Pynchon feature for new online mag?

[Robin Landseadel]

Down the Rabbit Hole.

My early education prepared me to become Pynchon’s biographer, a  
heuristic fabulist. Learned to read before I could talk, read Sherlock  
Holmes, Voltaire and Swift before Wonderland/Looking-Glass.  Was  
thrown into the center of the Civil Rights movement, L.A. chapter.  
Spent the summer of ’66 in Watts, had rocket tests in my backyard— 
J.P.L.’s front yard—in ‘64. Three decades later I.G. Farben moves into  
Berkeley via the Bayer Labs gene-splicing factory, conveniently  
located two blocks from my old house.

It’s not simply that I know where our fair-haired boy came from—I’ve  
lived there when he was living there including a few places not,  
strictly speaking, on the map, Stencilizing his every move without  
being aware of my actions—because all this trail-seeking was going on  
before I read any Pynchon. In any case, my narration cannot be  
trusted, God knows how much projection is going on here. And yet—I  
know where and when and managed to bump into a few whos as well. But  
like the master said, I only get to tickle his creatures.

I moved to Berkeley in 1979. Learned about “stripping” mass-market  
paperbacks—tear off the cover and mail back to the publisher/ 
distributor, throw out the book— while working at Campus Textbook  
Exchange, directly across the street from Sproul Plaza. One of the  
books being thrown out was The Crying of Lot 49, then being taught by  
a number of Profs at the UC. Felt like a moment right out of  
Fahrenheit 451. I retrieved a copy from the dumpster and started  
reading.  The Campus Textbook Exchange gig didn't last long and the  
next few months involved bumping around a lot of temp jobs—one  
involved taking AC Transit buses to the Transbay Terminal. Eventually  
got familiar with the general territory of Oedipa’s wild Midnight  
Climax of a ride, that late night tour through San Francisco’s land of  
the dispossessed, Yo-Yo-ing through the fog. After this adventure in  
temping, landed at the Northern Renaissance Faire, living in a spider- 
infested 16th scale Tudor mansion. Managed to get another temp job,  
this time from the phone company, an assignment that enabled me to  
read the entirety of Gravity’s Rainbow on the job.

Then things got strange.