Our boy Pynchon

[Michael Bailey]

On 3/20/08, Mark Kohut wrote:
> I might argue it [letting work speak for itself] is another reason why...................
>

trying a thought experiment, as if I were a novelist...

it seems like he wasn't
all that reclusive at high school or college

One account says he fled through a window, from a Time or Life
reporter in Mexico City.   This would seem to indicate prior
consent to an interview.  What could have changed his mind?

 Maybe he had stage fright, or a hot date, or maybe, just maybe, there
was ganja involved.  Kerouac definitely found the Mexican
reefer to be potent.
Also, in places, Burroughs talks about "the fear" - passages
which the young hipster TRPV would have been familiar with.
Maybe paranoia came into play.

Having started on a course of avoidance, he may have
realized that time spent talking would be time subtracted
from writing.  He may have figured that commenting on other
authors - which would be de rigeur - could lead to becoming embroiled
in controversies which might actually diminish his popularity (look at
what happened to John Gardner after he wrote _On Moral Fiction_
for heaven's sakes, even though he wrote some good, I happen
to think, maybe even great stuff after that...he lived to regret
and even to retract some of his words)

Finally, and returning to the sentiment we share, the works
do speak for themselves.  By now, some truly great writing
has been done on his work (I refer interested parties to
_Pynchon Notes_, available at
http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html, many early
issues free even, but well worth purchasing the later,
thicker volumes too - among other scholarship.)  Would
some of these viewpoints have come to light had the
author pre-empted interpretation?  Perhaps, but maybe not.
By offering a tabula rasa, he's given of himself in a unique way
- might not be right for everybody, but it suits him, seems to me.