Signed Pynchon - last chance

[Doug Millison]

The situation Malign describes is hardly unique to NYC but instead is common
to all the major U.S. cities. It is a major project to get your kids in the
"best" (that means different things to different people, of course) schools,
here in SF, and in NYC, as I I know from family and friends in NYC who have
kids in school, too, as well as many adults who came out of schools in
Manhattan or the desireable schools near the island.  The "best schools" are
many, and-- the point I was making and which drifted past your cubicle
apparently -- celebrities have their choice of just about any, especially an
author like Pynchon who has the ability to contribute in a significant way
to a school's fund raising efforts with the stroke of a pen. Celebrity
parents are not going to push to get their kids in academically demanding
schools unless they're sure their kids will be able to handle it; if they're
not particularly academically oriented, they'll choose the schools that are
desireable for other reasons.  Big celebrities of course, can get their kids
into any school they choose, no matter what the child's capabilities may be.
I don't know if Pynchon is in that category (equivalent to Madonna's
ability, for example, to enroll her baby in the French school in London,
shortly after the child's birth), but I do know that Jackson's school was
quite proud to have him as parent of a student there. 

So, I continue to doubt that Pynchon would put his son in a
church-affiliated school if he was the enemy of religion that has been
described.  Pynchon's made a choice, and I'm sure he has more leeway in that
choice, because of his stature as an artist, than the typical Manhattan
parent.


Malign
Getting one's children into the best schools is a 
full-time effort and begins at the severing of of the umbilical cord.  I
know 
a number of non-affiliated parents whose children went, or go, to religious 
schools because of the quality.