Our boy Pynchon

[D..]

I have my serious doubts as to the potential
"embarrassment" he'd feel over suddenly putting
himself out in the public's eye. Not that it's likely
to happen (shy of some major neurological damage
inflicted by disease or injury), but one has the
feeling that if he ever does, it's almost certain to
be a long-thought out, deliberate decision on his (and
his family's) part.  His avoidance of the media over
the years has been notably consistent and was one of
the factors that weighed into CNN not pointing him out
in their 1997 piece.

With all this freshly in mind, I recall something
William Gaddis said during his acceptance speech for
the National Book Award when JR won that might be
something Pynchon may well agree with:


"I feel like part of the vanishing breed that thinks a
writer should be read and not heard, let alone seen. I
think this is because there seems so often today to be
a tendency to put the person in the place of his or
her work, to turn the creative artist into a
performing one, to find what a writer says about
writing somehow more valid, or more real, than the
writing itself."

--from his acceptance speech for the National Book
Award in Fiction for J R , April 1976 (copied from
www.williamgaddis.org)


Cheers,

D.

--- page at quesnelbc.com wrote:

> Laura,
> 
> I agree with you. Taking embarrassment as a
> negative, what positive gain
> would there be in showing up on The View? Flog his
> latest book? I think
> not.
> 
> Page
> 
> > Once you get started, it's hard to stop (as I
> think the immortal Chaka
> > Khan said).  At this point, it would probably be
> too personally
> > embarrassing for him to become a public figure.
> >
> > Laura



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