Dinner with 'Professor' Irwin Corey

[Dave Monroe]

I asked about the time in 1974 when he had accepted the National Book
Award for Fiction that Thomas Pynchon received for his novel
"Gravity's Rainbow" when Pynchon, a well-known recluse, declined to
attend.

"With Pynchon's permission, Thomas Guinzberg, head of Viking Books,
asked me to take his place at the Alice Tully Hall ceremony to accept
the award, figuring that my double-talk was right in line with his
prose, which most readers found very obtuse."

The professor's acceptance speech went off without a hitch despite a
streaker running across the stage during it. Almost no one knew what
Pynchon looked like, his only published photo being one from his
high-school yearbook.

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