Pynchon-Tinasky

[rosenlake at mac.com]

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.

I don't recall any suspicion that Tinasky was Pynchon (or vice versa)
until Vineland came out, and Bruce Anderson made the assertion. And
looking through the letters, both Tinasky's and others', I don't find
any such mention.

I did come across the submission from one Ezra Pound (letter to AVA,
Januar 2, 1985) of a poem from which Tinasky often quoted (and I might
mention here that far from being relentlessly negative Tinasky praises a
few writers -- notably, E. L. Doctorow in prose and Sharon Doubiago in
poetry), a fact that Don Foster used to suggest that Tinasky was Thomas
Hawkins (or vice versa), because the poem is in fact Hawkins':

      Winter is icummen in,
      Lhude sing Goddamm ...

Lhude sing Godamm, indeed. Ta ta, foax. Enjoy yourselves . . .