Pynchon Mention in Santa Cruz Sentinel

[Richard Romeo]

Hi all from now lit and back on that grid NYC

thought y'all might find this interesting.

Rich

August 17, 2003 


Watson: The secret lives of writers
A few columns back, I dropped mention of the
long-lived rumor that THOMAS PYNCHON, reclusive author
of "Gravity’s Rainbow," "V," "Vineland," "The Crying
of Lot 49" and other works, lived in Aptos during the
1980s.
I asked anyone who had any information — or even new
rumors — to contact me.

By return e-mail and over the next month, I got some
interesting replies — some dead-ends, some rumor
re-hashes and a couple new ideas.

While "Gravity’s Rainbow" is considered his
masterpiece and "The Crying of Lot 49" is funny,
"Vineland" is the novel Pynchon was supposedly working
on when he lived in Aptos or somewhere nearby.

The book is filled with many of his trademark plot
twists — paranoia, conspiracy, drugs, science — a
perfect complement to our hippie-dippie,
stuck-in-the-’60s county. Supposedly, many local
landmarks are identifiable in the book. 

But was Pynchon really a resident once upon a time? 

Joe Schultz, a regular reader of this column,
suggested I slog my way over to blogger Jorn Barger’s
site at www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/tpportal.html, which
I did and found plenty of Pynchon plot summaries,
quotes, articles, criticism, biographies, etc. (at
least when the links weren’t broken). It made for a
fun read, but I could find no magic wand to dispell
those persistent rumors.

So I went browsing through some online news-lists and
found some juicy, old, rumors from Corralitos
cypherpunk Tim May, a newsgroup gadfly, who suggested
that sci fi author Rudy Rucker of Los Gatos might have
known Pynchon when he lived hereabouts. He also
suggested that the Zen connection in "Vineland" might
very well be the Mount Madonna Center.

May’s most intriguing idea, though, was that Joan
Baez, a Pynchon crony, often visited Santa Cruz when
her son went to UC Santa Cruz, which doesn’t mean
much, but is a great start to another rumor, dontcha
know ...

Another reader, an antiques dealer, added grist to the
rumor mill by e-mailing a story about another dealer
and his wife who ate dinner at Larry Selman’s house
once upon a time when Pynchon was present. 

I called Selman, the glass paperweight kingpin of The
Glass Gallery. All hokum, according to him. No truth
to it.

Then there’s the story told by Dave at Logos Books
that, after Pynchon moved away, he wrote Charlie Lange
a letter saying he’d been a big fan of his blues show
on KUSP. Pynchon made a very nice donation to the
radio station to say thanks.

Peter Troxell, general manager of KUSP, said, yes,
Pynchon did indeed say he’d enjoyed Charlie’s blues
show but that, for the rest of it, KUSP is "obligated
to keep relationships with donors nonpublic.

And someone else suggested I re-read John Yewell’s
1998 Metro piece about Pynchon, so I did.

Yewell wrote that a friend of his actually met Pynchon
in 1996 when he donated some books from his library to
a nonprofit.

More interesting though is the story about Yewell’s
friend in the post office who knew, from Pynchon’s tax
return, where the author lived.

Yewell went to the address, knocked on the door, asked
for Pynchon and was told he wasn’t at home. 

End of story.

Smells suspiciously like the rumor’s true, doesn’t it?

Now on to the creme-de-la-creme — the actual meeting
between Pynchon and the once-and-future columnist
Bruce Bratton.

Back in the days when Bratton was writing his column
for The Good Times (pre-Metro, pre-Sentinel), a friend
of his who knew Pynchon arranged it so that Bratton
accidentally stopped by when Pynchon was visiting.

"He was tall, brown hair, glasses and skinny," Bratton
e-mailed me.

His friend is still in touch with Pynchon, and Bruce
said he’d ask his friend to pass along a question from
me to Pynchon. 

The only question I could come up with was the lame —
"Where did you hang out when you were in town?"

Being the gad-about he is, I’m sure Bruce’ll keep me
posted if anything comes from that e-mail.

And, oh, by the way, just in case you were wondering —
Bratton’s still writing his column online. If you like
rumors, opinion and innuendo as much as I do, check
him out at brattononline.com.

Also
I’m not the kind of reader who thrills to National
Enquirer exposés of Lady Di’s secret sex life or
picture book essays proving the dénouement of John
Kennedy Jr.’s marriage, but I do like a good memoir
every now and then.

Not often, but occasionally, I find one that suits me
perfectly.

MARTIN AMIS’ memoir "Experience," published in 2000,
suited me just fine last month.

Heavy with celebrity author name-droppings —
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, PHILLIP LARKIN, JULIAN BARNES,
SALMAN RUSHDIE and IAN MCEWAN (with a special tip of
the hat to American author SAUL BELLOW, Amis’ friend
and mentor) — "Experience" showed me the exact place
where literary memoirs cross paths with cheesy
tell-all books. 

In other words, it was impossible to pull myself away
from the Amis divorces, the murder, the suicide, the
family squabbles, the death of a close friendship,
etc. 

Somehow, the whole thing cheered me up and pulled me
out of the reading doldrums I’d fallen into.

Which is odd in a way because Amis himself has never
exactly been a novelist one turns to for cheer. 

Instead, his novels — "Other People," "Money," "London
Fields," "Time’s Arrow," "The Information," etc. — are
a bit depressing, being as they are self-consciously
post- modern, often angry and regularly sordid and
gritty.

But Amis is a wordsmith first and foremost.
"Experience" shows off his keen narrative skills.

What "Experience" isn’t, though, is a chronological
listing of events in his life. 

Now, a lot of the reason I picked the book up in the
first place was to discover Martin’s true relationship
with his dad, author KINGSLEY AMIS, the celebrated
British author of "Lucky Jim," "The Green Man" and
lesser works.

I got my fill there. 

Father and son arguments over literary items were
wonderful, of course, but just as good were the
faithfully rendered bickerings about nothing.

Comparisons of Kingsley’s and Martin’s books,
politics, even lives, doubled the pleasure of reading
"Experience."

While the book was, in its way, guided by the spirit
of Amis’ murdered and dismembered cousin (which sort
of event would surely cure any of us of innocence
rather quickly), it is Amis’ puckish sense of humor
that kept me delighted to the end.

The party where Amis needlessly needled Salman Rushdie
(his face like "a chaotic potato") while friends
looked on abashed and aghast was lusciously vicious.

There was simpler fun, too, as in this description of
Amis’s "apres-book-tour condition" — 


"All split and scoured, the author (that not
particularly fragile being) must now shed his
executive self and repossess his former shape. It was
a Sunday. I and my ghost were alone in the studio
apartment. We had coffee — or I made it and my ghost
drank it. He had a bath, sluicing off all that jumbo,
and I felt a little better. We passed round a
cigarette as I went through my mail. One letter caused
me to sit down suddenly when I was halfway throught
its first sentence. This, I might have murmured to my
ghost, is probably for you ..."


There was precious little time to get bored with any
particular page in "Experience" because footnotes were
liberally appended. When not merely explanatory, they
were often better than the main text.

I am reminded, in particular, of one footnote near the
end of the book in which Amis rambles on about writers
who want to cloister themselves away from admirers,
emphasis on J.D. SALINGER.

However, he adds in his footnote, not all seemingly
ghostly writers are completely invisible. He writes:

"Salman Rushdie has been to a baseball game with DON
DELILLO. And Ian McEwan, for a time, used to have
lunch with Thomas Pynchon."

How odd ...

Author DAVID CORBETT ("The Devil’s Redhead") will read
from his new crime novel, "Done for a Dime," at 7:30
p.m. Wednesday at the Capitola Book Cafe.

My friend Bill borrowed the book and reported back.

He liked the well-sketched characters, he said, the
gritty prose, the gripping interrogation scenes and
thought that Corbett has a real eye for detail as well
as an ear for dialogue. 

Unfortunately, he continued, the author can’t seem to
"decide what the real story line is until about
halfway through the book, and by then, it’s too late
to do much with it."

By the end, Bill wrote, "the characters we have come
to know and like start to exit stage left into
irrelevancy. We learn that the murder itself is almost
coincidental to the real plotline."

The Bay Area setting is nice, though ...

Contact Chris Watson at cwatson at santa-cruz.com. 

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