IV "autobiographical"?

[Doug Millison]

How to separate Pynchon the person from the characters in his books?  
This is the question that seems to animate Pynchon-L more than any  
other.

In one sense, I know that's impossible, how could his creations in any  
way be separate from the author?

At the same time I also know how an artist can in fact achieve enough  
distance from a work of art to let it develop and breathe on its own,  
shaping it as it grows to be sure, yet aware that something new has  
entered the picture, something which is not identical with the  
author.  I don't know how to account for this in critical theory, but  
I know a tiny little bit about how it works in practice.

The second big question that has led to much p-list hand-wringing,  
heartbreak, and laughter over the years, yielding fault lines that  
exist to this very day:  What, exactly, does Pynchon mean by putting  
his characters in the situations where we find them, acting and  
speaking as they do?

I try to be careful about making categorical statements in that  
regard, knowing that readers can generally keep coming up with details  
in P's texts, like grabbing verses from the Bible, to make their  
points.  His books, IV included, are complex enough to  support many  
nterpretations from a variety of intelligent and reasonable people.   
There are enough differences in the various critical and theoretical  
approaches that readers bring to Pynchon's novels to produce startling  
differences in interpretation, too.  Enough rich chocolaty goodness to  
give us each our own Pynchon, if we want or need one.  I mean, we  
could read IV through the lens of the Holocaust, if we wanted to do  
that, it's hardly a stretch  when we've got a wanna-be Nazi wolf man  
in Chapter 1, textually linked to the future Blicero as described in  
GR, if I understood correctly what was posted the other day in that  
regard.

IF Pynchon somehow intends Doc as an autobiographical stand-in for his  
historical self --- a BIG if and problematic for all kinds of reasons,  
in my opinion -- that would be quite a statement he's making about  
himself, based on what we see of Doc in Ch 1 and what we know of him  
from the book trailer video that Pynchon narrates.   I mean, IF  
Pynchon intends Doc to be himself, what does it mean that he gives Doc  
a back story that includes helping the police set up drug busts and  
shake-down scams?  Would he be setting us up for a tale of redemption,  
where we grow to love Doc despite his checkered past?  Or what?

Do we know enough about Pynchon's actual biography to nail down any of  
this as truly autobiographical?

Some of what is taken as given about Pynchon is in fact problematic:   
the idea, generally accepted as gospel truth, that Pynchon was so  
messed up on drugs when he wrote GR that he later couldn't remember  
what he had been writing, or whatever it is precisely that JS wrote  
about Pynchon back in the day -- it's a great story, but since even  
that journalist doesn't mention that anybody else was in the room when  
Pynchon supposedly told him that, I don't necessarily take it as true,  
it can't be corroborated, and it may not be wise to take what the  
reporter says at face value.  When I know, from first-hand  
communication with that writer, that he had a specific axe to grind  
wrt to TRP, and when you realize to what an extent that particular  
journalist seems to have been driven by jealousy and a desire for  
revenge, I have to wonder if he might have been exaggerating or even  
inventing out of whole cloth the idea that Pynchon  somehow was lucky  
enough to get drugged up and reach into the clouds and pull out GR  
whole, because that apocryphal anecdote is of a piece by other  
statements by this journalist that add up to the concept that TRP  
isn't really that great a writer -- in a book that was published  
around the time M&D was released, this journo even has his old  
girlfriend claim that he the journalist was the true poet while  
Pynchon was just a poseur and parasite, or something to that effect.

It may be easier to find bits and pieces of the historical Pynchon  
scattered throughout IV.  I suspect that in part what he's done with  
IV is to work in all kinds of references to his personal past and to  
touch on a number of things in his various books that seem important  
to him at this stage of his career and life.  I don't think it's as  
simple as any single character standing in for Pynchon or somebody  
from his life.  Not claiming any special knowledge or insight, just  
stating my suspicions, with no need to find anything in particular in  
IV.  Just along for the ride and the fun of it.