Pynchon-Tinasky

[Eric Rosenbloom]

I agree with Mali's wise assessment. If nobody had ever thought they
were Pynchon's work, would I have thought so, reading the collection
(which includes a lot more than Tinasky's work) only as an interesting
picture of mid-80's Mendocino county? I can't say. Anyway, the
identification works for me. I was enjoying my triennial Gravity's
Rainbow read when I got an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas and
bought the Tinasky letters. Reading both at the same time was not
jarring -- they seemed to be from the same intense but fun sometimes
caustic voice. But we are all operating in almost total ignorance. 

--
Eric R

MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I haven't read the Tinaksy letters, but would suggest that in seeking clues
> and answers via style (dis)similarities, one might consider Hemingway's
> letters and the huge gap in style there between the austere control of the
> published prose and the informal, often ungrammatical, and misspelled
> letters.
> 
> The letters are also, often, quite funny in a straightforward and nasty way,
> something absent in Hemingway's prose after The Torrents of Spring, just as
> often appalling in their near-pathological and raving viciousness (see
> particularly his comments about James Jones), a side of him unindulged in his
> prose.
> 
> In short, the Tinaksy letters are no more likely to reveal than conceal
> traces of P's hand--style, opinion, attitudes--given that, if he did write
> them, no one on this list anyway has any idea what motivated him to do so.