reclusive P.

[Erik T. Burns]

A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)
BOOKS
COVER TO COVER
Arthur Salm
Arthur Salm is editor of Books
569 Words
08 February 2004
The San Diego Union-Tribune
1,2,3
BOOKS-2
English
Copyright (c) 2004 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All
rights reserved.

Oedipa Maas, Tyrone Slothrop, Benny Profane (and the Whole Sick Crew) -- any
of these characters from the early novels of Thomas Pynchon ("The Crying of
Lot 49," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "V," respectively) is deserving of
pop-culture status. Who among us hasn't been in love with Oedipa, dazed and
confused in San Narcisco; ached for Slothrop as he served as a reluctant
priapic predictor of V2 strikes on London; yearned to yo-yo with Benny
through the New York subway system, to hunt its albino alligators with
flashlight and shotgun, to stumble upon its subterranean rat civilization?

All right, Pynchon is an acquired taste, and not the likeliest candidate for
iconography. But the intensely private author actually turned up -- or
rather, piped up -- on a recent episode of "The Simpsons," blurbing a book
by Marge. And Yoyodyne, the former toy manufacturer turned defense
contractor from "Lot 49," is also the name of a company that has had
dealings with Wolfram & Hart, the friends-in-low-places law firm in "Angel,"
the dark "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spinoff. (It has been suggested,
however, that "Angel's" use of the name Yoyodyne may be a second-generation
genuflection: Inspired by "Lot 49," the makers of the cult film "The
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" also used the name,
and "Angel" may be referring to the film. There's a master's thesis in this.
Two, maybe.)

Still, don't look for the author to appear on "The New Hollywood Squares"
any time soon. Pynchon doesn't grant interviews or allow his photograph to
appear on the jackets of any of his books -- or anywhere else, for that
matter. Although the blurred image most people have of him is as a recluse,
he is said to live a fairly normal life in New York City. The man simply
chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency
so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and
Paris Hilton were ever to meet -- the circumstances, I admit, are beyond
imagining -- the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize
everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.

Dave Barry would no doubt point out that Benny Profane and the Whole Sick
Crew would be a good name for a rock band. (There was, in fact, a rock band
called Lot 49.) I kind of lean toward the Reluctant Priapic Predictors,
though they, too, sound like an acquired taste.

SubText

More than 200 of literary photographer Marion Ettlinger's intimate,
black-and-white, natural-light photographs have been collected in "Author
Photo: Portraits 1983-2002" (Simon & Schuster, 175 pages, $35). An author's
appearance shouldn't matter, but Ettlinger convinces you that it does. Could
short-story writer AM Homes be anything but a pre-Raphaelite goddess?
Poet-memoirist Mary Karr lounges languidly on a divan, a cowboy-boot vase in
the background. A worried-looking Bret Easton Ellis appears, once again, to
be trying too hard. Raymond Carter is tough, a ruined- and bitter-looking
Patricia Highsmith Fellini-esque, Truman Capote (weirdly) Brando-esque.

Many great authors, and more than a few I've never heard of. Some
conspicuous omissions, too. No Pynchon, for example.