Pynchon-Tinasky

[rosenlake at mac.com]

jbor wrote:
> The current consensus seems to be that the originator of the Tinasky hoax
> was in fact Thomas Hawkins, as cited in Alan Westrope's post of last Nov.
> Alan gave an example from Donald Foster's book, and the commentary there is
> more up-to-date (and feasible) than in that 'Lingua Franca' article:
> 
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0011&msg=357

. . . which post contains:
"Hawkins was a huge fan of _The Recognitions_ who, upon encountering
jack green's _newspaper_ no. 12, containing green's Swiftian invective
against the critics who had reviewed Gaddis's novel in 1955, decided that
green and Gaddis were the same person.  He corresponded with green, asking
if he had "taken notice of the velikovskyan catastrophism" in the novel,
and may later have become convinced that Pynchon was just another avatar of
this remarkable man of letters...:-)"

"P.P.S.: The novels of William Gaddis & Thomas Pynchon were written by
the same person."
--Wanda Tinasky, letter to the AVA, August 21, 1985

After I looked that up, I read the next link, in which it is quoted
(could have saved myself a few minutes).:
> http://www.komarios.net/gaddis/whoswho.htm
. . . wherein is also quoted another letter claiming that "the same
person" that wrote the novels of William Gadis & Thomas Pynchon was Jack
Green. 

Anyway, surely Thomas Pynchon was very familiar with The Recognitions,
which today remains one of the most incisive satires of U.S. culture (I
just read it again last year). Hawkins's interest in it is probably not
exclusive. It no doubt flattered the young Pynchon to be not just
compared with but identified as William Gaddis; after proving his
promise with Gravity's Rainbow (which was published two years before
Gaddis's 2nd novel, JR), TRP could no doubt joke about it.

Donald Foster's work on the Tinasky letters from what I've read
second-hand is not the kind of detailed analysis he applied to revealing
Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors. Instead, he notes the use of
poems by Hawkins and the coincidence of the letters ending and Hawkins's
death. It's a case, but . . .

Pynchon may well have known Hawkins's work. He is reportedly a great fan
of poetry, as well as the obscure. Hell, he may have been using
Hawkins's place in Mendocino to work. (And fled back east when the
domestic scene heated up . . .)

> I'm not sure that it's simply a matter of "old left" leanings as of common
> sense. Why would a writer of Pynchon's stature and acclaim bother with such
> mean-spirited and obviously resentful diatribes against obscure local poets
> & other writers? 

They aren't that mean-spirited, just popping some self-inflations (from
the Greek phalein?). Anybody who cares about writing wants to do that
all the time. And here was a good local newspaper giving them all the
space they wanted.

> And, profit margin and self-publicity certainly seemed to
> be uppermost in the minds of some of those supposed "old lefties" who were
> hawking the published letters around the traps for several years there.

Most brazen perhaps was Alexander Cockburn's article expressing doubt
about Bruce Anderson's (editor of The AVA) insistence that Tinasky was
Pynchon yet urging everybody to buy his friend's collection of the
letters anyway. He could have been more honest and said that an extra
bonus in the book is the collection of Bruce Anderson's wonderful
columns (which are indeed quite good).

Who is TR Factor?

Who got Don Foster involved? And why did he do such a token job? Who
told him about Thomas Hawkins? How come nobody else suspected Hawkins,
when everybody in the area was trying to figure out which one of them
was Tinasky?

For me, Tinasky sounds like Pynchon, not a parody or echo. It's the same
balance of irreverence, wide-ranging knwoledge and obscure tidbits, pop
culture, melancholic hope . . .

Yours,
EDR