Pynchon-Tinasky

[Dave Monroe]

This is indeed an interesting and worthwhile
distinction to make here, a "character" in a novel vs.
a "persona" on an editorial page, but ...

--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
-> ----------
> >From: Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
> >
> 
> > ... again, do note that we are talking about what
> we
> > all seem to presume to be a fictional character
> (Wanda
> > Tinasky, whoever "she" might have been)
> 
> Well, no, it was a persona, because the context was
> letters to the editor,
> not a "fiction" as such.

... and interesting not in the least as it's a matter
of different contexts which are nonetheless texts (in
that good ol' fashioned, ethnocentric, logocentric
sense or otherwise) themselves.  The novel vs. the
newspaper, fiction vs., presumably, fact.  Or, rather,
of "intentionalities" separable from their authors to
an "intentionality" presumably the author's own ...

Characters rather less controversially attributable to
Pynchon (i.e, those in the fictions published under
his name), of course, say, not to mention do, all
sorts of appalling things (although this has indeed
proven to be a matter of taste here).  Including
spouting racial slurs ...

 And a racial slur is a
> racial slur.

But, again, "persona," "character," whatever, i think
we're all in agreement that we're not only reading a
fictional construct here of some sort (which is to put
aside for the moment the question of to what extent
we're ALL "personas," "characters," "constructs"), but
we're reading a real person (whoever s/he might be)
constructing a fictional construct (Wanda Tinasky)
construction a real person (Bruce Anderson) as
fictionally constructing a fictional construct which
not only constructs himself as yet another fictional
construct, but another real person (Alice Walker) as a
fictional construct as well.

Glad to know that there are those yet among us who see
such nigh-unto-Russian egg nesting as still not
necessarily relieving its author of certain
responsibilities, but ...

But, again, I've no real commitment--or even
preference--on the "Tinasky = Pynchon?" question. 
However, I do think that the arguments themselves, the
quest itself, can be productive, and not only for the
interrogation of such questionable lines of reasoning
as ...

 As Rich says:
> Pynchon said he didn't write the letters, case
> closed; as far as I'm
> concerned too.

Now, of course, even I'd tend to grant Pynchon rather
more credibility--or, at any rate, I'd tend to be
rather more credulous--here than I would in the cases
of, say, the courtroom, the campaign stop, the press
release, what have you, but I don't necessarily see
any good reason why I should be.  Pynchon has his own
(perhaps inscutable, but ...) self-interests as much
as anybody does, esp. in a case fraught with as much
weirdness as l'affaire Tinasky.  Eric has consistently
raised perfectly good points here, however, far more
succinbctly than I ever will, of course, and I don't
have much to add to them, but ...
 
> And I think that one might be able to differentiate
> between the sort of
> practical jokes that Pynchon endorses and indeed has
> practised in the real
> world (eg. in sending the comedian, "Professor"
> Irwin Corey, along to
> receive his National Book Award in 1973)

And exactly how much do we know about Thoams Pynchon
"in the real world"?  Egg-zaktly ...

and the
> practice of adopting a
> fake persona to perpetrate the type of cowardly hate
> mail

Is that letter really "hate mail"?  I'd think that
Bruce Anderson has more of a grievance here than Alice
Walker, much less anybody else.  And, keep in mind,
"Tinasky" is here satirizing good ol' colonialist
adventure lit'rachure, not unproblematically
reproducing it, something of which Pynchon seems to
know a little about himself, not only as evidenced by
all the intertexts "Vheissu" conjures, but also by,
say, references to Buchan (I think) and Fleming
(definitely) in that Slow Learner intro. ...

 which might be
> either generally facetious ("Wanda")

See?  You said it yourself here, Tinasky is being
"facetious."  So what's the problem then?

 or more
> vindictive ("big one")

But s/he did save me the trouble of pointing out a few
hypocrisies about posting anonymous, pseudonymous,
whatever nastiness.  About posting nastiness in
general.  So ...

by
> contrasting a couple of passages from 'The Secret
> Integration'.

So we're reading from the actions of (some of)
Pynchon's chracters to his actual, offpage life here? 


> In the story, the boys' pranks are designed to
> "interfere with the scheming
> of grown-ups" (SL 144), and Étienne's ambition to
> have a "career somehow
> playing jokes" explicitly derives from his father's
> sage observation that
> "the only thing a machine *can't* do is play jokes."
> (150: It's significant
> that Étienne's father is the only parent in
> Mingeborough who isn't a
> racist.)

> It's tempting to wonder whether this
> vividly-recalled episode derives from
> experience: there are some comments here and there
> about P's mother's
> apparent racial intolerance. 

Temptinmg, indeed, a temptation to which you've given
in here, and, cf., of course, Ma Slothrop as well,
"Jew-zippy," and so forth, but ... but, well, is the
objection that a contextutally multiply-nested (but
nonetheless undeniable as such, I agree) slur is
"proof" that a given someone simply could not have
written that slur, no matter how distanced it is from
any sort of clear manifestation of its author's own
proclivities?  Does that mean that this Hawkins guy is
our alleged "racist" here as well?  At least for
someone who seems to argue that Pynchon himself
possibly valorizes a character who is implicated--and
he is, from being an SS official to launching
Gottfried ("got fried," yet another holocaust, a
burned sacrifice) the 00000--in everything from murder
to rather more wide-ranging Nazi atrocities to global
thermonuclear holocaust?  Sheesh ...

Again, it's not whether of not Pynchon wrote any of
those Tinasky letters here (something which Foster
doesn't account for the distinct possibility of,
although it is raised in the published ed. of the
Letters, multiple authorship), but, rather, the often
questionable argumentation used to dismiss the
possibility here ...


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