reclusive pynchon

[Terrance]

R E S P E C T

Ain't nothing wrong with selling cars on TV or doing a bit on The
Simpsons, on Fox, on the cover of Rolling Stone. Is there? What's with
all this crap about some sort of Respect for keeping it Real and
Aesthetically Pure?  Pynchon is  typical of what America breeds. It's
both fascinating and false the way the critical industry has treated him
over the years, from Entropy Man to New Englander who sprung from his
Great Great Grand Father's head like some Puritan Pedigree on a
Pilgrimage to Postmodern Perfection, to the Reclusive and Paranoid
Author, to the new King of the Blurbs. And  the Pynchons have had a hand
in the critical fabrications. A few years back I Was in a bar down on
Broome Street,  it may have been the Broome Street Bar, and they have
this painting on the wall, and Pynchon's head along with about 60 other
sometimes a SOHO artists is in the painting. So I asked the Bar Man,
"Was Pynchon a regular here or something?" ANd the Bar Man said, "No, he
sat over there (he pointed to the Broadway corner of the Bar) for a bout
week, him and this dude that looked like Frank Zappa. Funny thing is,
they would sit there in their fucking underwear."  "Oh, Shut up," I
said. And then this parrot that I didn't even know was practically
sitting on my shoulder said, "Yeah, that what the Frank Zappa looking
dude kept saying."

 
> >> The definition "A person who withdraws from the world to live in seclusion
> >> and often in solitude." doesn't really befit a person who lives in NYC & has
> >> a wife & child. Just because he's publicly reclusive (i.e. no interviews, no
> >> book tours, no 42nd St. Y, no cameras) doesn't necessarily mean he's
> >> privately
> >> reclusive.
> >
> > I think this is right.  Protecting one's privacy isn't necessarily
> > reclusiveness.
> 
> But as well as protecting his personal privacy and apparently being camera
> shy, he has also made a deliberate choice to shun publicity and journalists
> throughout his career, which is a different thing, and which is the point
> being made.
> 
> I find much to respect in the fact that he isn't in the papers every other
> week like all those other "celebrity" authors and auteurs prattling on with
> their opinions about things totally outside their sphere of expertise, or
> peddling Oldsmobiles, for example.
> 
> best
> 
> > That said, his desire for privacy is beginning to resemble Woody Allen's,
> > certainly the most public private person on the face of the earth.  And it's
> > gotten pretty old.  P's as famous for shunning fame as he is famously unread.
> >
> > I would respect P more at this stage if he would more often seize the public
> > podium that is his for the asking, rather than make allusive statements in
> > book forewards or talk to Japanese Playboy if, in fact, he actually did.