Bob Dylan and Close Encounters of the Pynchon kind.

[Will Layman]

Howard is a good friend of mine.  He lives in Vermont in the summer  
but he lives in NW DC during the school year -- I taught his daughter  
all through grades 7 - 12.  I can back up Joe's story (Howard's  
friendship with Bob and Tom) all the way.

That said, I hope that Joe will refrain from retelling the anecdotes  
as I have.  I know that's Howard's intention, and Howard is about the  
most gracious guy you could ever meet.

His books, while utterly un-Pynchon-ish in most ways, have twice been  
finalists for the National Book Award. They are terrific and well- 
crafted as all get-out.

-- Will Layman

On Jul 12, 2007, at 3:57 PM, Joe Allonby wrote:

> So I was in rural East Calais Vermont installing a piano in a  
> ramshackle old farmhouse at the end of a dirt road. The owner was a  
> nice enough guy in his early sixties named Howard.. While we were  
> discussing where he wqnted his new piano and where we were taking  
> his old one, the phone rang. He took a call from "Bob" who was in  
> Montpelior doing a "performance" and wanted to meet for dinner  
> before the show. Even from across the room I could recognize the  
> famous voice coming through the phone.
>
> "I couldn't help noticing, but were you just on the phone with Bob  
> Dylan?"
>
> "Well, I don't like to drop names but yeah."
>
> "Do you mind if I ask how you know Bob Dylan?"
>
> "We're old friends. We were introduced many years ago by my  
> literary agents husband. They're good friends."
>
> "OK, I'm going to take a wild guess that your literary agent is  
> Melanie Jackson."
>
> "Yes. How did you know that?"
>
> Howard Norman and I then sat down and had a great conversation  
> about his two good friends, Bob Dylan and Tom Pynchon. He had a  
> bunch of anecdotes about them both. He gave me several of his books  
> and ....... a pristine original paperback pamphlet of "Mortality  
> and Mercy in Vienna".
>
>