State by State Portrait--Pynchon Turned Down Offer to Contribute

[Mark Kohut]

Sounds like a Pynchon joke, if accurate.

Proulx is Maine and Wyoming.


--- On Fri, 11/14/08, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> Subject: State by State Portrait--Pynchon Turned Down Offer to Contribute
> To: "pynchon-l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, November 14, 2008, 4:37 PM
> Sean Wilsey is the author of the memoir Oh the Glory of It
> All and the
> co-editor, with Matt Weiland, of the newly released State
> by State: A
> Panoramic Portrait of America, which features original
> writing on all
> fifty states by the U.S.'s finest novelists,
> journalists, and
> essayists. Rail contributor Jed Lipinski recently met with
> Mr. Wilsey
> to discuss his new book.
> 
> Rail: What writers turned you down?
> 
> Wilsey: [Laughs] J.D. Salinger. I attempted to get in touch
> with him
> through his son, and had the door firmly shut, but
> politely. Franzen
> initially said he couldn't do a state because he had
> another book due,
> so we asked Don DeLillo to do New York. He wrote back
> saying that he
> couldn't write something that didn't originate in
> "my own dim
> interior." Thomas Pynchon said no, but recommended we
> talk to Annie
> Proulx about the difference between Iowa and Minnesota,
> weirdly
> enough.
> 
> http://www.brooklynrail.org/2008/11/express/interview-with-sean-wilsey
> 
> Thought Proulx wrote mostly about Wyoming?
> 
> rich