Pynchon feature for new online mag?

[Joe Allonby]

Round about 1980, I was a student at a small  East Coast elitist
liberal arts university learning to hate America and Jesus. Nearly
every waking hour was spent doing drugs or having sex or contemplating
either or with myself and others. I was blind. Not literally. It's
just a figure of speech. I am partially color blind though. I have
trouble with blue and green. Yellow might as well be green. I have no
idea what the fuck purple is. I was also left-handed and prone to
digression. In some circles it is accepted thought that both of those
conditions are ongoing.Hey! It's sunny out! Let's play baseball!

I was interning (is that a word?) at Boston's stuffiest publishing
house. These people published books and magazines that made the Wall
Street Journal read like Alistair MacLean. Even Simon and Schuster
wouldn't play with them. They did have a marketing department though.
And copywriters. Something called "product managers". And, of course,
advertising salesmen, most of whom could be seen emerging from the
anus of a giant jackass on any given Friday afternoon holding a
pre-loaded martini. Or sneaking down in the freight elevator with the
guys from shipping and receiving, one of whom had a brother who lived
in Hawaii and grew the world's most outrageous marijuana which he
shipped via UPS to his brother in Quincy, reeking and seeping cartons
of vulvate sensimilla with punta roja. Friday afternoons were for
office parties in Pre-Reagan America. It was all part of the creeping
malaise.

This was how I discovered Thomas Pynchon. Hiding under a desk in the
advertising department during a Friday afternoon office party, lurking
in the conversation of bored and stoned young publishing execs who
were all not so secretly convinced that they were much, much better
than this.

I needed to know this book that they were talking about. Why would
gravity have a rainbow and who was Roger Mexico? Why was the
visitation white and Enzian black? Can you really inject wine?
Fermented mare's milk? Isn't Rocketman just a song by a gay English
guy in high heels and glasses? WHAT IN GOD'S UNHOLY FUCKING NAME ARE
YOU FUCKING PEOPLE FUCKING TALKING ABOUT?

The next day one of them dropped the book off at my desk. Three days
later, bloodshot-eyed and unsteady on my feet, I gave it back to him.

"Couldn't handle it, huh?"

"No. I read the whole thing. I've done nothing else. I haven't slept.
Give me more."



On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 6:34 AM, Carvill John <johncarvill at hotmail.com> wrote:
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> Hello Mr. Morris. You are, needless to say, one of the people I'd most like to see contributing.
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> I think your email is based on a coupke of misunderstandings. The big one is, I'm not proposing a regular feature, requiring repeated contributions from p-isters. I'm suggesting a one-off feature, so there' no need to worry about sustaining momentum or anything like that.
>
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> What you say about Pynchon notes, or trawling the p-list archives, *seems* to be based on a misunderstanding or some sort, but I'm not sure what. I am probably missing your point, but I don't really get why you have mentioned those things?
>
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> If my biggest hurdle is the 'regular aspect' then consider that hurdle surmounted!
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> To clarify: what I am suggesting is that each p-ister contribute a short mini-essay on why Pynchon is so special, the overal aim of the feature being, broadly, to persuade a general reader to give Pynchon a go. That's all. This method allows for a wide variety of approaches; each p-lister may take a very different angle. I might write about Pynchons humour, someopne else about his erudition, someone else focus just on Mason & Dixon, someone else just on one fantastic paragraph, or maybe even just a sentence, etc. The focus of what yu choose to write can be as wide or as narrow as you choose. Write anything you want.
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> If enough p-listers wrote such a mini-essay, and we cobble them all together, would it not be interesting - even for us - to see what people choose to say? And I think it's beyond doubt that the combined effect of these individual contributions would be to spark the interest of a reader who otherwise wouldn't have given Pynchon a chance.
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>> Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2010 15:22:14 -0600
>> Subject: Re: Pynchon feature for new online mag?
>> From: fqmorris at gmail.com
>> To: johncarvill at hotmail.com
>> CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>
>> A few days ago Carvill John wrote:
>>
>>> But this guy, well read, etc. but never read a word of Pynchon, well, he made a suggestion that I immdiately rejected, but then reconsidered: why don't we run a feature on Pynchon, written by Pynchon List people?
>>
>> And just now:
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>>> FOlks!  Last nagging email on this one. Lots of good people signed up, but still plenty of quality p-listers yet to step forward.
>>> Come on!
>>> Don't make me name names!
>>
>> And I say:
>>
>> Tall order, Carvill. Even with a new novel it's hard to get any
>> consistent participation with Group Reads on the P-list. Almost all
>> start out with lots of volunteers, but end with less than a handful as
>> days grind by. And participation quality is a far cry from anything
>> resembling a "feature," especially if you mean it to be a "regular"
>> one. Insights here can be very bight, but usually also very brief:
>> bursts, not usually fully-fledged, nor sustained. That's why the
>> group participation works so well, filling out threads that bear
>> following.
>>
>> Flame wars are our specialty (you've been part of a few), and even
>> those have faded to a flicker from high-spirited days of old. Even
>> Millison couldn't be counted on any sustained commentary without his
>> "kick-me" flame-baiting (such a masochist!).
>>
>> Also occasional NP insights from all comers continue to spark new
>> mental-pursuits that keep many here for years.
>>
>> If it weren't so cumbersome, excerpting and compiling a few posts from
>> the P-list archives could provide rich material for someone willing to
>> commit to "regular" contributions of any merit. But that's a tough
>> slog, and would require a lot of time, especially from someone who
>> wasn't "there."
>>
>> Pynchon-notes could be a source also. But it's pretty dry even for
>> Pynchon fans.
>>
>> I think your biggest hurdle is that "regular" aspect re. Pynchon.
>> Free-wheeling literary blogger/s would probably be more fruitful, like
>> this "Conversational Reading" one:
>>
>> http://conversationalreading.com/
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> David Morris
>
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