Pynchon, anonymity and celebrity

Joel Katz mittelwerk at hotmail.com
Thu Apr 8 22:58:36 CDT 2004


well, he sounds sort of like....a real person.  a nice guy.  i'm shocked.  
where's melinda, now that i need comforting....


>From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (lorentzen-nicklaus)
>Reply-To: <040811713-0001 at t-online.de>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: re: Pynchon, anonymity and celebrity
>Date: 08 Apr 2004 14:57 GMT
>
>
>
>
>
>- 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?
> >
>
>
>
>

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