Pynchon, anonymity and celebrity

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

- Though more biographical than 'academic', the following 
3 titles might be helpful:

* Andrew Gordon: Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon:
A Sixties Memoir (in: The Vineland Papers, pp. 167-178.)

* Jules Siegel: Lineland 

* Mathew Winston: The Quest for Pynchon (in: Twentieth
Century Literature, 21, pp. 278-287)


KFL +


"Pynchon is no nerd, but the relative banality of his 
conversation ('Hey, man, would you like a joint?') and
his reticence made it hard to get a focus on the man 
behind the books. But that's not surprising: Pynchon
interposes his fictions between himself and the world.
His novels are an elaborate screen he can hide behind,
a form of both self-expression and self-effacement. The
woman who brought us together once offered to arrange 
for Pynchon to speak in a university auditorium. She told
him she could assure his anonymity by having him speak 
through a microphone from behind a screen. He refused:
'They would still be able to recognize my voice.' Ironically,
that is exactly the situation of Pynchon's readers: he 
speaks to us from behind a screen, but we recognize him
by his voice, that unmistakable Pynchon style./ Nevertheless,
from my brief encounter with Pynchon I gleaned a few things
about the man behind the screen. I know that he follows 
the reviews and evidently cares what critics say about 
him. That he probably has help with his research. That
he usually works slowly and ..." (Gordon, 174f)
 


"John M. Krafft" <krafftjm at muohio.edu> schrieb:
> I have been asked to recommend "an academic quality, article length work on
> Pynchon and his desire for anonymity, as an aspect of celebrity," and that
> turns out to be a taller order than I had suspected. Any suggestions?
>