Pynchon-Tinasky

[Eric Rosenbloom]

jbor wrote:
> As Rich has said, Pynchon sez he didt'n write
> 'em, so he didt'n write 'em. Simple -- and conclusive -- as that.

And the Pope says Jesus Christ is my savior. God bless Saint Thomas
a'Pynchon. God damn the Luddite heresy.

and jbor wrote:
> As far as the subjunctive assertion about "if nobody had ever thought they
> were Pynchon's work", well, I get the impression that once the suggestion
> was made, and it was made quite early on in the piece, "Wanda" did in fact
> start to play on it. One of our list hosts, Murthy, made the complaint last
> time the topic came up, that "Wanda" never actually said "she" was Pynchon
> -- that it "was a rap other people put on" her -- but I believe that from
> about the time of the letter where she talks about having worked at Boeing,
> if not even before this one, "she" was playing on the misapprehension others
> held that "she" was in fact Pynchon.

Perhaps, but I don't recall any suspicion that Tinasky was Pynchon (or
vice versa) until Vineland came out 2 years after Tinasky's last letter,
when Bruce Anderson made the assertion. Looking through the letters
again, both Tinasky's and the others', I don't find any such suggestion.

I did come across the submission from one Ezra Pound (letter to AVA,
January 2, 1985) of a poem from which Tinasky often quoted, a fact that
Don Foster used to suggest that Tinasky was Thomas Hawkins (or vice
versa), because apparently the poem is in fact Hawkins':

      Winter is icummen in,
      Lhude sing Goddamm ...

Lhude sing Goddamm, indeed. Ta ta, foax