ATD vs. V.? Overcoding or metaphor?

[Mark Kohut]

Michael,

I have talked to many publishing people about Pynchon and his editors, etc.
I am as sure as I can be that Jackie Onasis was never his editor. For one, he was never published by the comapny she worked for.

Cork Smith and the late Faith Sale (Kirkpatrick's wife were his early editors).

Mark


--- On Fri, 9/26/08, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: ATD vs. V.? Overcoding or metaphor?
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, September 26, 2008, 2:54 AM
> David Morris wrote:
> > I think the hollow earth segment in AtD was just a
> cheap throwaway.
> >  It came and went without any real resonance with the
> rest of the book.
> >   AtD needed a much more active editor.  A lot should
> have been cut
> >  before publishing.
> >
> 
> no doubt this has been mentioned before on the list, but
> Jackie
> Onassis was his editor
> at one point.  Fun was poked...
> 
> who knows what goes on behind the scenes.
> Most people think that Maxwell Perkins improved Thomas
> Wolfe's books
> immeasurably, but I've always been sort of curious
> about the material
> that was cut.
> (I think it's available somewhere, even been published,
> but I haven't yet gotten that curious, I guess.)
> 
> for my part, I wouldn't cut a word of AtD.
> 
> If the Chicago scenes established the Chums and interfaced
> them with
> the historical facts of the period in question, then the
> Hollow Earth
> sequences set the Chums loose amid its myths and
> misinformation.
> 
> In between, didn't we have the Pacific sequence, with
> the Tesla
> transmission, the fireworks and the falling-out over the
> figurehead?
> 
> Afterwards, don't we have their curious failure on the
> Vormance mission?
> 
> There's a lot of heavy lifting that could be done with
> that stuff, if
> I felt up to it tonight.
> Progressions, counterpoints, (de)cadences, singling up and
> casting off
> of lines of flight...