giveaway is the catalogue of television programs watched by
either writer, as evidenced in the _Letters_ and, say, _Vineland_.
Obviously, both TRP and "Wanda" are avid fans of the Tube (though one might
wonder how a "bag lady" who "lives under a bridge" would have had access to
said mod. con.), and this is indeed a point of comparison. However, the
types of programs which "Wanda" ostensibly watched (eg. sports, cop shows
like 'Hill Street Blues', ' Cagney and Lacey' and the execrable 'T.J.
Hooker) are imo thoroughly different to those Pynchon appears to revel in
(eg. cartoons, 'Wheel of Fortune', 'Gilligan's Island', 'The Brady Bunch',
'Hawaii 5-0', and the *original* 'Star Trek'), though there's a minor
cross-over with 'Donahue' I guess and, at a pinch, 'CHiPs'. But most of all
it's the sports stars and sportscasters that "Wanda" continually rambles on
about who don't get a guernsey at all in Pynchon's texts.

As well as the marked differences in tone, there is a distinct undercurrent
of bigotry running through "Wanda's" letters, particularly evidenced by the
constant tongue-in-cheek (though essentially derogatory) references to
"faggots" and the etymology of that term, and that appalling racial slur
against Alice Walker: these are far removed from Pynchon's attitudes on
similar topics imo, expressed both through his fiction and explicitly in his
non-fiction and the (*signed*) letters, blurbs, introductions and
reminiscences.

As to Eric's point, there isn't much in the 'Wanda' letters that could be
called "personal", considering the fact that it is a fictional persona
haranguing, in the main, on public and/or local issues.

And I'm not sure that Pynchon does really "edit ... the personal" out of his
work? What about that 1984 _Slow Learner_ 'Intro', where he writes

    ... Displacing my personal experience off into other environments went
    back at least as far as 'The Small Rain'. Part of this was an unkind
    impatience with fiction I felt then to be "too autobiographical".
    Somewhere I had come up with the notion that one's personal life had
    nothing to do with fiction, when the truth, as everyone knows, is nearly
    the direct opposite. ... (21)

In my experience it's only a weak or jealous mind which finds it necessary
to hide behind a false persona in order to spew insult and venom at others,
and Pynchon's is neither of these imo.

best

----------
>From: "Otto" <o.sell at telda.net>

>

> Thanks for this, Eric. I think this "handling" of opposites is one reason
> that made some people think that TRP could be Wanda T. *Schadenfreude* vs.
> *Glücksschmerz* is great.
> Robert wrote that "The vision just wasn't the same" - this is something I
> cannot "decide" from the three letters I've read, but these letters simply
> didn't give me the impression at all that TRP had written them.


----------
>From: rosenlake at mac.com

>
> Where else could he (to argue 'tis He at all) vent in such manner? Why
> shouldn't he have given voice to what he otherwise edits out of his
> work, i.e., the personal?
>
> The AVA may be small, but it is known as one of the best and most lively
> local newspapers in the country. And it prints pretty much everything
> people send it.