217 33rd St., Manhattan Beach

[Dave Monroe]

What makes #217 worth memorializing, since it doesn’t seem to have any
attributes of a great, passing era of American architecture? According
to several accounts, American novelist, Thomas Pynchon, lived at #217
in the early 1970s, about the time he was writing the mammoth and
mind-boggling Gravity’s Rainbow. South Bay locales figure in a number
of his works, either more or less disguised, and his fictional
“Gordita Beach” is probably Manhattan Beach itself. His most recent
book, Inherent Vice, is set largely in the South Bay, and demonstrates
a familiarity with the geography of the place. I like to think about
T.P. at least returning to the South Bay not all that long ago,
cruising around, collecting background for Inherent Vice.

[...]

However, the guidebook for “Places Thomas Pynchon Has Lived” has only
one entry: 217 33rd Street. Mr. Pynchon is reclusive to a degree
perhaps unattained by any other well-known author, and hasn’t been
seen in public since his writing career began in the 1960s. Anyone who
knows where he was prior to this, or where he’s been since, ain’t
talkin’. There are no photographs of him and only occasional reports
of sightings. His appetite for privacy makes the late J.D. Salinger
seem like a media hound by comparison.

According to reports by people who claim to have known him at the
time, Pynchon was living here in Manhattan Beach then, and, true to
his nature, maintained only a sparse, carefully guarded acquaintance.
It’s likely that Pynchon is still in California, possibly here in the
greater Los Angeles area, but no one who knows is talking: certainly
not Mr. Pynchon. That’s because he doesn’t talk to anyone about
anything under any circumstances. It’s nothing new for famous people
to live in southern California. Except, usually, they are a bit more,
well, public about it.

He had a darned groovy spot, not just two blocks from the beach, but
only a block down from the scene up on Highland.

Just a few blocks over, on Rosecrans, is one of the innumerable El
Tarasco mexican food joints where Pynchon, reportedly, occasionally
ate (there are umpteen El Tarascos, all over the area). This is a
pitiably small scrap of information, and demonstrates how successful
Mr. P. has been in eluding everyone.

[...]

>From time to time, I may post a few other articles from spots that
appear in Pynchon’s novels. There are a significant number of
locations in the South Bay of L.A., especially with the publication of
Inherent Vice, that qualify. They might say something interesting
about either life in L.A., or perhaps they’ll reveal, just as
Pynchon’s characters themselves strive to do, some pattern or
underlying insight about the man that we can assemble from otherwise
disparate and unconnected facts.

http://blaknissan.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/217-33rd-st-manhattan-beach/