Pynchon after death?

[Dave Monroe]

Thomas Pynchon - A Passion for Secrecy

Perhaps the most enigmatic American literary figure of
the latter half of the twentieth century, Thomas
Pynchon is renowned for his passion for secrecy, in
both his private and professional life. His writing
has come to define if not presage an era of
conspiracies, cultural paranoia, and hidden
connections in history. Part of the beauty of his work
resides in how seamlessly he weaves the personal lives
and emotions of his eccentric characters into the
larger fabric of historical events. It is therefore
with great pleasure that the Ransom Center announces
the acquisition of the corrected typescript to Thomas
Pynchon's first novel, V., originally published in
1963. Until now, Pynchon scholarship has largely been
limited to critical analyses because of the paucity of
primary sources available to scholars.

Along with V., the Ransom Center has acquired eight
typed letters dating from the early 1960s, from a
young Pynchon to two close friends. The letters are
witty, agonizing, insightful, imaginative, full of
both doubt and bravado, and peppered with expletives.
In short, they are a tremendous gauge of a young
author's state of mind, and indicative of the
brilliance that would follow in novels such as The
Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow.

One letter from Mexico in 1964 details the profound
effects of the Kennedy assassination on Pynchon's
mental state. A negative review of V. and his
self-professed inability to plot have him questioning
his worth as a writer, but rejection from
Cal-Berkeley's math department tips the balance back
in favor of writing. Pynchon also describes his role
as best man at the wedding of fellow author Richard
Farina, who would die tragically in a motorcycle
accident two years later.

Following the publication of Gravity's Rainbow in
1973, which is dedicated to Farina, Pynchon published
no new novel for sixteen years, before returning to
the scene with Vineland in 1989 and Mason & Dixon in
1997.

It is estimated that this early typescript of V.
contains one hundred pages of scenes ultimately
excised from the published novel, as well as a dozen
pages reworked almost beyond recognition. The Pynchon
material at the Ransom Center should prove of great
scholarly value and is a welcome addition to a growing
collection of later twentieth-century literary
materials.

Stephen Smith
Special Assistant to the Director

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/newsletters/2001/spring/pynchon2.html

Recent Acquisitions

[...]

Thomas Pynchon

The manuscript for an unproduced musical called
Minstral Island by Pynchon and Kirkpatrick Sale. Early
notes, outlines, and drafts for the 1958 collaboration
between Pynchon and Sale which explores the year 1998
when IBM dominates the world and artists (including
musicians, sailmakers, and prostitutes) are pariahs
who have yet to be assigned roles in the new world
order. Pynchon collaborated on the manuscript with
Sale in 1958, prior to the publication of Pynchon's
first novel, V. Kirkpatrick Sale has written
extensively on the political, economic, sociological,
and environmental impacts of technology, even going so
far as to reconstitute the term Luddite to describe a
contemporary movement that is skeptical of
uncontrolled technological advance. Pynchon
manuscripts are notoriously rare, which makes this
unpublished gem particularly exceptional.

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/news/newsletters/2002/summer/11.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_news.html

--- severs at fas.harvard.edu wrote:

> ... does anyone out there have any speculation as
> to whether the Pynchon policy of complete secrecy
> and nothing-but-the-novels will continue after his
> death, in the hands of an executor? ...


		
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