P writing on drugs? Re: On The Road (Destination: Starbucks)

[Will Layman]

Tried to post this yesterday, but it seemed to get hung up in the air:


I know that the story I'm about to tell won't decide this dispute  
[about P writing on drugs] or, for that matter, seem particularly  
credible (indeed, I don't actually know that it's credible), but here  
it is.

I'm a high school teacher, and one day -- around 1999 or 2000, I  
think -- the aunt of one of my students was in my office.  Don't want  
to say her name for, I hope, obvious reasons.  She looked at my  
bookshelf and saw both LINELAND (the Jules Siegel book about Pynchon- 
l) and a bunch of Pynchon's books, and she plucked LINELAND off the  
shelf.

"Oh, are you interested in Thomas Pynchon?"  I asked her.

"I know him," she said, as she flipped through the book.

Imagine my reaction.  I think I stammered something about how you  
don't run into one of Pynchon's friends every day.

"Actually I lived with him for a while, in California."

Omigod omigod omigod, I'm thinking.

She called him Tom.  She said she had spoken to him on the phone once  
in the last five of six years (which would have been the mid-late  
'90s), but they were no longer close.  She told me that he was  
working on GR when she was with him.  She said that one of the  
characters in GR was obviously based on her.

I felt I shouldn't ask her any questions about him personally,  
because I didn't want to put her in a position of having to refuse to  
answer.  But I did mention that some people thought he wrote GR while  
stoned.  She said, "Well, this was California in the [late '60s,  
early '70s -- I can't recall the years she was actually referencing],  
so . . . .  But, really, how could you write all of this if you were  
high?"  Obviously, I'm paraphrasing her.

Every time I saw her after that, I wanted to mention Pynchon, quiz  
her, somehow draw more out of her, but I demurred.  Her niece has  
graduated and I haven't seen her since (and probably won't see her  
again).

Was she telling me the truth?

-- Will Layman