Problems of Paranoia in those Hollander Essays.2 of 50

[Peppermint Paddy O'Furniture]

One example of dim RISK and the consequences: 

>From "Where is Wanda? The Case of the Bag Lady and Thomas
Pynchon"


The personal tie-in became especially evident when Thomas R.
Pynchon Sr.'s
obituary was published (Newsday 23 July 1995). Pynchon's
father, who lived to
be eighty-eight, was taught Sunday school as a child by
Theodore Roosevelt's
daughter, Ethel, in the town of Oyster Bay, New York. John
Gable, executive
director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, reported
that the elder Pynchon
was the last person he knew of who vividly remembered
childhood encounters
around town with the bluff and hearty ex-president, who died
in 1919. Recently,
Thomas R. Pynchon Jr. married Melanie Jackson, the daughter
of Nancy Dabney
Roosevelt, herself the granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt.
As John Gable
commented, "The Roosevelts and Pynchons were very close."
Wanda Tinasky refers to the Progressive Burton K. Wheeler,
who leads us to
the Progressive Robert La Follette, who leads us to the
founder of the Progres-
sive Party, Theodore Roosevelt, whose granddaughter is the
mother-in-law of
Thomas R. Pynchon Jr. This chain of associations is similar
to one in Lot 49,
where the princely Thurn and Taxis family leads us to the
Rothschilds, who lead
us to J. P. Morgan & Co., which leads us to the stockbrokers
Pynchon & Co., who
were relatives of Thomas R. Pynchon Jr. (see my "Pynchon's
Inferno").
If Tinasky isn't Pynchon, it is a staggering coincidence
that Wanda should
mention Burt Wheeler. (How many people know that Burton K.
Wheeler ran for
the vice presidency in 1924 ? Or that Wheeler made a career
of being a thorn in
the side of certain "Wall Street Interests," according to
The National Cyclopedia
of American Biography?) In Vineland, "Zoyd" Wheeler's given
name is men-
tioned only once, at his wedding. It is Herbert Wheeler.
Marrying Margaret "Fre-
nesi" Gates (herself a third-generation leftist), Zoyd
becomes "her" Burt Wheel-
er. This may seem contrived, but that is the way Pynchon has
been using
indicative naming since his earliest short stories-as in
"The Secret Integration,"
where he mentions James G. Blaine and invokes the
presidential election of
1884. Apparently, in 1983 Pynchon was already thinking of a
name for his good-
natured schlemiel, "Zoyd," that would load him with
historical resonance. Zoyd
Wheeler is to the narcs as Burton K. Wheeler was to big
business?
The view of artist as active citizen (if we can regard a
writer who insists on
anonymity as an active citizen) is the final plank in the
case that Thomas Pyn-
chon and Wanda Tinasky are one. In her letters Tinasky
claims to be a bag lady
living on scraps, sleeping under bridges, refusing to grant
interviews or allow
photographs (just like Pynchon). In his credited works
Pynchon undertakes to be
a public person, involved in the events of the day (just
like Tinasky). They are
each other's complement. But Pynchon fiercely guards his
privacy because he is
aware of the punitive wages of satire.

CRITIQUE WINTER 1997, VOl. 38, NO.2 145-158

"Whuchoo gunna go an fuck wit me for Chuck?"  

        ---Peppermint Patty, written on the wall of
Bolingbroke's dump