Thomas Pynchon Promotional Broadside

[Mark Kohut]

My guess here is that this prize, like many in the book/literary world,
is decided BEFORE the award date---unlike Academy Awards, Pulitzer Prizes
and National book Awards----and the writer is notified, often thru his publisher. 
You can see that Pynchon says he was glad to be notified in advance but he won't accept.
Therefore, they must have chosen another writer's book.

There are some literary Prizes in which it is necessary to accept---or show up and accept----

All the stuff I've read on the Nobel by the way says that the Committee now wants that ever since Sartre declined it in the 60s.......they talk to the possibiles in advance these days................
so, it is possible TRP already won the Nobel invisibly, so to speak, and we might never know or not until someone writes their Swedish memoirs.

(I have occasionally wondered if Elfrede Jellinek, Pynchon's German translator of GR, at least,  was a 'second choice' when TRP declined.) 


--- On Fri, 7/11/08, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Thomas Pynchon Promotional Broadside
> To: "rich" <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, July 11, 2008, 2:35 PM
> On 7/11/08, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > this I just found:
> >
> > http://sweetbooks.com/p.htm
> >
> > PYNCHON, Thomas. Mason and Dixon. NY: Henry Holt,
> (1997). Hardbound in
> > dust jacket. First edition. Presentation copy
> inscribed by Pynchon to
> > William Plumley, head of the University of Charleston
> award committee
> > that chose Pynchon for their Appalachian Medallion:
> "For William
> > Plumley, With appreciation and thanks. Thomas
> Pynchon." TOGETHER WITH
> > a Typed Letter Signed from Pynchon declining the award
> and presenting
> > the book. One quarto page on Mason and Dixon
> letterhead dated June 23,
> > 1997, in full: "Dear Mr. Plumley, Regretfully, I
> must decline the
> > Appalachian Medallion...."
> 
> Did anyone even know he'd been chosen for this?  Then
> turned it down?
> The only directly related Google hits I get are for this
> book ...