ATDTDA (2): J. (P)ierpont Morgan (33.27)

[Dave Monroe]

--- Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net> wrote:

> [...] "He is naive enough to think he can get
> financing for this, from Piermont, or me, or one or
> two others (p. 33).
> 
> John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31,
> 1913) was an American financier and banker, who
> dominated corporate finance and industrial
> consolidation....
>  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan

March 4, 1998
New York Times

Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask
By MEL GUSSOW

In his private correspondence, Thomas Pynchon, a
famously reclusive author, offers extraordinary
insights into his creative process as well as his
insecurities, angers and passions and his day-to-day
life.

[...]

All this, and more, is revealed in more than 120
letters that Pynchon sent to his agent, Candida
Donadio, from 1963 to 1982.

In 1984, Carter Burden, the businessman, politician
and arts patron, purchased the group of letters from
Ms. Donadio (through a dealer, Ralph Sipper, of Joseph
the Provider Books in Santa Barbara, Calif.) for
$45,000, making it the most expensive item in Burden's
valuable American literature collection.

Last month, two years after Burden's death, his family
presented his collection (worth $8 million to $10
million) to the Pierpont Morgan Library. While the
letters were in Burden's possession, only he and his
family had access to them. By fall, those letters
should be available to scholars. In them is a rich
treasure of Pynchoniana.

Pynchon is, along with J.D. Salinger, one of the
mystery men of American letters. Very little is known
about his life, he is never knowingly photographed,
and his curtain of secrecy is maintained by relatives
and friends. During the two decades of the
correspondence, he and his agent were evidently close
friends, and he unburdened himself about deeply
personal matters.
	
[...]

The letters are brightened by the author's gift for
language and his mischievous sense of comedy, with
which he assails publishers, critics and politicians.
When he hears that the humorist H. Allen Smith has
written an article for Playboy claiming to be both
J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon, he says, "What no
one knows is that Smith is actually Pierre Salinger,
and I am H. Allen Smith."

Badgered by Who's Who to supply a biographical note,
he considers inventing a life, indicating that he was
born in Mexico, that his parents were Irving Pynchon
and Guadalupe Ibarguengotia and that he was "named
Exotic Dancers Man of the Year in 1957" and "regional
coordinator for the March of Edsel Owners on
Washington in 1961."

[...]

In April 1964, Pynchon tells Ms. Donadio he is facing
a creative crisis, with four novels in process. With
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 Bennett Cerf will have
a duel to see which one will be be his publisher.

After looking back on his difficulties creating his
first novel and discussing political problems in the
United States, he wonders if there is any validity in
writing.

That makes him think about other avenues of
expression, and he remembers his original desire to
study mathematics, a plan that ended when his
application to the University of California was
rejected. It occurs to him that perhaps writing is all
he can do. He asks himself if he is good at it and
answers that he does not know.

The next year, he is in the middle of writing a book
that he characterizes as a potboiler. When it grows to
155 pages, he calls it "a short story, but with gland
trouble," and hopes that his agent "can unload it on
some poor sucker." The book turned out to be his
highly praised second novel, "The Crying of Lot 49."

At various points, he considers selling both "V" and
"Lot 49" to the movies. He reveals himself as an avid
moviegoer, offering capsule reviews. When the
possibility of writing film criticism for Esquire
arises, he says he would love to do it and explains:
"I can be crisp, succinct, iconoclastic, noncoterie,
nonprogrammatic ... also curmudgeonly, insulting,
bigoted, psychotic and nitpicking. A boy scout's
decade of virtues."

[...]

In a handwritten letter in January 1975, Pynchon
mentions for the first time another work in progress,
"Mason & Dixon," 22 years before it was published.

In 1978, in what might have been a response to a
suggestion that he write his autobiography, he says:
"As for spilling my life story, I try to do that all
the time. Nobody ever wants to listen, for some
strange reason."

Most of the letters are signed "later, Tom," one,
"love, Tom." Then suddenly on Jan. 5, 1982, he writes,
"As of this date, you are no longer authorized to
represent me or my work," and signs the letter
"Cordially, Thomas Pynchon." In a follow-up letter, he
asks Ms. Donadio's assistant to send him everything
else of his that she still has. He does not mention
the letters.

When asked about the Pynchon letters, Ms. Donadio, who
lives in Connecticut, said: "I never talked about
Thomas Pynchon when I represented him. He was so
terribly private." She added that it was "a matter of
honor" not to talk about him now. Pynchon, of course,
could not be reached for comment, but through his
lawyer, Jeremy Nussbaum, he expressed his acute
concern that Ms. Donadio had sold the letters.

"It's a rather startling event," said Nussbaum. "I've
never heard of an agent selling letters of a client,
except after the death of the client. They were
entrusted to her in a relationship of confidence, and
they were sold against his wishes."

The Morgan Library has provided Nussbaum with copies
of the letters, which he will pass on to Pynchon.

http://www.mondowendell.com/mask.htm

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.salon.com/media/1998/03/10media.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#1990s

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9802&msg=24094

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9803&msg=24470

"... Juscelino Kubitschek was a Brazilian social
reformer, president of Brazil from 1956 to 1961, who
was forced into exile when the CIA (an insitution
closely associated with the Dulles family, longtime
lawyers and administrators for the Rockefellers)
directed a military coup against the popular,
democratically elected Goulart regime (1961-1964). 
So, Pierce Inverarity evokes the Standard Oil team in
a multi-generational feud with J.P. Morgan, and his
law firm reminds us of the CIA's role in postwar
American foreign policy."

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0107&msg=57990

   We can only infer from the reaction of the stock
market to the failure of Pynchon & Co., the use of the
Irving Trust Co. as receiver, that the firm was a
Morgan satrap. The Pynchons appear to have used to
advantage all of their family associations with the
J.P. Morgan group, with whom they had shared common
interests since the founding of the colonies in 1630.
Yet as the J. P. Morgan influence ebbed, the Morgan
associates suffered as well. Once again the Pynchon
clan had thrown its lot in with the loyalists and
lost.

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ppolitics.htm

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm#chap_2

Cf. ...

http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_dante_hollander.htm#chap_1


 
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