Pynchon's letter: You Hide, They Seek

[Ya Sam]

That's a very peculiar article, so decide for yourselves. It's not a review 
of AtD, but some stuff, very minor, is revealed. On the whole it's about  
Scott McLemee's discovering a letter by Pynchon. Some sentences might be 
spoilerish, but not for me (and I'm spoiler paranoid)

NO SPOILERS IN THE BODY OF THIS MESSAGE

"Working as an archival assistant at the Library of Congress about a dozen 
years ago, I had the memorable and never-to-be-repeated experience of 
discovering a letter by Thomas Pynchon. It was written early in his career, 
when his aversion to the public spotlight was known only to friends — rather 
than being, as it is now, a somewhat paradoxical claim to fame. ..."

"Eyes wide, I read as Pynchon turned down the “flattering and attractive” 
offer to come teach at Bennington. He did so, he said, “with much pain, 
don’t ask where” — explaining that he had resolved, two or three years 
earlier, to write three novels all at the same time. Pynchon hinted that it 
was not going well, and called the decision “a moment of temporary 
insanity.” But he also said he was “too stubborn to let any of them go, let 
alone all of them,” and thought that teaching would distract him, “given the 
personal limitations involved.” He thanked Hyman for the invitation, and 
also praised Hyman’s analysis of V. as “criticism at its best.”

It was modest. It was polite. A few months later, he published The Crying of 
Lot 49 — maybe one of the novels driving him to distraction, maybe not. 
Unfortunately there were no more letters from Pynchon in the collection — 
nor did this one provide any indication where he was when he wrote it. (The 
return address he gave was that of his literary agent in New York.)

As a clue into the mystery of Thomas Pynchon, then, it seems like a pretty 
small thing. I hadn’t thought about it at all in a long time, in fact — 
until a stray reference in his new book brought it back to mind."

Read the whole thing here

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/15/mclemee

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