Timeline

[Robin Landseadel]

The problem about this taboo concerning Pynchon's "Private Life" is  
that the man [like it or not] is a public figure from a family full of  
[historical] public figures and that he is an authorial voice who  
reflects the times and the places where he's living in his writing.

Gravity's Rainbow makes more sense if one has a understanding of  
things that were happening 1966-1973, in particular working backwards  
from obvious influences on Pynchon's writing—like Norman O. Brown or  
the Yippies or Richard Nixon's various paranoias or even the  L.A  
freeway system in the Hippie/Yippie era—that can best be understood in  
the context of the time and place where the book was being written.  
Similarly, Vineland makes much more sense if one knows of the  
activities of Earth First at the time the novel was issued. In  
addition to the FBI/Cointelpro subplots of both Vineland and the Earth  
First! saga, there are also subplots of Judi Bari's private life that  
may be part of Vineland's design as well:

	For personal and political reasons, Bari preferred to believe that

	 she had been the victim of an attack by the timber industry, or

	by some other political enemy, even the FBI. After all, that was

	her public persona — the martyr of a radical environmental

	movement.



	But deep down she could not escape the idea that the person

	who bombed her might have been Sweeney, a man with a

	violent past. Bari never admitted this fear in public. It's a secret

	she only told a handful of close friends.



http://www.theava.com/bari/talbot.html

http://netowne.com/conspiracy/politics/index.htm

The point where the political becomes all too personal is a central  
theme of Vineland.

My guess is that Vineland was written relatively quickly* and that the  
author's awareness of what was going on in "Vineland" [that land  
stretching from Mendocino to Eureka] during the time the novel was  
written is very much to the point, just as living in Manhattan during  
9/11 is very much to the point in Against the Day.

Understanding Pynchon's writing requires that [at least to a certain  
limited extent] we find out "who is that man behind the curtain?" I'm  
not talking about going through the man's trash, but knowing that  
Pynchon worked for Boeing or that he's lived in or near surfing  
communities or that he comes from a long line of intellectual gifted  
and sometimes heretical Pynchons is relevant in understanding his  
writing. Particularly in Vineland or The Crying of Lot 49, where time  
and place are critical to the stories in those novels. I'm sure that  
time and place will be very much to the point in Inherent Vice.  
Connecting the dots concerning what we already know about the author  
yields plenty of useful information regarding the man's novels.  
Knowing about the landmark decision "Pynchon vs. Stearns" illuminates  
The Crying of Lot 49:

http://tinyurl.com/dk9rkr

Knowing about Thomas Ruggles Pynchon  III:

http://www.newenglandancestors.org/research/services/articles_gbr48.asp

. . . and his "Introduction to Chemical Physics":

http://books.google.com/books?id=da8LAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA16&dq=Thomas+Ruggles+Pynchon+III+trinity

. . . illuminates both Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day.

*(David Streitfeld said in the Washington Post on August 9, 1992 that  
he had seen a copy of the Vineland manuscript three months before  
publication and that "It was basically a rough draft, meaning he did a  
lot of work at the last minute. This certainly didn't take 17 years.")

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.books/msg/ddc442f03369d0cc

On Feb 10, 2009, at 7:31 AM, rich wrote:

> could be easily done using various databases but I think it comes
> close to crossing that line into his private life
>
> imho
>
> rich
>
> On 2/9/09, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Robin's recent post on TRPs whereabouts for @ 10 years in California
>> leads me to ask: Has anyone done a timeline, albeit uncertain,
>> of TRP's places of residence year by year, work by work?
>>
>> One sees this kind of thing in some bios and forewords of writers
>> and their books.