Tinasky hoax

[jbor]

on 2/5/04 9:04 AM, jbor wrote:

> I thought I recall reading that Pynchon was aware of Foster's investigations
> and that he had given the project his blessing (and had even assisted
> Foster). Perhaps I'm wrong. I think "hoax" is exactly the right word for the
> way the Tinasky letters were collected and published.

[...]
About the same time, Anderson convinced himself and many others, including
visiting national correspondents from major dailies, that a very popular
contributor to his lively letters-to-the-editor column was reclusive
novelist Thomas Pynchon, writing under the pseudonym Wanda Tinasky.

Some circumstantial facts supported this idea. "Tinasky" was a very good and
clever writer, fond of Pynchonesque puns. Pynchon was rumored to be in the
area, researching his book "Vineland."

Even when the letters stopped in 1988, the Pynchon rumors continued.

Complaints by the Pynchon family led to an investigation by Vassar College
professor Don Foster, a specialist in authenticating authorship.

Foster traced the Tinasky letters to a former postal worker and minor Beat
Generation writer named Donald Hawkins. The letters had stopped abruptly in
1988 because Hawkins had murdered his wife and then killed himself, driving
off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean.
[...]

Story Source: LA Times

http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/1011871/2012245.html

***

31 August 1988: The last Tinasky letter, except for spurious "copycat"
letters, appears in the AVA.

September 1988: Thomas Hawkins fatally bludgeons his wife Kathy, then mourns
over her corpse for several days in their home on Beal Lane, just north of
Fort Bragg in Mendocino County. On September 23 he sets the house on fire
and drives Kathy¹s car over a 90-foot cliff to his death.

21 March 1990: AVA publisher Bruce Anderson prints an announcement in his
paper: "SUSPICIONS CONFIRMED. The justly famous American novelist, Thomas
Pynchon, is almost certainly the pseudonymous comic letter writer, Wanda
Tinasky." Plans to publish the letters in book form slowly take shape.

14 June 1995: Thomas Pynchon's wife and literary agent, Melanie Jackson,
writes to the team preparing the Tinasky letters for publication: "I have
conferred with the author and his editors and publishers, and no one can see
any resemblance between his work and any of these letters [ . . . ] Thomas
Pynchon's name cannot be associated with your project in any way."

May 1996: The Letters of Wanda Tinasky is published, on the premise that
Thomas Pynchon almost certainly wrote the letters. Steven Moore's Foreword
begins, "Well, if it ain't Pynchon, it's someone who has him down cold: his
inimitable literary style, his deep but lightly worn erudition [ . . . ]"
(An "inimitable literary style" would seem to preclude an imitator "who has
him down cold," no?) The scholarly journal Pynchon Notes provides its
readers with instructions for ordering the book from a post office box in
Oregon.

October 1996: The book's editor, TR Factor, sends copies of the Letters,
back issues of the AVA, and lots of Pynchon material to Don Foster, who in
February had identified Joe Klein as the author of Primary Colors, asking
him to corroborate Pynchon's authorship. Foster remains unconvinced, and
other duties limit the amount of time he can devote to the investigation.

1997: Thomas Pynchon makes a rare public statement, telephoning CNN to deny
authoring the letters.

September 1998: Don Foster's sleuthing leads him to the woman who purchased
the Hawkins property after the couple's deaths. Untouched by the house fire
is the shed where Hawkins did his writing, containing an Underwood
typewriter and lots of correspondence and news clippings about the life and
work of Thomas Hawkins, including the 1962 letter that Jack Green returned.
She sends the much of the material to Foster, and it confirms his suspicion
that Hawkins, not Pynchon, wrote the bulk of the Tinasky letters. On
September 12, Foster faxes the results of his investigation to Melanie
Jackson, and soon he receives a thank-you note typed and signed by Thomas
Pynchon.

http://www.nyx.net/~awestrop/gaddis/whoswho.htm

best