& etc.

[Doug Millison]

I'm not sure what "jbor" might mean by corroboration, but excerpts from the
letters I refer to (from Pynchon to his agent, Candida Donadio) were
published in the NY Times and many other publications (Salon had a piece on
this, too), on the occasion of the transfer of those letters from a NY
collector to the Morgan Library (I don't recall the exact name of that
institution) a while back, articles that were written by reputable
journalists (Mel Gussow, if I remember correctly, at the NY Times) who, in
some cases, had access to the letters (or to the Library's published
excerpts of the letters) before Pynchon blocked it. Easily found the
articles in a search of the NY Times web archive, I expect. 

That sort of journalism -- based on sources that others can examine and
judge -- is quite a bit different from the mud-slinging that Siegel pursues
with regard to Pynchon, where he presents a memoir that describes meetings
and conversations with Pynchon with no third person present (and, therefore,
nobody who can corroborate Siegel's account), and when the writer, Siegel,
clearly has a grudge against Pynchon (decades later) because of Pynchon's
alleged fling with Siegel's then-girlfriend/later-wife.  Believe Siegel, if
you wish; he also claims that he's a better writer than Pynchon, and, in
Lineland, puts words to that effect into the mouth of his
ex-girlfriend/wife; he claims as well -- and it is preposterous -- that he's
invented the electronic book or some such, a claim that I thoroughly
undercut at the time, simply by pointing to the long history of people who
had gotten there before he did. Siegel also played fast and loose in his
editing and presentation of material from the discussion he generated on
Pynchon-L --  he cut and re-shaped some of that material in ways that do not
always jibe very well with the way some of those discussions actually
unfolded here on Pynchon-L, and his revisions generally tend to make Siegel
look better at the expense of the interlocutor in question.  This latter
method would seem to characterize Siegel's general approach to
reconstructing what he knows about Pynchon. 

It's worth knowing, I think, that when asked about Siegel's claims in
Lineland, Pynchon told a researcher, "He should get a life." 

As far as I know, Hollander works from multiple sources, too, as do other
researchers who have gathered quite a bit of biographical information about
Pynchon.  Hollander is a Pynchon scholar and critic, of course, not a
journalist reporting on Pynchon news.

The notion that very little is known about Pynchon would appear, to me, to
be something like a myth or meme that gets passed along -- often enough in
this forum by "jbor" -- without any real critical attention.  When you see
what some people have compiled (often with stipulations that it not be
shared in any public sort of way, as in the case of the above-mentioned
letters), it turns out that quite a bit is actually known about Pynchon.

There's no accounting for what "jbor" finds "odd" -- he/she flip-flops so
often it's hard to keep track of the shifting positions taken up and then
abandoned as he/she pursues these endless arguments here. I base my
assessment of Siegel's work re Pynchon -- the Playboy magazine article,
Lineland, and his own subsequent rehashings of his various allegations about
Pynchon -- on a close reading of same, plus an extensive correspondence with
Siegel, and correspondence with others who have met some of the people
involved.

Not sure what to make of the rather enigmatic parentheticals, since "jbor"
and "David Morris" are the only anonymous trolls currently active on a daily
basis here on Pynchon-L. 

-Doug

"jbor":
Perhaps he was lying or putting-on or being modest in these letters. By the
way, where is the "corroboration" for this? Also, it seems odd that you
would denounce Siegel's 1977 biographical piece out of hand as
"uncorroborated assertion", and then valorise Hollander's 1978 Cornell
Alumni semi-biographical piece (which draws heavily on Siegel's article, by
the way), when the former actually knew Pynchon over several years and the
latter didn't. Let alone the different treatment you reserved for the one
(legitimate correspondent) and the other (anonymous troll) on-list,
_Lineland_ notwithstanding. 





Doug Millison, Senior Editor
Knowledge Management magazine
(415) 348-3054
DougMillison at ftmg.net
www.destinationKM.com