The Donadio letter...?

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 14:28:56 -0400
>From: "David Kipen" <kipend at gmail.com>
>Subject: The Donadio letter...?
>
>
>Would somebody please tell me where I can find the text of this April 1964
>letter?

>All finest,
>David Kipen

To read the entire letter I guess you'd somehow have to break into the 
Pierpont Morgan Library. Selected snippets from the 120 letters were printed 
in The New York Times, though, before Susan Burden (the widow of the 
collector Carter Burden) did the only decent thing and put a lock on the 
letters for the rest of Pynchon's lifetime. The snippets were printed in the 
article "Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask" by Mel Gussow (New York Times, 
March 4, 1998, E1). The relevant excerpt/quote reads:

In April 1964, Mr. Pynchon tells Ms. Donadio he is facing a creative crisis, 
with four novels in process. With a sudden bravado, he says, "If they come 
out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the 
literary event of the millennium." If so, he wryly suggests that Alfred 
Knopf and Bennet Cerf will have a duel to see which one will be his 
publisher. [End of quote]

....and that certainly aroused my curiosity !