Pynchon-Tinasky

[rosenlake at mac.com]

Dave Monroe wrote:
> As I recall, Fotser doesn't account for the letters
> signed "Wanda Tinasky" received (1990?) after Hawkins'
> death (1988?).  He also made at least one egregious
> misreading, attributing a comment about Alice Walker
> ("a stripe-assed baboon" or somesuch?) to "Wanda
> Tinasky" "herself," rather than noting that it was a
> line WT puts in the mouth of some local luminary or
> another (sorry, Letters not handy, either) in a little
> playlet or somesuch in one of the letters.

Here's the letter . . .

"Would you be interested in serializing a novel I have in process, based
on the romantic lives of several of our more public local personalities?
To avoid lawsuits, I have disguised reality somewhat . . . e.g.,
presnet-day Mendocino County becomes Kenya c. 1910; you, Mr. Anderson
[editor of the AVA], are of course the Great White
Hunter-poet-philosopher, always flying your air flivver off into the
bushes to shoot lions & suck your pipe; Alice Walker appears as your
faithful old gunbearer, to whom you are always exclaiming with rough
affection, 'You purple-assed baboon!' (I know this phrase is used by
William Seward Burroughs, Mr. Anderson, but remember, this is _1910 . .
. I'll_ sue _him_ for plagiarism!) --April 16, 1986

"Out of Africa, or Way Out West With the Night, my thinly veiled novel
of life in romantic Mendocino County." --May 28, 1986

> ... one might well
> reiterate the question Eric asks, "Who [ultimately]
> got Don Foster involved?"  Pynchon, of course, has not
> been unknown to set in motion his own labyrinthine
> intrigues of sorts before, covering to outright
> removing his tracks ...

A-and the tale (I haven't read the Foster chapter myself) of Foster
finding the work shed at Hawkins's place still intact with papers and
typewriter 10 years after Hawkins's death is bit suspicious. And then
dutifully faxing his report to Melanie Jackson who gets her husband
(TRP) to sign a typed thank-you note?

--
Eric R