Thomas Pynchon Promotional Broadside

[Mark Kohut]

My online research seems to indicate that this award is presented irregularly, not always for fiction and that no award was given in 1997.


--- On Fri, 7/11/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Thomas Pynchon Promotional Broadside
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, July 11, 2008, 3:38 PM
> 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 ...