Pynchon's reply

[Joe Allonby]

Common ground after all, though I was thinking of Pete Puma and Bugs
Bunny. Jones borrowed a lot from Avery. Oh Mr Monroe....

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 12:44 PM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> On May 20, 2009, at 8:51 AM, Joe Allonby wrote:
>
>> Half & half, please.
>
> Wish I could find the old Tex Avery cartoon, Fox & Droopy as I recall:
>
> "One lump or two?"
> "Oh, I have a sweet tooth—seven, please."
>
> [Droopy whips out mallet. . . .]
>
>> Is this making sense or should I just reach for the mallet and say
>> "Don't bother, I'll do it myself."
>
> Re-holster your mallet and grab a sarsaparilla.
>
>> All very good points, Robin
>
> Thanks.
>
>>  But assuming authorial intent without real evidence is a minefield.
>
> Copy and Roger that. Charles Hollander's explanation of the author's intent
> is where our paths diverge. On the other hand, Charles Hollander is a very
> good writer, he illuminates many of Pynchon's sources/citations and love his
> work at Positive Feedback Online.
>
> http://www.positive-feedback.com/
>
> What I ran across—thanks in large part to the Dude's writing—is the
> historical backstory of the Pynchon clan. After separating out the issue of
> intent—all those questions concerning why something would end up in
> Pynchon's books—there's still the issue of what gets left in and what gets
> left out of the books. It seems as though, for whatever reason, things
> relating to the Pynchon Family history do end up in Thomas Pynchon's books.
> That line about  "lazy research habits" in Pynchon's letter to Hollander
> seems more in line with looking up family history in a library than creating
> the scaffolding for the century's "master cabal." It's kinda like Googling
> yourself. Thing is, looking at the path left in the wake of a forward
> looking gathering of fairly bright people who were in on the ground floor of
> the creation of this country seems to cast off clues to the "master cabal"
> after all.
>
>> I've encountered this firsthand when people have tried to
>> tell my what my lyrics are "about" citing specific people
>> and events. Sometimes I just make things up that sound
>> like a good story.
>>
>> Pynchon saturates his stories with so much information that it is
>> tempting look for things that might not be there.So, I'll take the guy
>> at his word though allowing that he may have been a little
>> disingenuous. The self-deprecation of the Slow Learner intro seems
>> indicative of an ego firmly held in check and a self-critical view of
>> his own work. I'm reminded of the Dylan interviews in "No Direction
>> Home" when he cynically toyed with clueless reporters. I won't say
>> that Hollander is as inane as a mid-sixties pop reporter. Pynchon
>> shows respect for him. But there is a quality of "Come on, aren't you
>> reading too much in to this?".
>
> Agreed. Still, looking at family history certain themes come up: Heresy,
> Robber Barons, tax stamps and other irregular philatelic collectables,
> international banking, trains and electricity and other offerings that point
> back at Pynchon & Company, Pynchon vs. Stearns and William Pynchon. And then
> there's the man's own history at Boeing and in the Navy. I'm sure that in
> 1964/66 OBA spent a lot of hours of library research on the history of his
> family, and that seems far more human and plausible and do-able than other,
> more complicated theories.
>