is Pynchon a recluse?

[Otto]

>
> Although, when the _Soho Weekly News_ ran a story that Pynchon was
Salinger
> he wrote back saying, simply, "Not bad, keep trying."
>

Oh, that's nice. I didn't hear it before. The next stop was the Wanda-thing
maybe.

> But, yes, I agree with you Otto. It's obvious that Pynchon isn't nearly as
> cloistered or neurotic as Salinger. However, and by the some token, he's
not
> a publicity-hound like Foster Wallace or DeLillo or Updike either. There
are
> no book tours, glossy Sunday Supplement features, car ads, award
acceptance
> speeches. Pynchon's self-styled absence from public life has been
consistent
> for forty years now, just as have his occasional forays into the popular
> press, book blurbs, and the like, these extending right back to the
> beginning of his career as well, as Rich pointed out. There's the review
of
> _Warlock_ for _Holiday_ ('A Gift of Books', Dec. 1965), his letter to the
> editor in the _NYTBR_ from July 1966 ('Pros and Cohns'), that letter to
> Thomas Hirsch (1969) in which he expresses his disdain for Western
> Christianity and which he subsequently permitted David Seed to publish in
a
> critical study, among other examples. Indeed, the 'Watts' article (1966)
> itself is pretty much a straight piece of journalism.
>
> I like Rich's notion that Pynchon speaks to the media on his own terms.
And,
> he certainly chooses which media (his conversation with Michael Naumann is
> significant in this respect I think, and I'd be willing to bet that
Pynchon
> was aware and approving of that conversation's subsequent reportage in the
> German media), as well as when, and about what.
>

Yes, he's definitely choosing very well what to say in public.

> It strikes me that there are both aesthetic and political implications to
> Pynchon's choice of public anonymity. For one, the texts speak for
> themselves, and this is something which is foregrounded by his absence
from
> the public spotlight. Secondly, garnering media celebrity would be
somewhat
> incongruous, if not hypocritical, in the light of his ongoing critique of
> the structures and institutions of American hegemony.
>
> best
>

Yes, indeed, both good reasons, though I doubt that his critique is limited
to America and does not include a general critique on Western
Civilisation -- and speaking of Naumann I'd like to remind on what Pynchon
did when Naumann told him about his entering the first red-green government
in Germany: TRP laughed, according to Naumann in the radio-show.

Otto
(humming "So You want to be a Rock'n' Roll Star")