Siegel, Pynchon's College Neighbor

[Keith McMullen]

 From Siegel's Playboy article:

"Everyone has his own fantasy of success. I once had no greater hope 
than to
publish a learned paper on 17th Century English songs in The 
Proceedings of
the Modern Language Association. Somewhere in the blank fog of time 
there is
a scholar writing a learned paper on Thomas Pynchon. To him I offer this
footnote: In Mortality and Mercy in Vienna, Pynchon's first published 
short
story, the protagonist is one Cleanth Siegel. My second wife, the former
Virginia Christine Jolly of San Marino, California, tells me that the
character represents me. I have noticed the coincidence of name but do 
not
recognize myself. Possibly it is a me I have never been able to examine 
very
well, the back of my neck, or the dream of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, whose
essential quality is that it cannot be remembered."

"Be that as it may, I did attend Cornell in 1954. The boy in the next 
room was
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. If there are any correspondences to be 
found in
that or anything else that follows, I leave them to Chrissie and the
scholars."